Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is one of the most anticipated games of the year as usual but it’s also one that gamers are nervous about. The fifteenth mainline entry in the FPS franchise is going back to basics with boots on the ground combat but stripping the game down to a much more hardcore version of the shooter.
No more automatic healing, there’s a button dedicated to healing yourself and you have to have a piece of gear to do it, all players have 150 health, specialists have been refined, and much more. This isn’t a Call of Duty game you’ll be super familiar with, it has hints of Black Ops 2 and 3 but it’s something very new and different. The only question is, is it a good kind of new and different?
It has the potential to be but in its current state, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 feels messy and disjointed. This is the roughest beta for a Call of Duty to date but perhaps that’s a good thing, it gives a chance for more fans to have their voices heard and a chance for Treyarch to tweak things to make it something really worthwhile.
The issues are far and wide-ranging from balancing issues with weapons and gear, spawning issues, and much more. For starters, the most frustrating thing is the gunplay. This feels like a Black Ops game which I personally believe has the best overall gameplay but with 4, everything felt like a game that was trying more to emulate that Black Ops feel and failing.
The time to kill (TTK) is way too long and pretty inconsistent too. Since everyone has 150 health in the game (Treyarch has said this is to help them tune weapons but the health will be 150 in the final game too), gun battles are drawn out by an extra couple of seconds which gives more time for the enemy’s teammates to come and join the fight and kill you or cause other issues.
Taking on more than one or two people at full health is now super hard unless you’re using your specialist ability or the enemy has really terrible aim. On top of that, healing yourself is way too fast. If a player is able to slip behind cover for just a split second, they can stick themselves with a needle and their health will rapidly build back up to 150. The meter to use that ability again recharges really quickly as well, it almost makes it feel like taking out regenerative healing was pointless because the self-healing is significantly more efficient and faster.
Luckily, snipers haven’t really taken a hit due to this. Snipers still feel very effective and are one shot kills from the chest and above, they pack a real punch even though there were only a handful of really good vantage points to use them within the five maps available during the beta.
For the most part, SMGs are the way to go within Black Ops 4 because they shoot super fast and deal out lots of damage. That combo is essential to winning fights in the game due to the TTK, they’re pretty overpowered at the moment and can make some battles feel inconsistent.
The general rule of thumb in a shooter is if you get the first shot off, you’ll win a gunfight simply because you end up putting more bullets into them in that period of time. Black Ops 4? Not the case all the time. Sometimes it’s shoot first, die first. The TTK inconstancies are this Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s downfall, it holds the game back from being really fun and makes it more aggravating than a typical Call of Duty. I have a positive KDR in the beta so it’s not just a question of me being terrible at the game, there’s something genuinely wrong with the gunplay.
The issues don’t stop there, Black Ops 4 has this jarring shift to this more tactical, team-focused gameplay. This doesn’t work in Call of Duty because if you’re not partied up with your friends, everyone scatters and you don’t have much of a way to communicate with them. Teamwork isn’t really in the mindset of an average Call of Duty player and that’s not an insult, they’ve grown to play as lone wolves
Battlefield is a game reliant on teamwork due to different classes having abilities to heal each other, repair vehicles, dispense ammo, and having a squad you spawn on and are rewarded for staying close to. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s reliance on teamwork doesn’t feel fully developed with no ways of communicating, only a handful of ways of actually being able to have an impact on the team, and more. It simply isn’t the game for this style of gameplay.
Some specialists have abilities that dish out ammo or health to the team but since Call of Duty has always given you ample amounts of ammo, players have been wired to just run from spawn and kill, kill, kill until they’re eventually gunned down. It has always been a franchise where the player can be mindless but now it feels like the franchise itself has painted itself into a thoughtless corner, adding things that simply don’t fit.
Specialists are a bit of a mixed bag. There are a few carried over from Black Ops 3 (but those who were big Sparrow fans will be sad to hear she’s gone, at least as of right now) and some new ones like Torque who can lay down barbwire to prevent people from flanking. Anyone who tries to run through it will have their health rapidly decline until death or be forced to unload tons of ammo into it to destroy it but you’ll likely alert nearby enemies and get killed.
Personally, I think things like the barbed wire need to be nerfed. There are some abilities that are too powerful, it’s not so much the damage it deals out but the amount of damage it can take from enemies. There’s also an ability where you can light people on fire through walls or cover, a K9 unit that can be called in which eats bullets like it’s candy, and a shield that can be pulled out and take pretty much infinite bullets as you fire a machine gun and they all feel pretty overpowered.
On the other hand, these main abilities take way too long to earn. You’re pretty much guaranteed at least one use per game but even super skilled players may not get to use it twice, the meter takes far too long to charge and it makes it all the more frustrating when you finally get it charged, activate it, only to get shot in the back and then you can’t use it at all.
All specialists have the option to take a secondary ability that replaces grenades which you can’t begin unlocking until about level 30 or so. These abilities include things already mentioned like barbed wire and lighting players on fire through walls but also extend to support abilities like spawn beacons. Ruin (the character with the gravity spike slam) has a grappling hook but it’s more of a way to move forward really fast than an effective way of traveling vertically or get to unique spots.
There was a moment on the map Gridlock where there was a pretty high wall in front of me, you couldn’t jump over it normally but it wasn’t blocking off an out of bounds area. I attached my hook to a building over the wall to try and launch myself over the wall but was met with an invisible wall that served as an extension of the other one.
It feels like both a lack of thought put into the ability and the map design, it can’t be used very creatively and feels rather limited. It’s understandable if they put restrictions on certain areas of the map so players couldn’t glitch into certain areas but the way I was using it wasn’t a glitch, it was trying to navigate the map in a more clever and efficient way.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 just feels like a step back for the series and part of that is due to where it takes place in the Black Ops timeline. It’s set canonically between 2 and 3, likely the 2030s, so it’s advanced warfare but not so advanced to avoid robots and jetpacks. There are both leaps in logic and a feeling of the game losing it’s typical $60 value.
We have fewer interesting killstreaks (there may be more at launch but it’s unclear), the ability to slide at breakneck speeds despite you not having any boosts or anything to make you move that fast, and much more.
As of right now, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 ain’t super hot. It’s not an abomination, it’s not even the worst Call of Duty but it does feel like it’s having a bit of a strange identity crisis. Despite this, Treyarch is an incredibly competent studio and have churned out the best games in the long-running acclaimed franchise. I’m cautiously optimistic that they can take all the criticism and feedback coming from the community during this beta period and salvage something good from this.
I don’t know if I’d be able to say that I see a great game underneath all of the problems but I do see potential for something good at the very least. Now, we just have to play the waiting game to see if Black Ops 4’s battle royale mode, Blackout, was worth sacrificing the campaign for when the beta for it drops in September.
