Preview: Call of Duty’s Blackout mode is the peak of the Battle Royale genre

Earlier this year when rumors began flying around about the inclusion of a battle royale mode in the new Call of Duty, fans became pretty nervous. After all, Call of Duty’s gameplay is centered around really fast-paced combat in close quarters maps AKA the opposite of battle royale.

Many feared this would be a hastily put together mode to cash in on the Fortnite/PUBG craze but truthfully, it feels like more than that. It’s unique to Call of Duty, more specifically unique to Black Ops itself. You have the basic formula of battle royale with a ton of people skydiving on to an island, scavenging for weapons in order to be the last man standing.

With Blackout, Treyarch has taken the faster, more arcadey gameplay of Fortnite and mixed it with some of the depth of PUBG with things like attachments and more strategical gunplay. They’ve taken the best of both worlds while simultaneously infusing it with Black Ops lore and gear to create something uniquely theirs.

So what makes it unique? What makes Blackout more than just a more refined version of other battle royale games? There’s a lot ranging from simply playing as iconic Black Ops characters to exploring a map filled with classic locations from the series’ multiplayer mode. There’s no mistaking that this is a Treyarch developed battle royale mode.

As you load into a lobby, the load screen flashes red numbers at you similar to the ones seen in the first Black Ops game, when you jump on to the map, you’re hit with familiar locations like Nuketown, Array, Firing Range, and more, there are zombies that surround you on key points of the map, and the list goes on.

Treyarch could’ve easily slapped together a basic map, put some recognizable Call of Duty weapons, and upped the player count to 100 and called it a day but they didn’t. There’s passion to be felt here, this is a love letter to the Black Ops heritage.

Even without all of the intricacies of the Black Ops franchise, newcomers can get a lot out of Blackout. The combat is a refined version of the classic Call of Duty gunplay to ensure combat isn’t too snappy but isn’t too long, creating the perfect amount of tension when a firefight ensues.

Using a variety of weapons and tools you find on the map, you can become quite the force to be reckoned with. You’ll find your expected SMGs, shotguns, and handguns but Treyarch has gone much further than guns and some attachments. There are recon cars (a non-lethal version of the RCXD), perks that run on a timer, trip mines, grapple guns, and even specialists weapons like the semi-auto grenade launcher, the War Machine.

This sounds like it could quickly become a nightmare where the most well-equipped person is guaranteed the win but that’s not the case. This is a battle royale game, there’s strategy and skill involved to survive. You arguably create more risk for yourself by using the War Machine because everyone’s going to hear it and potentially rush towards you to kill you for it.

A lot of these rarer weapons have very limited ammo as well and you can’t restore ammo for them unless you find a new one. You also take up one of your weapon slots so if you blow throw all of it, you’re stuck with one weapon until you find something else. On the other hand, if a cargo truck filled with enemies drives past you, that War Machine will make quick work of all of them.

One issue I have with Blackout is the abundance of items to find. This sounds like a good problem to have but it’s not. Since the map is fairly condensed to prioritize engagements with enemies (don’t worry, it’s still a rather large and dense map), if you choose to land in one of the key locations on the map, you’re pretty much asking for death.

I’m not just talking about Nuketown Island or the center of the map, basically, any of the towns marked on the map are going to result in you dying at the start of the match. The reason for this is because there are seemingly weapons everywhere. In trying to eliminate the PUBG issue of scarce resources for more fun gameplay, Treyarch has made it so that people can kill you just as your feet are touching the ground.

Luckily, this can be fixed with some tweaks to how frequent weapons spawn. It doesn’t have to feel like the map is stripped of guns but it’s an issue if I can’t get into the action because someone shoots me out of the sky at the start of a match.

If you’re smart and quick on your feet, you may be able to outsmart enemies without using a weapon. At one point, I landed at Firing Range with my squad who spread out away from me. As I began searching for a gun, I quickly became under fire. I slid into cover as bullets rained down upon me, footsteps were rapidly approaching me. I called out to my teammates who said they were on their way but they were quite a ways away from me. That’s when I saw my escape, on my right I noticed something: an open garage door.

The steps grew louder and louder, right on the other side of the cover at this point, the suppressing fire stopped and I bolted out of cover, sliding once again through the garage door. I smacked the button to slam the door down behind me to slow down my pursuers and then grabbed a handgun off the ground with just a single clip. Not my best defense against another squad but it would have to do. The garage door began to hum as it opened up behind me, I rushed into another room, ran out the back door and placed a few bullets in the head of the enemy that had been pinning me down second floor window.

Two guys came up from the door behind me, in a quick shootout, I put one down on the ground but had used up the last of my ammo. Expecting this to be my untimely demise, I let out a sigh of frustration. That was until a lone bullet slipped through the right ear of my foe and out his left ear. Just in the nick of time, my team had saved me with a sniper rifle they had found.

These are the kinds of thrilling moments created in Blackout. Moments where you’re pinned by other players in a graveyard like some sort of western as zombies swarm the location around you. Moments where you use your grapple gun to climb through a construction site like that final battle in Spider-Man 3. Those anxiety riddled moments that feel rewarding regardless of the outcome because you come away with unique war stories to share with your pals.

Blackout is the ultimate Battle Royale experience. It doesn’t feel like a copycat, it feels like it’s own entity with its own strengths. It feels like a far more polished, well-rounded experience than anything else at this point and if Treyarch continues to expand on this mode, we could have something really special that everyone can fall in love with.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will launch with Blackout on October 12th for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. The final playercount remains unknown at the moment but the beta started with 80 and raised to 100 by the end.