You can also now call a chopper and bail early on the wave-based horde instead of waiting to die, rewarding bonus points. It feels good to take your honed weapons into the arena instead of relying on what you can find there, but wall-buying guns, powerups, and Juggernog buffs are all still critical parts of the mode. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War adds some new quirks to the core zombie experience by letting players bring their own loadout into the massive undead slaughterhouses. As a big fan of team-oriented Call of Duty with friends, this mode is an enjoyable change up from the frenetic fury of Warzone.įinally, there’s Zombies. While the mode could be fun with random people, you’re going to want to bring three buddies you can talk to on voice chat for the best results – if you queue up and spray-and-pray like a team deathmatch, you’re going to get demolished. If you enjoy working with your friends in big battles and huge maps, this is the perfect opportunity to show off your teamwork. However, Fireteams takes a more focused approach, without the unchecked chaos of Warzone (and without the threat of being booted). Of the three core pillars to this Call of Duty title, the campaign stands out as the winner despite its brevity.įireteams is a 40-person mode with four-person squads, and it features large-scale, team-based firefights similar to Call of Duty’s free-to-play battle royale, Warzone. While you can barrel through the critical path in the boisterous campaign in about five hours, you’d be passing up optional missions and plenty of secrets, including old Activision games to play. One trip takes you deep behind Soviet lines to discover a training facility where soldiers practice incursions on a quaint simulated USA town – and you can bet that gets rowdy in a hurry. While those missions steal the show, even the rank-and-file excursions around the globe pack plenty of punch and creativity. The absolute highlight of the late-game takes place in Vietnam, a mission with a well-designed looping structure that left me grinning and dumbstruck.
One tasks you with playing a double agent through the famous KGB headquarters Lubynaka building, letting you solve some puzzles and come up with solutions as to how to sneak your strike team in. The best missions in the game have a “choose your own adventure” feel to them. While your core mission is to hunt down a covert Soviet operative known as Perseus, the journey takes you all over the world and even to the recesses of the mind. Picking these bonuses doesn’t drastically change the action, but they provide a nice avenue for customization. Subtle bonuses let you alter various aspects of your playstyle I selected traits for a higher health pool and taking less damage while stationary, allowing me to handle trading fire from cover much more easily. While the multiple ending paths you can take won’t blow you away, they’re a neat little incentive to go back and replay missions another way.Ī character creator allows you to pick several profile perks to tailor your approach to the campaign. Taking Call of Duty to these weird places has been hit-and-miss in the past, but this story resonates well as you unearth its mysteries and make choices. It starts out with a classic Call of Duty guns-blazing soiree, transitions into more of a spy-vs-spy affair, and then goes off the rails with some absolutely wild, reality-warping fare. These are the best strategy and tactics titles that PCMag has reviewed.The campaign is an enjoyable-but-short return to form for Black Ops. The games in either category can operate in a turn-based or real-time fashion.īut enough talk-it's time to play some games. Gears Tactics represents the category well. Tactics games, on the other hand, typically focuses on maneuvering troops and other combat elements. The StarCraft games are excellent examples. Strategy games typically task you with managing all battle aspects, such as harvesting energy sources and building bases or troops. There's a fine line between the strategy and tactics genres. That's when strategy and tactics games prove appealing. Fast-paced, action focused titles have their place, no doubt, but every now and then you need the exhilaration that comes with squashing enemies with your brain. Sometimes twitchy video game genres, such as fighting games and shmups, don't provide the kind of challenge you're craving.
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