NEW RELEASE: Black Ops 4
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WRITTEN BY: Ricardo Burks
Another year, another Call of Duty. This year Treyarch has blessed us with their fifth installment of the Black Ops subseries. Despite Black Ops 4 being the 15th main Call of Duty game, it is has broken the record for the most day one sales in Activision’s history. Activision hasn’t released the numbers yet but we know it is higher than than the $310 million that Modern Warfare 2 (2009) amassed in its first day and way more than the measly $250 million that Infinite Warfare (2016) amassed in its first week.
The game is able to keep things fresh and different with new mechanics and various new weapons and modes. The zany fast-paced first person shooter embraces itself with a new unique style that has hints of Black Ops 3 (2015). Long dead are the days of auto healing and jet packs. After firefights, players must manually heal themselves or else they run the risk and not being up to snuff in the next fight they get into.
Specialists do make a return with brand new characters for you to play and explore. Each specialist has different abilities that contribute something new to the team. Are the enemies flanking and you need vision? Recon’s senor dart will expose enemies that try to get the drop on you. Need to get to an objective in a hurry? Ruin’s zipline hook can help you fly across the map with relative ease.
In a traditional Treyarch fashion, the Zombies game mode does see a return. The game includes three new fully fleshed out levels right out of the box. That is the most any Call of Duty has shipped with. Perks have been replaced with blessings from various gods of mythology. One such god is Ra who gives players a scepter to shoot solar beams and heal allies. Gobblegum has been replaced with elixirs. Elixirs give players abilities depending on what is equipped during the match lobby. There are numerous different elixirs with game changing effects that players can mix and match to suit their needs. That being said, ignoring the storyline and focusing solely on the gameplay, I had a blast playing that mode.
The final game mode is called Blackout. Blackout is Call of Duty’s take on the battle royale genre. For those who don’t know, battle royale is a game style where one player, or a team of players, drops into a map and must find equipment and weapons to survive until only they remain alive. The heaviest player right now in that genre is Fortnite. The big question on many players mind is whether Black Ops 4 can dethrone Fortnite. Since June, Fortnite has been hovering around 125 million players concurrently playing. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds will take a big hit since only 176 thousand players remain on its PC servers. Black Ops 4 battle royale plays extremely similar to that of Battlegrounds. That being said, Blackout is a fun new twist to the genre and I am excited to see what it can become as it grows from its infancy.
Black Ops 4 is available now on Xbox One, Ps4 and PC.
