Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Multiplayer Review

For a Call of Duty loyalist, Black Ops 4 Multiplayer mode is a creative — if somewhat messy — extension of the series fans have grown to love.

Black Ops has always been unique in terms of its storylines and its approach to gameplay, guaranteeing futuristic weapons and abilities that go beyond the pseudo-realistic realm of other Call of Duty games.

In analyzing the game against this backdrop, it’s hard not to wonder whether Treyarch, its creator, has taken its drive for constant innovation too far in Black Ops 4 Multiplayer. At the outset, the most noticeable deviation from the Call of Duty template is that this is the first game in the franchise’s history to lack a traditional single-player campaign, a decision supported at least in part on data that showed players were losing interest in campaigns in favor of Multiplayer modes.

Specialists

There is, however, a nod to campaigns of past. Black Ops 4 Multiplayer introduces us to a ragtag team of Specialists, some of whom we first met in Black Ops 3, and offers their backstories through gameplay tutorials spliced with brief cinematics. These Specialists each have unique abilities to assist them in combat, such as Firebreak’s Purifier, a powerful flamethrower, and Nomad’s K-9-Unit, a dog that hunts down enemies to attack them. In addition to the abilities, each Specialist comes armed with a piece of equipment that recharges several times throughout the course of a match, such as Ruin’s Grapple Gun that allows him to move quickly through the map.

Black Ops 4 allows players to customize their loadouts using the Pick Ten system from precursor games, allowing you to choose the right gun attachments, perks and wildcards to provide tactical advantages.