On November 13, 2020, “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” was released for gamers to enjoy on PC and other console systems. Treyarch and Raven Software have done an excellent job of creating a compelling story and action-packed first person shooter. Anthony Hanna, ’22, agrees by stating, “Call of Duty (CoD) [Black Ops] Cold War (BoCW) brings back all the old aspects of Treyarch that I loved.”

For the hefty price of $60 on PC and $70 on console, BoCW delivers on every single aspect, worth every dollar spent and then some. However, it is important to note that the battle pass is not included. Without the battle pass, gamers will not have access to additional content that is released in the future. In addition to the battle pass, BoCW takes up a staggering amount of storage space on PC, almost 250 gigabytes. To put that into perspective, BoCW occupies approximately 3,500 times more storage space than TikTok. 

The campaign centers on the Cold War era as the name suggests, and the protagonist is “Bell,” a persona created by the player in the start menu. After several cutscenes and conflicts, the nemesis of the villain is revealed to be “Perseus,” a Russian spy gone rogue. A covert CIA team is formed immediately to stop “Perseus” from starting full out nuclear warfare. Although CoD games are infamous for their action and violence, BoCW utilizes different character perspectives to convey the feel of a spy game. At some point along the campaign, players will start saying, “Shaken, not stirred.”

In addition to the campaign’s mainline story, the player can access two side quests. Both side quests require the player to decipher and collect hidden clues from the main story. Each scene of the story has one to two clues for the side quests. The BoCW campaign offers more with game changing decisions that the player can make. Unfortunately, the campaign cannot be completely analyzed without ruining the suspense and climax of the game.

Aside from the campaign, BoCW also introduces the CoD classic “zombies” mode. Set up in a secret fascist laboratory, the game mode allows up to four players to battle through the hordes of zombies and stop the plague from spreading. “Zombies” also has a solo gameplay option for the brave-hearted.

Another component of BoCW is the multiplayer component. Gamers can battle each other in game modes such as Fireteam, Combined arms, VIP escort, Team deathmatch, and Free-for-all, just to name a few. As always, there are players who complain about every aspect of the multiplayer portion, but this time, the CoD community agrees on one thing: Bring. Snipers. Back.

BoCW has significantly reduced the impact of the sniper rifle in multiplayer game modes by increasing the aim down sights from 200-300 milliseconds to 500-1000 milliseconds. The CoD community may have loathed sniper rifles in previous games, but recent changes have shifted the tides.

With a hair-raising campaign, gut-wrenching “zombies” mode, and game-changing adjustments to sniper rifles, BoCW is set to be one heck of a game.