Call of Duty has been a relevant game since 2003 when they released the first Call of Duty game. Call of Duty is a first person shooter where you can play against other players online in multiplayer, fight alongside your friends to survive a zombie outbreak, squad up with friends or other players online, fight in a 150 player battle royal and play in the single player campaign. With the release of the seventeenth game in the Call of Duty series and the sixth release in the “Black Ops” series, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was released on November 13th, 2020. Call of duty: Black Ops Cold War is available across many platforms, such as Xbox Series X and Series S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Windows.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has had many mixed reviews from players and critics. The most popular game mode, which is the multiplayer, has had numerous complaints on the maps, which include Amanda, Cartel, Checkmate, Crossroads, Moscow, Garrison, Satellite, Miami and Nuketown ‘84. Junior Noah Hodgman said, “All the maps just kind of feel the same, they all are pretty small and have very bad spawn points.”

Another part of multiplayer that has been receiving complaints are the weapons. Players have been complaining about how some guns are way better than others and they feel pressured to use them which can make their experience not as fun. A big controversy with the weapons is the snipers being way too underpowered and many players think they need a buff so they can compete with the other weapon classes.

Another big change they made to Cold War is skill based matchmaking, which takes players stats and playstyle and puts you up against players who have a similar skill level and play style. On one hand this is better for new players so they can have the best experience possible, but makes it hard for the better players because they have to face harder opponents which makes it harder to go on killstreaks and progress their weapons. On the other hand, the new zombies gamemode has been receiving great reviews because of the large map and many “easter eggs” which have kept players entertained and makes them feel like they always have stuff to do.

With the next generation consoles being released at about the same time as Cold War the multiplayer servers and multiplayer zombies servers are the fastest they have ever been in any other call of duty game so players can find games almost instantly so players can spend their time playing the game and not waiting for a game. Another big plus is the sound design in Cold War, In the last Call of Duty one of the biggest problems players had with the game was the audio in both multiplayer and warzone players said that they couldn’t hear anyone because the awful audio but in Cold War players all agree that the developers listened and made the needed changes.

Players have had pretty good thoughts on the single player campaign with the difficulty being way harder than in past Call of Dutys and giving the player multiple endings based on the choices they make during the missions. The last game mode is Warzone, which is the 150 player battle royal. Warzone has not yet made it into Cold War but is being added to the game at the release of season one when they hope to fix all the issues players have with the game. They plan on doing this by adding new maps and making many changes to fix the glitches and rebalance the guns.

With all the issues players have with the game many players think the game is still quite enjoyable. Junior Payton Neumann said, “The game is really fun to play and my friends and I have put a lot of time into it but it has many issues they need to fix especially the skill based matchmaking.” The players do have things that they want the developers to fix, but 75 percent of players say they enjoy the game according to google surveys and reviews. At the end of the day it is another Call of Duty game that players will put countless hours into and many players would recommend to their friends.