generally i stick inside of my comfort zone with games, japanese titles, older games and an occasional indie projects, but even within these there aren't too many genre's that i'm outright not into, i can enjoy mostly anything within those comfort zones but there are a few genre's and styles i just do not touch generally, military games, sports games and shooters being a few that i just never play but i do think that sometimes it can be a good thing to go outside of what you usually play because it's good for perspective, of where the industry is going, where genres are headed and where the tastes of that era lay and that brings me to why i decided to play a call of duty game. this is not a series i have a whole lot of experiance with, i've played a little zombies here and there with my partners and i beat the campaign for world at war and thats kind of it, it's just not a series i ever played much of, but seeing the game go free on plus (and given the physical copies of the game are essentially bricks because of a forced net connection and needing a download) i decided to give it a try in full while my partner had it installed anyway. That install is absurdly huge though, i've seen some big ones in the past few years, stranger of paradise (2022 goty) is 90 gb, genshin impact is 75GB and final fantasy 15 was over a hundred but i have never seen anything close to the massive 240GB of data this game uses when the campaign is installed, it's ridiculous and a major flaw i need to get out of the way right off the bat, it should not be this size and it's exclusionary of people with data caps and a big hit to physical copies.

the game is split primarily into 3 different modes, campaign, multiplayer and zombies and the mode we went for first was zombies becuse it just sounded the most fun for us. now one thing the game absolutely does right is that all dlc maps are free, this includes the 3 extra zombie maps and the additonal modes within that and it's great, it gives you so much more things to do and the content is usually quite good, the bonus zombie maps are the highlight of that section and a lot of the dlc multiplayer maps are also the highlight, though the dlc reliance on remakes is a little bit much, remakes in tis game are a recurring thing as the first zombies map was indeed a remake, but a good one. the zombies mode itself is a fairly standard zombie survival mode, but it was one of the first, you get randomized guns from a box, can buy them from a wall, you got perks that give you bonus effects like a third gun, elemental bullets or extra health and you survive against waves of increasingly difficult zombies and bosses, it's fun! you have a few objectives you can do generally to in order to make it more gamey like a longrunning story questline that was much too hard for me, extra objectives like turning on the power and getting the weapon upgrade stations up and running as well as secret items to build, songs to find and extremely powerful weapons you can get only in the mystery box. i always made it my aim to ge to at least round 20 before i moved on from a map and this was never easy, finding the right spot and weapons was always tough but when you get into the zone, helped by the games inbuilt music player and spotify integraton i just used to play kpop the whole time, it's massively fun and a good timewaster. the first map, as mentioned is a remake, specifically of the first map from world at war necht der untoten but heavily expanded and more rundown, it has a lot of graffiti, an expanded outside area and third floor as well as an underground lab to explore with an alternate "aether world| version that you need to explore in order to unlock the all in one perk machine and the upgrade station, it's not the biggest map, it's the smallest here by a little but it has a lot of verticality and it's fun to explore, it's also not too complicated, you can easily figure out how to unlock all the basic amenities on your own and with very little trouble, something that could not be said about either of the prior black ops zombies maps i briefly played, some of which we were only able to reach the upgrade machine maybe once total, it's also one of the easier maps here with a large area with a plane to run through that i found it easy to stay in until i hit my goal of round 20 and i had a good time, it's not the most creative map but it's simple and easy and that works very well for me.

that map was more or less it at launch for the core mode which would have been massively dissapointing, especially for people wanting something wholley new, while it was expanded and has new mechanics like a crafting system for items and killstreaks as well as a new perk machine that gives elemental bullets, it wasn't really anything all that new as helf the map was well trodden ground (this is like the 4th remake of this same map). there was one side mode though with dead ops arcade 3, a very heavily expanded version of the twinstick mode from previous games and it's mostly unchanged here, for better and for worse. i find dead ops to be a very not fun twinstick, it's kind of unresponsive and hard to see things and also very overly difficult, i've never beaten it and i have no real intent to, it is helped little here by having a more clear structure and a first person mode that fixes the visibility issues but i still couldnt find myself finishing it, it's just soo long and difficult. a few months later real new content would release in the form of the firebase Z map, a map made moostly out of assets from the games first big vietnam mission, it's split into 2 sections with a house where you can get your all in one perk machine and the upgrade machine and a small terrace across the road which houses a teleporter to the other section of the map, a large military base. the main gimmicks here are the two area structure, which is neat, bosses in the form of shapeshifters which can be a little annoying to take out and seem to spawn randomly, 3 generators you need to power to access areas and power things and a big wave based tower defence section that appears in later rounds. it's not a great map, it's the most difficult of the four and it's just not very interesting, the house is the most interesting part but its too difficult to survive there and it's far too small and the bosses don't make for a fun challange as they also spawn alongside the boss from the first map, a fire zombie with armour. the tower defence rounds make for a fun change of pace but they come far too late and i only ever encountered one before dying every time as they were too spread out to really be much of a factor. it still has its fun moments but overall it's more of a miss for me. after this was the outbreak mode and it was another real miss. this is a zombie battle royale, essentially, you drop into a big area, gather supplies and do little missions with vehicles and submissions thrown in for variety, it's just not very interesting and borderline impossible to finish solo due to needing to clear the whole area of zombies at the end under a strict time limit, something i could never accomplish.

after this was the map mauer der toten, the highlight of the mode for me it;s based again on one of the campaign maps, namely the immersive simmy mission set in berlin near the beginning of the game. this map was a large block of streets at the berlin wall, with the game split between both sides of the wall with a subway system connecting them (which has a running train you have to dodge while travelling) its great! you get to explore rooftops,a hotel, the streets below, small shops and a destroyed section of the wall where the games upgrade station is housed and is the best spot to stay for me. it's cool looking, creative and fun to explore and its not massively difficult either, you have a few new boss types here with exploding zombies and a flying necromancer type boss that can spawn randomly and has to be hit at a weakspot and it's all really fun to play, it has variety and a good vibe to it, very reccomended. the last of the maps released was forsaken, another town based map but this time a receation of small town america, with a russian base/government buding thrown in, this one is my second favourite, it's more or less just a direct reskin of a multiplayer map that's also just taken from a campaign mission so it does feel more repetitive than other maps because it's already been seen and is mostly unchanged for this, it's a good map and maybe the best looking, with a fantastic 50's americana vibe and it'a also one of the easiest maps with great lines to run and a cool gimmick with it's ammenities with them being in an irradiated area you must not stay in too long or you can die and it even throws in a massive bioweapon boss between rounds for variety too. it's a good map but compared to some of the others it does feel a little like it was thrown together quite fast. overall it's a fun take on the mode with some good new additions, but i do have to say that maps i had played in prior games just felt more fun and creative to me, it's all a little done and while the final two maps are great, i cant help but feel the quality in them is a step down from other games, but still a step above some of the games i did not enjoy like black ops 3.

i also played some of the multiplayer, i don't have a lot to say here. it's mostly split into 3 match types all with their own set of maps. the small team gunfight which is a mode i did not like, while it had some fantastic maps like a department store, the rooftops of amsterdam and a gameshow, it's one death quick round structure felt a little bit too difficult to me and i only really won two of the games i tried here, some great maps but not a mode i loved. this mode also brings me to one of the biggest issues with multiplayer that really damaged my enjoyment of modes like this. not all modes and maps work with bots, while most of the standard 6V6 maps work fine with bots, firefight and some combined arms maps do not and this means that i had to deal with real lobbies here and i just did not like doing that, the combined arms ones i do get as the vehicles may have been difficult to do with bots, but the lack of gunfight here is a real shame and should have been included. combined arms is another mode here which is a 12V12 mode with much larger maps and this one can be a lot of fun, it's chaotic and the maps are mostly all good! i loved the big ship map which has boats and varied objectives as well as the miami map which takes up a whole street full of bars, hotels and a beach. the rest of the multiplayer is just standard 6V6 in a variety of maps, here i had a lot of my fun with bots which was preferable to me as i could pause and take it easier than in a normal match but even here the bot mode was very limited, there was only 3 very basic modes, with things like kill confirmed, infection and capture the flag all nowhere to be seen at all, despite prior games having it as an option. it feels uneccessarily limited and i hate that they did this, but i still tried to have a fun time here, it's very basic and just like the other modes but still has some fun maps like a mall, the streets of moscow, ancient ruins and a multiplayer version of the town from forsaken, but this mode also has some issues with having a ton of remakes, in fact over half were, and while they were all new to me, with ones like the zoo, the drive in and the paintball arena being a blast to explore, it felt very nostalgiabaity with the sheer amount of them on display here.
lastly here is the campaign and this was the unexpected highlight of the game for me as i fully expected what cod is known for, linier setpieces, jingoistic nationalism and bro times, but i kind of didnt get that experiance at all. now don't get me wrong cold war has these moments, a ronald reagan cameo and an ending that still makes out the main characters to be overall heroes despite being awful people that the game knows are awful, but it's also fairly ambitious within its sphere, tells a great story and has some very progressive features to it. the game lets you pick your gender which is a nice feature (i'll always take being able to see myself in a game over another generic white guy protag) and it even has options for nonbinary people which is s fantastic feature that, while i didn't use it should be a baseline option for any game and the game does recognise your gender, though the use of gendered slurs in the campaign felt a little harsh to me, it really wasn't needed. the game has some fun globetrotting too, from amsterdam, to turkey, vietnam to russia and america, it even has cool levels set in surrealist dream environments and a PT-esque hallway that were absolute highlights and the campaign even goes outside of the normal setpiece driven action scenes sometimes to really just let you take in some quiet time with wonderful immersive sim style stealth levels, one of which is set in a small, semi-open area of berlin with side objectives that have a real impact on the story and a later on non-combat stealth segment around a government building with numerous ways around a singular objective that you can do and it's fantastic and went well beyond what i had expected for the game, while the silly action movie antics are a lot of dumb fun that kept me smiling, these moments are what really shone for me. the choices here do matter a lot too, it can determine who lives, who dies and even what ending mission you get, the game even has a fallout style slideshow at the end discussing your choices and how they affected the world at large, it's really cool! the game even has some non-linier mission choices, with two side missions that you must gather information and solve puzzles to even begin, one of which has you decoding a cypher and guessing codes and another has you using clues to determine traitor suspects, it's really cool and again, for the kind of game this is, very ambitous and i had a great time figuring out both. even the story here is great, it has a lot of twists that, if you've seen the movies i imagine it takes inspo from will be very ovious, but i havent seen those so i was surprised every time and the ending twist really tied into themes i personally love that i won't spoil, but you get an amazing surrealist level out of it that even has a cute little polybius reference (that unlocks you an old activision arcade game to play! as many are hidden throughout the campaign and are a lot of fun to find and try), fantastic stuff and the campaign is the reason to play for me, a genuinely great time.

overall i had a very good time with the game, it wasn't something i think i ever would have played otherwise, and while i'm not sure i'll play another like it for a very long time, it was fun and a lot more experimental and interesting than i'd have ever thought given the reception these games usually get, parts still feel very cynical and corporate, but a lot here has clear ambtion and it feels like some people did genuinely care a lot about specific aspects like the campaign and it helped me get a little more perspective on where aspects of the industry are this gen, for better and for worse, the game wasn't all hits, the afterthought bot mode, the lack of offline play, the physical that reportedly doesn't work wihout a download and the rampant microtransactions (i didnt even try and unlock many weapons or characters as so many were locked behind paywalls that i just did not care) though the free maps did help that a little, paying for those while the game had MTX would have made me steer clear of the game entirely i think, and it all does show bad trends that worry me, but the fact that even with these it has stuff about it i love, gives me a little bit of hope, and you need that sometimes to see that it's never as bad as you may think when you can get cynical about things.