I thought I was above getting excited over brand crossovers in multiplayer shooters, so it is to my great shame I admit my heart rate spiked when Activision revealed the Terminator is coming to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Look, everybody has a weakness, and there hasn’t been a good Terminator film in over thirty years, so at least I can pretend I’m in one by gunning down teenagers as James Cameron’s cyborg assassin.
I’ve skipped ahead a bit here. The Terminator was teased on Call of Duty’s blog as part of Black Ops 6’s Season 2 update, but Arnie’s crimson-eyed killing machine won’t arrive through the time portal until shortly after Season 2 drops. But there’s plenty coming to Black Ops 6 in Season 2 itself, including a cache of new maps, two multiplayer game modes, and a horde of updates to zombies.
Let’s kick off with those map reveals. There are five arenas landing in Season 2 of Black Ops 6, four of which are entirely new, with three of these arriving at launch. These include Bounty, a 6v6 map where players battle inside the lavish penthouse suite of an Avalon crime boss, and Dealership, another 6v6 arena where you’ll ruin some car salesman’s day blasting speed holes in all his sleek, shiny rides. The launch map that caught my eye, though, is Lifeline, a compact Strike map set in on a luxury yacht stranded in the middle of the ocean. I love a map that squeezes players together, especially one that adds a novel conceit on top. Lifeline looks like it has both.
Following these launch maps, two further kill-boxes will unfold later in the season. This includes a remaster of Grind, a skate park map originally debuting in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. More interesting, though, is Bullet, another tight arena themed around a bullet train. As well as fighting inside the compartments, Bullet will also let players try to get the drop on opponents by climbing onto the roof. Be warned, though, this tactic apparently risks you being thrown off the train as it hurtles along at 200mph.
Outside of maps, Season 2 of Black Ops 6 brings two game modes to competitive multiplayer. First up is the brand new “Overdrive” mode. Described as a “charged-up twist on team deathmatch”, Overdrive sees players competing to earn stars rather than points for kills, with different types of kills earning different numbers of stars as listed below:
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- Earn 1 star for Basic Eliminations like finishing off an enemy with body shots.
- Earn 2 stars for Core Medal Eliminations like headshots and melee attacks.
- Earn 3 stars for completing Distinguished Medal Eliminations, reserved for only the most impressive takedowns.
Earning stars also nets players special abilities, like the ability to see through walls, and boosts to movements and reloading speed. Alongside Overdrive, Season 2 also brings back free-for-all favourite Gun Game, where all players start out with the same weapon and cycle through new guns as matches progress.
Beyond trad multiplayer, Black Ops 6’s zombies mode gets a beefy addition. A new adventure will transport players to the Tomb a “cursed dig site” that may contain the “elusive” sentinel artifact, whatever that is. Through this adventure, players will venture progressively deeper into the tomb, starting at the exterior dig site, before venturing through catacombs and ossurarys, eventually arriving in far stranger environs that I won’t spoil. I’m not a zombies guy at all, but it looks pretty neat. Alongside the Tomb, Season 2 adds a new undead enemy, the electrifying shock mimic, and a new wonder weapon called the staff of ice.
These major additions come bundled with an array of smaller updates, like new wildcards and scorestreaks for multiplayer, various balance tweaks to Warzone, and more. Then there’s what’s coming after Season 2 drops, which brings us back to my best robot pal. The Terminator plods mercilessly in Black Ops 6 in the form of a tracer pack operator bundle, which comes with two ultra skins; Arnie’s quintessentially 80s T-800 get-up as seen in the original movie (not the biker outfit he wears in T2), and his skinless “Titanium Core” as seen in the climax of the film. They both look excellent, even if the modelling of Arnie’s face falls straight down the uncanny valley. I also laughed at the blog randomly quoting Arnie’s line “I’ll be back”. Yes Activision, that is something the Terminator says.
You can read the complete list of updates here. I haven’t delved too deeply into Black Ops ‘ multiplayer this year. Morgan described it as “pretty bland” when he tested the beta, though Nova Smith was much more positive, praising the game’s “stellar multiplayer offerings” in his review. I have played through a big chunk of the campaign, however, and it’s comfortably the most interesting single-player Call of Duty has delivered for a while.
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