call of duty black ops cold war multiplayer review

I will never get over seeing ‘Kirk “Bell” McKeand’ in pre-mission briefings. The game opens with you filling out a personnel file - name, which clandestine outfit you’re from (I went MI5), and psychological profile, which is an icky way to give you in-game buffs - paranoid people aim faster, OK? Once that’s done, you’re assigned a codename - Bell - and that’s how characters refer to you. It has a bit of the old perspective shifting Call of Duty campaigns are famous for - there’s one piece of nostalgia bait where you head to Yamantua as Mason, accompanied by Woods - but you mostly play as you.

As Goldilocks would say, “The amount of headfuckery is just right.” There’s an entire level like this in Black Ops Cold War, and I think it will stay with me as long as series classics like All Ghillied Up.

If you haven’t played that, it’s a brilliant indie game that you should play immediately where all your actions are commented on by a narrator, and you can go against that narrator to experience some surprising outcomes.

And it all culminates in a section that riffs on one of the unlikeliest of inspirations: The Stanley Parable. It balances the in-your-face, balls-to-the-wall set-pieces you’d expect from COD with more subtle subterfuge masterfully.

Call of duty black ops cold war multiplayer review