Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is giving me non stop headaches. After the many articles I wrote about Cold War, the game was finally released a few weeks back on November 13. I wanted to get a better feel for the game and more hours played before giving my honest thoughts. Compared to the beta, the game felt a little smoother, yet the game feels like wasted potential, mostly due to the lack of content. Hopefully with their first big update they fix the many problems I have with the game. I will only focus on four main parts of Cold War’s multiplayer, the maps, weapons, score streaks, and gameplay, not it’s campaign or zombies.

Most Call of Duty’s launch with a variety of maps, yet Treyarch this year decided to release ten maps, eight of those maps are only for 6v6 game modes (Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, Domination, Hardpoint, Control, Free For All, Search and Destroy, and VIP Escort) which is most of Call of Duty’s player base. The eight maps are Moscow, Garrison, Satellite, Miami, Checkmate, Armada, Cartel, Crossroads, with the addition of Nuketown ’84 just released on the November 24. Out of those eight maps, Armada, Cartel and Crossroads are actually for 12v12 (Combined Arms) but Treyarch was very smart and made them smaller for 6v6 instead of keeping them big like Infinity Ward does in their Call of Duty’s. The remaining two maps are Alpine and Ruka for the biggest game mode, Fireteam Dirty Bomb (40 players, 10 squads of 4).

While most maps in Call of Duty I am usually content with, this year has been a huge disappointment. Mostly being a 6v6 player, I find myself only playing Moscow, Checkmate, Crossroads, and Satellite with the rest not playing the way I’d want them to. For the first two weeks I played those maps, yet once Nuketown, my favorite map, was released, I was excited to play the fifth iteration of it, but once again found myself disappointed.

Nuketown is a super small map that results in fast games, but to my surprise the games, most of the time, ran horribly, almost exactly the same each game. It was almost as if players were having a sleepover with each other because of how many players camped in the houses making it impossible to leave.

Luke D, a student from ERHS commented, “the maps are repetitive, there is a lack of variety for the players.”

The maps were a huge disappointment this year, but hopefully things will run a lot smoother with new maps in the first update which is set to release December 16.

Every year with a new Call of Duty, one gun or two are usually broken for a while, but I have no idea what Treyarch is doing because the amount of imbalance weapons is horrendous. This time around we have 29 weapons at the start of the game, with a handful of them being broken.

Once the game was released, the infamous MP5 ruled the game, being very overpowered and being unlocked as soon as you reach level 4. After about a week of MP5’s everywhere it was finally nerfed, (downgrade the power, effectiveness or influence of a particular game element in the attempt to achieve balance) yet every week a new gun replaces the one that got nerfed.

Michael S, a student, stated, “there isn’t any diversity in the use of guns by the community.”

Treyarch has to constantly nerf their guns because they become impossible to play against, which forces players to use those broken guns, so they feel evenly matched.

Luke D stated, “the guns are very unbalanced.”

Launchers are another weapon that are broken, but in a bad way. I personally haven’t used them, but I’ve heard enough complaints to know that they are impossible to kill players, which doesn’t make sense why a rocket can’t do so.

Treyarch just recently increased the amount of XP we get for each weapon, due to the fact that it would take hours upon hours just to level up the guns.

In 2019, Infinity Ward introduced the gunsmith which allows players to pick from tons of attachments to put on their guns. It was fairly easy to understand what attachment does what and how to make the weapons feel better, but this year I feel like a lost kid in a store. The gunsmith is confusing, making you think you have a good attachment, but soon realize you don’t and have to look up a YouTube video on how to make your weapon the best. Just like the maps, I hope they fix the guns, because I am losing my mind over how powerful some of these are.

Score streaks are no stranger in the Call of Duty franchise. I do have things to complain about them, but first I do have to say how great they feel in this game. They feel like they’re doing their job and are very effective, but there is a catch. Usually, you go on a streak of kills without dying and get the score streaks that you picked, but not this time.

Treyarch this time around wants to please the bad players in the game by letting the score streaks continue to be earned even once you lose your streak. They do a great job following everyone’s a winner, rewarding those just for participating.

Michael S agreed with me stating, “score streaks are given without even trying.”

Each game now runs the same, when it starts to come to an end, everyone seems to be calling in their streaks. The problem with this is allowing those who do terrible to still feel included even if they have more deaths than kills. Even as a player who doesn’t have trouble getting streaks, if I have a bad game and still receive a high score streak, I feel bad about myself because I know I didn’t deserve it yet I’m here participating just like everyone else. I know they probably won’t remove this, but they really need to.

This year’s Call of Duty has been a roller coaster of a mess. The gameplay feels familiar but the longer I played the more disappointed I got. The maps aren’t anything special and probably won’t be brought back in the future. I’ve spent over 24 in-game hours of multiplayer time while only using SMG (Sub Machine Guns), yet it took me six in game hours to level my gun to the max level. SMG’s usually can compete with other guns but this year they feel like peashooters that make me want to rip my hair out. Score streaks are probably the only decent thing about this game, but the fact that the worst players can earn them irritates me. Kills work the same way in this game, Treyarch removed the assists and just gives you the kill, yet it doesn’t really count.

The game has a lot to be done to make it more fun. I would have rated this game at a 6/10 but after last week of playing Nuketown, I dropped it to a 5/10. I hope Treyarch will save this game, but honestly, I have no idea.