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Call Of Duty Black Ops Cold War is out now on PC, plus last and new-gen Playstation and Xbox consoles, and for me, the story behind this latest title really attracted me because the ’80s is my time.
America and Russia are at loggerheads, we were constantly under the thread of nuclear war and that led to the excellent BBC film, Threads. It has so many moments which still linger in the mind.
You’ll take the lead as Bell (but can input your own name, so mine comes up as Dom “Bell” Robinson), your instructions come from Alder – and it can’t be an accident that he’s a dead ringer for Robert Redford, making this feel like he’s taking the lead in the game. That said, despite having a team to work with, any sensible man will have the hots for MI6 agent Helen Park, voiced by Lily Cowles.
Over the course of the campaign, as you battle to track down and capture the evil Perseus, you’ll pay a visit or two to East Berlin, West Berlin, Turkey, the Soviet KGB headquarters and even Vietnam, back in 1968. I thought I’d gone back in time when that came up, but not quite – you’re made to regress back to a time as if you’re there… or maybe you were there? It’s all a bit hazy, but it’s still great. Perhaps we can get a sole game set there?
I was only a kid as Ronald Reagan took office, but he pops up here a few times, despite the notable handicap of being dead. Well, it’s someone doing his voice, obviously, but his appearance in the first segment is fantastic. In fact, even though I’m playing in 1080p, while all the cool kids are on 4K (and I’ll upgrade when I can get a new TV that does 3D as well as 4K), I whacked the settings up as high as I could for my slightly aging GTX980 and it still looks fantastic.
The card is a 4GB one, but while the settings claimed I needed for 4.7GB for what I had set it to, the game is still running at over 50fps and is often very smooth indeed, although oddly, the information intros and outros are a little sticky. The audio on those is fine, and the subtitles keep up, but the visuals are sticky. I’m guessing that’s the limitation of my system, but as long as the game proper plays, then I’m happy.
There were a few daft AI issues, howvever, such in one mission (I forget which), when a colleague told me to follow him going forward… and he just stood there by the car we were hiding behind. It was up to ME who had to move forward… in order to trigger HIM moving forward!
Similarly, in Brick In The Wall, I rescued an informant from being tied up in a room where there were Germans outside. They could have stormed at any time… but waited until I came out in order to to try and kill me. That’s crazy.
In Echoes Of A Cold War, at one point Woods shouted “GRENADE!”, as it landed where he was kneeling. He stayed put… it exploded… and he flinched briefly. Yep the AI does need some working on. Then on another level, I saw one man constantly running into his dead colleague, as if he couldn’t break free. We’ve seen that loads over the years.
In Desperate Measures, I was spotted by a Russian guard as I entered a particular area down some stairs. So, I left the room, climbed the stairs… but he never came after me.
In Operation Chaos, I was constantly told how Aldrich was up ahead of us, and in the motel, even though we’d already been in there and killed him!
Also, there was one occasion when I tried to play this – and I only wanted to play the campaign – the game took forever to load, and then just said… Well, it was something about a server error, and the only option was to exit to desktop. What the hell does anything online have to do with playing a single-player game? Games which force an online link are ridiculous.
In this review, I’ve spoken only about the campaign because the campaign is my thing. If you want multiplayer, then that’s here along with the usual Call of Duty Zombies mode. I’ve gone through the campaign twice, so I could get decent footage for the game because you don’t want to see me trying to figure things out and take twice as long.
NOTE: Full gameplay will be online shortly, but I’ve still to upload some of it. The full playlist will be above.
Call Of Duty Black Ops Cold War is out now on PC/Battle.net, PS4, PS5 and Xbox One/Xbox Series X.
Important info:
- Developer: Codemasters Cheshire
- Publisher: Codemasters
- Players: Single player campaign, multiplayer
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GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT |
9 10 8 9 |
| OVERALL | 9 |
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.