Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a 2020 first-person shooter game co-developed by Treyarch and Raven Software and published by Activision. It is the seventeenth main installment of the Call of Duty series and is the sixth entry in the Black Ops sub-series, following Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. Set in 1981, Black Ops Cold War single-player story follows CIA operative Russell Adler and his team of agents as they hunt down a Soviet spy named Perseus. As with previous Call of Duty titles, the game also includes a multiplayer component and the cooperative Zombies mode.
Development on Black Ops Cold War began as a collaboration between Raven and Sledgehammer Games, which was not intended to be an entry in the Black Ops sub-series, but due to disagreements between the two studios, Activision assigned Treyarch as a lead developer on the title in May 2019. Marketing for Black Ops Cold War began in August 2020 and was done in different forms, including cryptic messages within Call of Duty: Warzone, puzzles made to be solved online by fans, and a website showcasing historical Cold War events; a full reveal debuted on August 26, as part of an in-game event in Warzone. The game was released on November 13, 2020, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Upon release, Black Ops Cold War received generally favorable reviews from critics, and became the best-selling title of 2020 in the United States. Reviewers responded mostly positively to the single-player campaign and Zombies, but were mixed on the game's multiplayer component, with some deeming it to be weaker than the one featured in its direct predecessor, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. A sequel, titled Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, was released in October 2024.
Gameplay
As with previous Call of Duty games, Black Ops Cold War is a first-person shooter, featuring a single-player campaign, a multiplayer component, and the cooperative Zombies mode. The campaign gives players the ability to create their own custom character; players can choose their intelligence agency, skin tone, nationality, and gender, as well as different personality traits that provide in-game perks. Its missions feature a non-linear design, which gives players multiple ways to approach a mission's objectives. In-between missions, players are able to access a safe house, where they are able to review various pieces of evidence, interact with non-player characters, and plan out subsequent missions via an evidence board. Black Ops Cold War also features multiple endings, which depend on several choices that the player has to make throughout the campaign.The game's multiplayer component introduces three new game modes: "VIP Escort", "Combined Arms", and "Fireteam: Dirty Bomb", in addition to Call of Duty standard modes, such as "Team Deathmatch", "Domination", and "Hardpoint". VIP Escort puts two teams of six against each other; one team is tasked with escorting their VIP—a randomly selected player from the team—to one of two exfiltration sites, while the other team must eliminate the VIP. After a round is completed, the teams switch sides; the first team to score four points will win the match. Combined Arms puts two teams of twelve on large-scale maps, which feature transport vehicles to aid players in navigating the maps, and tasks them with taking control of five to six capture zones; the first team to reach 400 points will win the match. Fireteam: Dirty Bomb puts ten teams of four against each other on large maps, and tasks them with collecting and depositing uranium in various dirty bombs; the team that destroys the most dirty bombs will win the match. Like previous Call of Duty titles, players must progress through 55 player levels in order to unlock various items for their loadouts, such as weapons, perks and "scorestreaks"; unlocked weapons can be customized via the "Gunsmith"—a returning feature from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare —which allows them to equip various weapon attachments, such as foregrips, barrels, and optics.
Zombies
In Zombies, one to four players—who are part of a CIA-backed response team named "Requiem"—fight off endless hordes of the undead, which increase in both number and difficulty with every completed round. Zombies features four main round-based maps: "Die Maschine", "Firebase Z", "Mauer der Toten", and "Forsaken". In order to unlock all parts of the maps, players must purchase several doors with "Essence" points. Essence can also be used to purchase various player upgrades, including perks, weapon damage upgrades—which are acquired from the "Pack-a-Punch" machine—and ammo modifications. Players can also earn "salvage" materials, which can be used to craft various pieces of equipment, obtain armor, and increase a weapon's level of rarity. As in the multiplayer component, players can bring their own customized weapon with them into a match; previous Zombies modes only allowed players to start a match with a pistol. Starting at the end of round 10, and every five rounds afterwards, players can choose to exfiltrate from the map via helicopter; should players choose to exfil, they will have a limited amount of time to head to an efxil point, where they must kill every zombie in the area before they can exfiltrate. Successful exfiltrations reward players with "Aetherium Crystals", which can be used to permanently upgrade various player items, including perks, weapon classes, and ammo mods.Supplementing the core round-based maps are three additional game modes: "Dead Ops Arcade 3", "Onslaught", and "Outbreak". Played from a top-down perspective, Dead Ops Arcade 3 tasks players with completing a series of "Arenas", which culminate in a boss fight. Onslaught puts two players on a selection of maps from Black Ops Cold War multiplayer, tasking them to defend areas grounded off by a "Dark Aether" orb, which must be powered by killing zombies. Onslaught was initially exclusive to players on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5; the mode was made available to all other platforms in November 2021. Outbreak puts players on a large zone situated in the Ural Mountains and tasks them with completing a selection of main and side objectives. Once the main objective is completed, players can choose to exfil from the zone or warp to a new, harder zone.
Plot
Campaign
In January 1981, CIA operatives Russell Adler, Alex Mason, and Frank Woods are sent to Amsterdam to target Qasim Javadi and Arash Kadivar for their roles in the Iran hostage crisis. With intelligence gained from interrogating Qasim, the trio tracks Arash to an airfield in Turkey, where they witness him executing everyone in the vehicle he arrived in. The team eliminates Arash's men and corners him; he gloats that the Soviet spy Perseus —who Adler believed to be dead—was the one responsible for organizing the hostage crisis before being executed. After being briefed of his threat by Adler and Jason Hudson, U.S. President Ronald Reagan authorizes a black operation team to neutralize Perseus.Adler's team consists of MI6 intelligence officer Helen Park, CIA operative Lawrence Sims, and Mossad operative Eleazar "Lazar" Azoulay, with Mason and Woods providing tactical support. The final member of the team is an agent known only by the codename "Bell", who allegedly served with Adler and Sims in MACV-SOG during the Vietnam War. Operating out of a safe house in West Berlin, the team asks Bell to recall Operation Fracture Jaw in 1968, where Adler believes he, Bell, and Sims first encountered Perseus. Afterwards, the team proceeds to East Berlin to apprehend/kill Anton Volkov, a Russian mafia boss with ties to Perseus.
The team learns that Volkov helped Perseus smuggle a nuclear device through East Berlin; they also find encrypted coordinates to an unpopulated region within Ukraine. Bell and Woods are sent to these coordinates, where they infiltrate a secret Spetsnaz training facility and discover that Perseus has infiltrated "Operation Greenlight": a top-secret American program that planted neutron bombs in every major European city to deny their use to the Soviets in the event of an invasion. Intel retrieved from the Spetsnaz facility indicates that Perseus is excavating General Nikita Dragovich's destroyed base in the Ural Mountains, which was used for the development of the "Nova 6" bio-weapon. Mason and Woods are deployed there to retrieve Dragovich's list of American sleeper agents, but find that Perseus has wiped the data from the base's mainframe; this forces Adler and Bell to infiltrate the Lubyanka Building to retrieve the list. The duo learns that a Greenlight scientist is one of the sleeper agents and has fled to Cuba, where the team follows. The team discovers that Perseus has managed to steal the detonation codes for every Greenlight bomb, meaning he can devastate Europe and lay the blame on the United States. They come under fire and Lazar and Park are injured, leaving Bell only enough time to save one of them.
After rescuing Bell, Adler continues to press them by provoking their memories of Vietnam once more. At this point, Bell's true identity is revealed as an agent of Perseus, having been shot by Arash in Turkey out of jealousy. Adler found Bell and brainwashed them using Project MKUltra into believing they were his comrade. With Bell's memory returned, Adler interrogates them on the location of Perseus' headquarters. Bell can either choose to remain loyal to Perseus and lie to Adler, or choose to betray Perseus and reveal his location. Should Bell choose the former option, they will tell Adler to go to the Duga radar array, where he and his team will be too far away to stop Perseus from activating the nukes. Otherwise, Bell betrays Perseus and joins the CIA in their assault on Perseus' headquarters in the Solovetsky Islands, where they destroy the transmitters needed to send the detonation signal. Later, Adler takes Bell out for a private conversation, assuring them that their choice to turn against Perseus was of their own free will and that they are a hero, before eliminating them as they are a loose end for the CIA.