Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (spoiler-free) review: I didn’t want to like this game

Black Ops Cold War doesn’t bring forward the refinements introduced in 2019’s Modern Warfare, but the multiplayer modes are solid and the game is still fun.[/caption]Despite knowing this, and going in with rock-bottom expectations, Cold War still managed to surprised me.

The campaign

Multiplayer

Zombies are back, people![/caption]If you’ve played other CoD games, you won’t really find anything wrong with Cold War’s animations, and in the absence of Modern Warfare, they’d be just fine. But, Modern Warfare does exist, and it raised the bar so high for quality, that it’s simply hard to ignore.The fluidity of animations aside — and there are some balance issues to sort out — Cold War’s multiplayer is fun and definitely worth investing time and money in. All the usual modes that CoD fans know and love make a comeback, including Fireteam, Domination, and Search and Destroy. Oh, and Zombies is back!Sadly, the latter has, so far, been nearly unplayable for me. I’ve yet to encounter a server that gives me sub-200 ms pings, and I’m yet to finish a Zombies map without the game crashing straight to desktop within a few minutes.For those wondering, Warzone is still Warzone and is running on the Modern Warfare engine (Yay!).

Meat and potatoes are meat and potatoes

Here’s the thing: Meat and potatoes are meat and potatoes. They’re a staple for a reason, like dal khichdi or rajma chawal. We’re so used to staples that we take them for granted, mock them even, but we also can’t live without them once they’re gone.We may well mock the franchise, treat it like a meme, and even dismiss it outright for being generic, but we have to admit, there’s also nothing quite like it.The games in the franchise might not be the most inspirational, or even interesting, but once they’re part of your diet, they’re hard to live without.Wherever you stand on the matter, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is, I think, just interesting enough to be worth your while.The game was reviewed on PC:CPU: Intel Core i7 6700K @ 4.6 GHzCooler: NZXT Kraken x53 240 mm AiOMotherboard: Gigabyte Z170-D3HRAM: 2x 8 GB DDR4 3,200 Corsair Vengeance ProGPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, courtesy of ZotacStorage: Corsair MP600 PCIe Gen4 SSD, Samsung 870 QVOPSU: Corsair AX850Cabinet: CoolerMaster MasterBox MB511 A-RGBMonitor: BenQ EX2780QKb/mouse: Corsair Strafe, Corsair M65