The latest game in the annually released COD franchise, Black Ops 6, hit gamers’ libraries early on Friday. With the weekend behind us, gamers have had plenty of time to drop their first impressions of the game’s campaign, multiplayer and zombie modes. All of which provide a vastly different Call of Duty experience.
As of writing this piece, the game is rated “Mixed” on Steam, with around 60% of the reviews being positive. On the Microsoft store, it has a whopping 2.1 out of 5 stars, while PlayStation players seem to enjoy it a little more with a 4 out of 5 star rating.
Trawling through Reddit seems to indicate that people are enjoying the game, mostly, barring a few launch bugs. These will more than likely be ironed out over the next few days now that the game has had some time out in the real world.
While we can’t yet see any stats from Xbox, PlayStation or GamePass, Steam shows the Call of Duty franchise as a whole hit an all-time peak of over 300,000 players over the weekend. This doesn’t pick out Black Ops 6 on its own, but from the history of the charts, since the game launched on Friday, the Call of Duty franchise has increased by around 200,000 average players.
Over on Twitch, the stats show that the game peaked at around 71,000 streamers streaming the game and has already accumulated over 8 million hours watched, with a peak viewership close to 400,000 viewers.
While these numbers all seem impressive on paper, the game costs a wallet-busting R1,420 to purchase, which leads us to assume that having the game on GamePass as “free” to play for those with Unlimited Memberships is mainly accountable for the game’s player numbers.
Most comments on Reddit point to people enjoying the game but wouldn’t have spent the full price if they hadn’t been given the GamePass option to pick it up.
While the game is available on Game Pass at a subscription rate of R119 per month for the PC option, it is only the Standard Edition of the game. If you’re looking to amplify your COD experience with a few battle pass skips, some operator and weapon skins, accessories to use in Zombies, and a couple mastercraft weapons, you can pick up the Vault Edition of the game on the Microsoft Store, Steam, the PlayStation Store or on your Xbox for a meagre R1,969. Game Pass subscribers can get away with only purchasing the Vault Edition Upgrade for R540, though, so if you are on Game Pass and do want all the skins, I recommend you pick the more wallet friendly route.
Personally, I’ve only spent a couple of hours trying to show the world I’m not as nooby at FPS games as they might think I am. I find the multiplayer experience pretty enjoyable, as someone who plays multiplayer games often, but it doesn’t seem very different from other Call of Duty experiences I’ve had in the past. I was annoyed that I had to clear up a few older games to make way for the 200GB download from the Microsoft Store, which I still think is way too big for a game, no matter how many modes it has. However, I can uninstall the campaign once I’m done, allowing my League of Legends file to grow again with each skin I purchase. Although, I have been told that if you are smart, unlike me, you can download only the Call of Duty Black Ops 6 files, without Warzone and the rest of the COD franchise, which should only use up around 100GB of your hard drive. Overall, I’m pretty sure I’ll be spending a few afternoons unlocking skins and pulling off as many finishers as I can for the next few months until I get bored or find a few friends to play Zombies.
If you’ve dived into Activision’s latest Call of Duty game this weekend, whether you’ve braved the solo campaign, taken on a few Cold War Zombies or tried your luck with the sweaters over in multiplayer, let us know what you think about the game so far in the comments below. [We’re already addicted, two thumbs up from me – Ed]
