Most people who play Call of Duty for longer than the six to eight hours it takes to complete the campaign will be embroiled in the multiplayer mode. That’s why Treyarch’s decision to remove a traditional campaign from Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 makes sense. I’ve already written extensively about how the latest Call of Duty game aims to be one for the fans, hardcore players, and people who return to the game time and time again. Trimming the fat of modes that players barely log any hours into leaves Treyarch free to really focus on tuning and perfecting the multiplayer aspect of the game, where most fans will invest their time.
Black Ops 4 has a lot going for it, with the multiplayer, solo ops training missions for the specialists, three complete Zombies campaigns, and Blackout, Treyarch’s take on the battle royale craze. They aren’t showing off a lot yet, so I only had the opportunity to get my hands on the multiplayer at last week’s reveal event, but even that showed some major leaps for the series. Perhaps most notably, the crazy vertical movement we saw in Black Ops 3 is now gone. There’s no more wall running or boost jumping, so combat stays decidedly grounded. It’s anything but slow though. While Treyarch might be rolling back on those crazy elements, they’ve kept that incredibly smooth flowing movement around the environment. The studio’s commitment to “guns up” is more present than ever, and as ...