So I saw that CoD Black Ops 6 was free until tomorrow and decided to give it a go. It’s been at least a decade since I’ve last played a CoD game, and I have fond memories of a time when I could play one of these games without rolling my eyes at the non-political politics of badass operator slop. I also remember that incredible Soviet campaign from CoD World at War and that was enough to give this game the benefit of the doubt.

My overall impression is: What in the name of everloving fuck is this thing?

First off, it was a 150GB download. What is this, a massive open-world game? This is not Starfield, there’s nothing here that could possibly justify this size. But eh, whatever, just went ahead and downloaded it overnight, installed it and then booted it for the first time last night.

What greeted me was several layers of separation from the actual game. It asked me to create an Activision account, which then rebooted the game, then it showed me a whole screen full of DLC and loot that I could presumably buy with whatever the fuck currency they’re using.

It was, simply put, a shopping mall stocked with colorful guns and variations of camo outfits and hats and whatnot. It was utterly undecipherable to me. How do I get out of this screen? I struggled to actually find out how to continue on to the game because the screen was just covered in an endless amount of garbage and season pass ads and whatever else. It gave me flashbacks to the time when I tried to play Gears of War 5 and was greeted by pretty much the same abomination of a screen. Is this what triple-A is supposed to look like now?

Anyways, I navigated my way just barely in order to find a button, any button, that would take me to the fucking game. There was one that would take me to the multiplayer lobbies, another one for the zombies mode, another one that would take me to a store, and presumably half a dozen other ones where I would go to a hundred different things that were not the goddamn single player campaign.

Finally, I made it, found the button, with my thumb already reaching for the alt key and my middle finger wanting to stretch towards F4, and I booted the goddamn campaign. It closed what I thought was the game window, and restarted into what seems to be another executable. Was I not even in the game yet?

Anyways, all this to play just two missions and feel bored mindless after like half an hour. It’s still pretty much the same gameplay from a decade and a half ago, but a little bit more advanced and better looking. Generic badass operator slop, very well produced and the generous budget clearly shows, but it’s so goddamn boring.

It boggles the mind how this shit can keep going on after so long, the same game being re-released every year. Who even needs AI slop when we can have humans putting out this shit that’s essentially just a premium form of generic content?

As a palate cleanser before going to sleep, I booted Tactical Breach Wizards. You know what happened? I double clicked the desktop icon, and within twenty seconds I was playing the fucking game. No ads, no nonsense, no trying to upsell me after I paid for the base game. Just a damn good game that I can sit down and play.

    • joaomarrom [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      18·
      2 days ago

      I can’t say enough positive things about it, it’s legit in my top 5 all-timers alongside Into the Breach, which was my favorite turn-based strategy game before I played TBW. It’s incredibly fun, very addictive, the writing is phenomenal, charming and very funny. I highly highly highly recommend checking it out.

      Edit: reposting my comment from a previous thread:

      Playing Tactical Breach Wizards and I seriously cannot recommend this game enough, what an absolute banger. It’s incredibly charming, has a wonderful soundtrack, excellent world building and hilarious writing. It’s just the right level of quirky and goofy where it’s enjoyable and delightful without ever being annoying.

      It’s set in a kind of weird futuristic Shadowrun-like magical world with some really fun characters, like a necromancer doctor who needs to kill people before she heals them and a traffic warlock who attacks you by summoning cars filled with undead souls to run you over and applies stasis curses as a punishment for illegal parking. You get the sense that the writers who came up with the lore had a blast writing it. It’s one of these very special games that make you feel like the developers were having a lot of fun working on it.

      When I first saw it, I immediately thought it was going to be like XCOM, which is a game that I really like, so I picked it up on sale. As it turns out, it’s actually way way closer to Into the Breach, which I like even more. There’s no RNG or accuracy mechanics, it’s more like ItB’s tile chess positioning dynamics, where you push enemies into walls and other enemies, but this time there’s a very funny focus on defenestration. It’s incredibly satisfying to line up your moves so that you can throw a handful of enemies through a window in the same turn.

      I’ve only just started playing it, but I can already tell that it’s going to be an all-timer for me. It’s an incredibly joyful, lighthearted and fun game that I’d recommend to anyone, but it’s absolutely a must-play if you enjoyed Into the Breach.