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.