And the opening mission is the most stylish of the lot, starting in a neon-lit Amsterdam bar shortly after New Years Day, and taking you to the damp city rooftops as you chase a target.īut then there's the rest, which often feel like mediocre remakes of the more middling Call of Duty missions of yesteryear. There are stealth missions that give you a chance to approach things more, erm, diplomatically. The mission manages to make you feel deeply uneasy throughout, like a monster is waiting around the corner despite the brightly lit building, ultra-shiny linoleum floors, and funny snippets of NPC dialogue. One takes place entirely in the headquarters of the KGB, and it's all quiet hustle, no machine gun muscle. Weirdly enough, the monotony sets in on the more fast-paced missions you’d expect from a Call of Duty title - it’s the slower ones that hit differently.

The fun moments break up long periods of monotony that shouldn't exist in a campaign that's this short (it took me a little over five hours to beat it).

The fact that one of your ending choices is technically impossible according to previously established lore doesn't seem to matter all that much - it's just fun and games. There are collectibles that actually mean something. There are tons of great moments where your gun remains holstered, or you don’t have a gun at all. But then Frank Woods wonders aloud if the taps in a fake bar work as he’s getting pelted with bullets from AK-47s, and you realize that maybe, just maybe, this game is having fun.īlack Ops Cold War does play around with the franchise formula, adding a shot of some mysterious liquid and shaking instead of stirring. These moments feel like the franchise can never get out from its own shadow - especially the Black Ops titles, which so often deal in historical representations of America the Savior. There are moments when the 'do anything to save America because Ronald Reagan says so' energy starts to give you a red-white-and-blue icepop brain freeze.

The musical stylings of Black Ops Cold War mirror its campaign's contents.

Call of duty cold war campaign music