Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is better liked by MeinMMO author Jürgen Horn than it should be. The controversial setting and the war theme stand in contrast to the fun gameplay and the exaggerated staging.
This is my problem with Call of Duty: I never used to engage much with Call of Duty until recently. This is mainly due to the themes of the games, which have always glorified war and the military too much for me. The over-the-top military antics and the patriotic pathos – the game is literally called “Call of Duty” – continue to make me uneasy.
Yet, I love fast-paced and uncomplicated shooters, but I clearly prefer fictional and as colorful worlds as possible. Hence, games like Fortnite or Apex Legends are more my cup of tea than PUBG or the Warzone.
However, as a game editor, I have to play and get to know games that I wouldn’t have bought privately, and this time it includes the new Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
The Cold War is a creepy setting
The titular Cold War was again a reason why I wouldn’t have played the game. This era is still fresh in my memory. CoD Cold War takes place just before my birth, and until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the topic was more or less ever-present in my childhood.
Although I didn’t directly understand what was going on, the fact that “the Russians” could come at any moment and that some politicians had a “nuclear button” and could blow up the world with the push of a button sometimes worried me as a child.
Especially the trailer for Cold War, featuring the “nuclear button,” sends shivers down my spine, and I’m really glad that the Cold War didn’t turn hot in the end.
Therefore, I found the choice of setting anything but tasteful. War zones from the recent past as settings for games just don’t feel right to me. I felt somewhat the same way back then with Battlefield 5, which disturbingly reminded me of my grandfather’s war stories. But with Cold War, things turned out differently in the end.
The campaign: Too silly to be really controversial
Since the setting intrigued me in a morbid way despite my aversion, I did start the campaign. It initially fulfilled my fears: On behalf of hardliner Republican Ronald Reagan, I lead a retaliation strike against Iranian terrorists together with a CIA hit squad. The background is the hostage-taking of US diplomats in Tehran, which ended in 1981.
This controversial subject is handled in such a silly manner in the game that it can hardly be taken seriously. The attack on the first terrorist’s party pad in Amsterdam quickly turns into a shooting gallery. An endless number of utterly foolish Iranians crawl out from all corners of the house and run straight into my fire.
Later, it’s time to take out the top terrorist at a Turkish airfield, which ends in the best 80s action movie style with a long chase sequence with buggies on the runway. Even here, whole hordes of terrorists seem to be ready to be taken down by our CIA team wave after wave. In this video, you see what I mean:
The rest of the missions usually follow the same pattern. It begins with a quiet stealth segment and ends like in an old James Bond film with outrageous action sequences.
I can actually deal with that. The entirely exaggerated staging makes the initially dark setting unbelievable and more like a fictional action spectacle than a serious war simulation. One just can’t take it seriously and instead shoots freely.
This is indeed very fun. Just grab the gun and start shooting. If you embrace the zany shooting gallery logic of the game and see it as a wacky action film, it’s also enjoyable to follow the story and hunt down the villain Perseus.
After completing several missions in the campaign, I’m already looking forward to the end of the day to continue protecting the world with my CIA team from destruction by stolen nuclear bombs.
And I’m looking forward to the multiplayer because once I’ve got the hang of it and unlocked some good weapons, the multiplayer mode is also a lot of fun. You can read about it in my preview report on CoD Cold War, where I describe how I first made Mother Russia cry as a noob.
