Cold War is easily the best CoD game to come out post Black Ops II.

I totally understand why it got a ton of hate when it came out because of the fact that from a mechanical and technical standpoint, it was a complete stepdown from Modern Warfare (2019) but in terms of character and content, I think it's easily the most interesting and fully enjoyable package even with its complicated and rushed development during the height of COVID.

The obvious thing first, I am in love with this game's aesthetic. The 80's theme is so fucking cool and Cold War really takes it and runs with it, you can really tell when it comes to the design of a lot of the levels in all game modes of Cold War and also within the narrative of the campaign.

Despite the fact that it may be a bit short, I fucking LOVED the campaign. Each mission felt so distinct and unique, I loved making my own character with their own perks and having dialogue choices that change how events play out, similar to Black Ops II.

On top of that, the side content with the campaign where you had to decipher the codes to find Perseus was so fucking cool to me. I remember writing all these different strings of numbers and city names in my notebook physically to try and crack the code and it was genuinely such a memorable and engaging moment in any game I've ever played and it was totally optional. In general, doing different side stuff and replaying missions was so fun, I remember replaying the whole campaign twice to get all the Dark Ops challenges completed.

Most people would consider the multiplayer to be the weakest part of the game and to an extent I would agree. Cold War's movement system feels pretty similar to Black Ops 4, generally being pretty stiff and janky, especially compared to how buttery smooth movement was in MW2019. The gunplay, animations and overall polish wasn't as on point as the last game because of the older engine but I think despite all of this, mechanically, Cold War's multiplayer was really sound.

Besides Miami, Cartel and The Pines, there weren't really any offensively bad maps in the game, they all ranged from competent to being very good. I also really enjoyed the wildcard system in Cold War allowing players to really add more onto what kind of playstyle they wanted to rock with, even being able to do weird shit like have two secondary weapons.

The multiplayer had an actual working mini map, easily recognizable enemies, maps that weren't dogshit and DEAD SILENCE AS A PERK. I really can't say the same about MW2019 lol. Minus maybe the slightly longer time to kill, Cold War was the last classic feeling CoD game we ever got. I don't think that even games like CoD WW2 or Black Ops 3 matched that golden age CoD game feel as much as this game.

When Cold War first came out, I was really mixed on the zombies because I felt it was too easily and strayed too far from the original formula of Black Ops III which I thought and still think is the gold standard for zombies. However, over time I've come to accept that Cold War is totally its own thing and it does its own style of gameplay pretty well, I think all 4 maps in Zombies are really fun, especially Mauer Der Toten is my favorite, knowing everything in that map down to a T.

I would even argue that Cold War does some things better than previous zombies iterations. I really like how hectic late rounds are in cold war, zombies get super fast and they feel way less monotonous as late rounds in something like BO3 or BO2 zombies. The exfil system is a really nice alternative to end the game and get better rewards than having to die or do the Easter egg to complete the map and I also think Cold War has the best perk system by having no limit but having each perk you get become increasingly more and more expensive as you acquire more. This is just way more fun than choosing the same 4 perks every single game like in every single zombies game in the past, even BO4 because even that game had an obvious meta of what perks were the best.

Cold War was a bit of a mess at launch but in its final state, I think almost from an objective standpoint, it is the highest quality, most unique and offers the most amount of content compared to almost any other CoD game post 7th Gen.

Reviewed on Feb 02, 2024


1 Comment


3 months ago

agreed 100%