PlayingCall of Dutyused to be a simple exercise. It was once the most popular game in the world, and remains one of the most played around the globe even now, decades after its peak with the likes ofBlack Ops 2andModern Warfare 2.
Nothing beats a good old-fashioned TDM sesh with your friends, but over the years, much of this magical simplicity has been lost to the live-service machine. If you’re a lapsed player like myself and log into Modern Warfare 3, you will be flabbergasted by the sheer level of rubbish on the user interface. No longer can you enter a match with three simple button presses, it’s an awkward conundrum of restrictive filters, outfitting operators, and digging through a decade of guff to actually enjoy the game you purchased. It isn’t good enough, andActivision knows it.
Call Of Duty Is In Dire Need Of Evolution
Thankfully, with the launch ofBlack Ops 6later this week, it appears that Treyarch is looking to improve the user interface not just for this year’s entry, but for many others to come. There have been a few times where I’ve been tempted to get back into Call of Duty recently, thanks to seasonal event crossovers and its enduring popularity. But at every juncture I’m turned off again, tempted to return to a more simplistic and welcoming experience like Fortnite rather than put up with the inevitable toxicity of the world’s most popular bro shooter. But mostly, it’s thanks to the impenetrable menus and ridiculous install sizes.
To Activision’s credit, it has been working on the install size problem by allowing users to choose what they want to install and when. But it’s still a nightmare to deal with.
Ever since the release of the rebooted Modern Warfare in 2019, all Call of Duty titles can be found under a single client. The initial idea here is admirable in how it wanted to act as some sort of centralised hub for all things Call of Duty, but its annual releases and the presence of Warzone resulted in the client becomingverybloatedveryquickly.
If you ever wanted to get into the multiplayer portion of a specific game or replay a certain campaign, it wasn’t a very fun experience. In fact, it was anti-consumer in how it pushed the latest and greatest while working to bury everything that came before. Now, Activision will be introducing a Game Tile and tab system in which each title in the series - both new and old - has a dedicated space.
Now It Finally Has A User Interface That Doesn’t Hate The Player
Black Ops 6 and Warzone will be displayed on the main screen, while everything else can be found in the ‘All Games’ tab and customised to your liking. It’s not perfect, but a solid start to curating a nicer and more approachable space for the shooter franchise. Activision will roll it out to select users ahead of the official launch of Black Ops 6 if you want to see it in action, a good idea considering the queues and server issues bound to plague the new entry at first.
A rocky user interface is normally something I’m willing to forgive in single-player games, or at the very least work around if the rest of the experience is worth my time. But in live-service titles like Call of Duty, where you are interacting with countless menus and trying desperately to curate every install, loadout, and game mode, it is much harder to reconcile with.
It shouldn’t have taken Activision this long to address such a dire user interface, but at least it has, and the future of Call of Duty could be so much brighter as a consequence. Or, at the very least, far less confusing.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
WHERE TO PLAY
Forced to go rogue. Hunted from within. This is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.Developed by Treyarch and Raven, Black Ops 6 is a spy action thriller set in the early 90s, a period of transition and upheaval in global politics, characterized by the end of the Cold War and the rise of the United States as a single superpower. With a mind-bending narrative, and unbound by the rules of engagement, this is signature Black Ops.The Black Ops 6 Campaign provides dynamic moment-to-moment gameplay that includes a variety of play spaces with blockbuster set pieces and action-packed moments, high-stakes heists, and cloak-and-dagger spy activity.In a best-in-class Multiplayer experience, players will test their skills across 16 new maps at launch, including 12 core 6v6 maps and 4 Strike maps that can be played 2v2 or 6v6.Black Ops 6 also marks the epic return of Round-Based Zombies, the fan-favorite mode where players will take down hordes of the undead in two brand-new maps at launch. Post-launch, players can look forward to even more exciting maps and groundbreaking experiences dropping into both Multiplayer and Zombies.
