Summary
There’s a lot to enjoy withCall of Duty: Black Ops 6. The Campaign mode feels refreshing and different, with some sections having much more freedom in their level design. The Zombies and Multiplayer modes also have received some exciting new changes, like Omnimovement. It’s no wonder that Black Ops 6 sawone of the best launches in the franchise’s history.
Black Ops 6’s story focuses primarily on the events of the Gulf War in 1991 and features missionsset in the Middle East, along with moments that best align with some horror games. Below are some games that might interest you after completing BO6.
Prior to heading into Black Ops 6, you may want to know the characters and storyline a little bit more, even for Zombies mode. Black Ops Cold War is a great place to start, with an equally compelling(albeit short) campaignthat will help to recap everything that happened between Frank Woods and Russell Adler during the chase for Perseus.
You can start to see some of the early ideas for the expansive and redesigned campaign you now have in BO6 getting their start in Cold War, and the final mission and plot twist is one of the best of the series. This game takes place during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the Cold War and serves as a direct sequel to the original 2010 Black Ops game.
At a certain point in the main story of Black Ops 6, you’ll find yourself in a hallucinogenic nightmare sequence that brings a psychological horror element to the game. Some mannequins will creep up on you and zombies suddenly spawn instead of human enemies. A perfect psychological horror military game to follow that up is Ad Infinitum.
Ad Infinitum takes you further back in time to the battlefield of World War 1. You’ll play a German soldier suffering from PTSD after the Great War, who finds himself back in the trenches with terrifying creatures in place of enemy combatants. It’s a psychological horror tale about the scars war can leave you with, and Ad Infinitum has a unique way of telling it.
Another first-person shooter that offers more action-oriented horror with a lot of excellent characters and set pieces is Resident Evil Village. Once again, the horror of Zombies and the campaign section that sends BO6 in a more horror direction allows a Resident Evil title to end up here.
The eighth mainline installment of the Resident Evil series follows Ethan Winters' journey to find his kidnapped daughter, Rosemary, in a snowy Gothic European village. He’ll be shooting his way through hordes of Mother Miranda’s Cadou experiments, including Lycans and a hierarchy of monstrous bosses.
You also have brothers-in-arms with Chris Redfield and The Duke,one of the best merchants to rival Resident Evil 4’s.
If you want to experience more of the mannequin sequence from BO6’s Campaign, the Shadows of Rose DLC for RE Village will deliver on that.
One other horror game worth mentioning is House of Ashesfrom The Dark Pictures Anthology, as it also involves the U.S. military’s presence in Iraq during the 2003 invasion started by the son of H.W. Bush, President George W. Bush.
One of the main playable protagonists in this game, Rachel King, is a CIA officer like the protagonists of BO6, and is voiced and captured by Ashley Tisdale.
There’s tons of atmosphere and mystery since the main protagonists get trapped underground in an ancient Mesopotamian temple where creatures seemingly not of this world are hunting them.This is also a Supermassive title, so the outcome of every character’s survival is determined by the difficult choices you’ll be making.
Where Call of Duty is usually an action-packed thrill ride with explosions and set pieces galore, Spec Ops: The Line is a much darkerand more emotional journey. Instead of Iraq, you’re part of a team heading into a Dubai landscape devastated by sandstorms, with a story inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and also reminiscent of Apocalypse Now.
This is a third-person shooterwith squad-based gameplay where you can essentially give your unit commands of where to target, and the narrative follows the leader of Delta Force, Martin Walker, on a quest to bring down the commander of the 33rd Battalion, John Konrad.
Like the Black Ops 6 campaign, this military shooter is not what you think and has some pretty graphic and upsetting visuals.
If you enjoy the multiplayer aspect of Call of Duty as well as the more open-world playground the campaign offers this time around in BO6, the Ghost Recon games, specifically Wildlands, and its 2019 sequel, Breakpoint, are excellent options to continue that kind of experience.
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint even features The Punisher and The Walking Dead star Jon Bernthal as the antagonist, Cole D. Walker. Wildlands sees you going after the Santa Blanca Cartel, while Breakpoint follows the Ghost Recon squad on the hunt for Walker.
These games let you run even more wild with the combat strategies and stealthusing the tools, weapons, and equipment at your disposalthan BO6’s more basic Equipment Wheel mechanic, and it’s a fully open-world design with wider traversal variety as opposed to the more linear mission-based progression in BO6.
Zombies in Call of Duty installments haven’t felt the same since Black Ops 3, no matter how much B06 thinks it can take it back to the OG era. So, if you want something more in line with the traditional Nazi Zombies mode but with a third-person design instead of FPS, Rebellion’s Zombie Army 4 is a thrilling zombie shooter experience.
This comes from the developer ofthe Sniper Elite games, and you still get that nice X-Ray bullet-time kill on enemies. The game is its own story campaign that continues from where the trilogy left off and offers an abundant variety of zombie enemies to mow down. You can also play with a party of up to four players, just like how the Operators work in CoD.
Espionage and stealth are a major focus of Black Ops 6, with more missions tailored to that kind of gameplay. If you haven’t already, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell is an excellent series to get into next, but it’s ultimately Splinter Cell: Conviction that makes a perfect companion game since it features a level set in Iraq during the Gulf War and a co-op Prologue chapter to the campaign.
The Splinter Cell series puts you in the shoes of Sam Fisher,whose stealth suitand stealth takedowns become the best parts of the game.
The way you’re able to use your environment when dealing with enemies and the cinematic quality of takedowns, not to mention the silhouette system when you get spotted and the objectives being written out in the background, make it one of the most iconic stealth games.
Campaign Mission Two, Blood Feud, and Campaign Mission Three, Most Wanted, is where the inspiration comes from to add Hitman to this list. In Blood Feud, your character must stealthily work his way toward a tower to use a sniper rifle and eliminate a man associated with The Guild called Yannik.
Most Wanted sees you infiltrate Bill Clinton’s gala and sneakily take out guards and Pantheon agents to break out Adler.
If you love this new direction, particularly the use of disguises from not only your character but the NPCs with you, Hitman World of Assassination features all of that on an even greater scale. This collection offers the entire trilogy of IO’s newer Hitman entries, with Agent 47 finding all sorts of brutal and creative avenues to take out his targetsand can don numerous disguises.
Espionage, stealth tactics, cinematic story, open-world level design, and the backdrop of the Cold War don’t get any better than Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid series.
If you’ve played through all of Black Ops 6’s campaign and are yearning for more of that similar gameplay from Campaign Mission Four - Hunting Season, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain will more than satisfy you.
The Phantom Pain sees Venom Snake venturing into 1984 Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War. However, all the games in this series come with unique and original characters and storylines tied to stealth and military themes that are also mixed with a science fiction angle.
