Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's Warzone 2.0 integration feels awful

I have to assume that Raven Software is currently pulling its hair out. There should be big tufts, maybe even whole hairpieces, on the floor at the developers' office, who over the last 16 months in particular have gone from strength-to-strength in most of the updates made to Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's Warzone integration was rolled out recently, courtesy of sister studio Treyarch, and there's no finer way to describe this radical redesign of the battle royale monolith without being disingenuous and than to say it's a record-breaking misstep.

Warzone, as we all know, has gone through several guises and there were many who disliked the "new" direction that Infinity Ward and especially Raven took when they designed the basis of the now two-year-old Warzone 2.0. Gone was the break-neck speed from its predecessor. Instead, we got a game with an inventory system borrowed in part from Escape From Tarkov, movement that breathed Arma III crossed with Modern Warfare, and a gigantic new map called Al-Mazrah that offered architecture and terrain fans had never seen before. Warzone 2.0 was something different from what Warzone had been, causing many hardcore gamers and loud streamers to go ballistic. Activision lost players who believed that the main point of Warzone from the start was fast-paced, slide-cancelling, sniping and solo-based play rather than the stacking of squads that Al-Mazrah often offered.

I never played much Warzone. Three or maybe four evenings in Verdansk turned into three or four evenings in Caldera, with no real desire for more. Too much focus on customised perk chains, OP loadouts, and the mega speed meant that as a beginner I felt out of my depth. Warzone 2.0 was my way into Activision's hyper-popular online sensation. It was slower paced, there was a focus on loot, the three-plate vests didn't come with the initial parachute jump, and XL backpacks plus heavy, slower movement made it a different game than what it once was. I got into it, quickly learnt to love Al-Mazrah, the inventory system as well as the proximity chat which, especially in the first year of the game's life, built the conditions for a whole bunch of incredibly hilarious elements and conversations with enemy teams.

In 2023 and 2024, Warzone 2.0 has changed. Raven has listened to players' desire for the same movement patterns and running speed as the first game, and upgraded, tweaked, fine-tuned, and polished the diamond in the rough free-to-play shooter that, thanks to Vondel, Urzikstan and an upgraded Rebirth Island, has entertained on a royal scale, especially in the last year. The condition that I personally consider Warzone to be in before the Black Ops 6 integration is the finest condition that game has ever been in. Functionally complete, with stable servers, relatively bug free, good looking, action-packed, fast-paced, and very addictive. Then things changed. Thursday, November 14 arrived, and everything changed... For the worse.

Black Ops 6's Warzone has basically fundamentally rebuilt the game. As someone who has invested over 1,000 hours in Raven's project over the last 24 months, I naturally have to question why, especially just when the game finally worked as it was first intended? The Black Ops 6 update has now redone the basic mechanics and although I thought it would feel just like the Omnimovement in Black Ops 6's Multiplayer, it doesn't. I've dropped into the new Area 99 map a number of times and have been struck every single time by how backwards this is, because it feels in every way like Black Ops 6's Warzone is the dated game, while Modern Warfare III's Warzone is the new, modern one.

The Omnimovement gimmick pretty much only messes me up when I'm trying to dodge enemy fire, accidentally snapping to prone or hurtling backwards like a dumbass. The loot system feels sluggish and not nearly as snappy, and picking things up feels more like that lethargic, tired, ancient system in PUBG: Battlegrounds than anything else. Weapons are now colour coded like in Fortnite, which doesn't belong in Warzone and all the perk packs, loadouts, and weapon builds I designed in Modern Warfare III's Warzone have been deleted. Oh, and the new animation that Treyarch put in that makes the player's shoulders and thus the weapon move much more when you run is also not something that belongs in Warzone, as it slows down and gets in the way of effective running.

On top of that, I am once again super sceptical about the new menus that feel like they were made by people who wanted to change something that really works, just for the sake of change. Change for the sake of change, not for the sake of improvement, plain and simple. Spending many, many millions of dollars on redesigning things that already work superbly well surely that must be the most efficient form of wasting money, especially when you could have kept Modern Warfare III's Warzone as it was and spent all your time on two or even three new maps, instead? After all, that's what the fans are asking for. A new Resurgence map on par with Vondel and a new big map on par with Al-Mazrah, not a completely redesigned movement system that feels sluggish or menus that just mess up every little function.

Then there's the matter of Treyarch and their graphic artists, who are clearly no match for those who worked on the IW 9.0 engine. Black Ops 6's Warzone and primarily the new map Area 99 (which is just an extended Nuketown) looks like an early PS4 map rather than something released in late 2024. It doesn't get much better if we look at the sound design either, which has also been completely unnecessarily redesigned. The chat sounds marginally better with a less peaky and less reverb-focused acoustics, while the game itself sounds considerably worse than, say, Rebirth Island did in Modern Warfare III's Warzone. The explosions are less detailed, the footsteps are less audible, and it just sounds off right now.

The fact is I am a bit shocked and above all annoyed at how Activision took something finely polished, well-functioning, popular and demonstrably very good and destroyed it with tons of skewed design decisions. The fact that they also chose to delete the Riot Shield as a melee weapon (completely) on the grounds that it is a "troll weapon" is almost absurd. In a team-based battle royale game where it's largely about playing strategically smart and tight to win in the form of squads, a riot shield and its use is no more of a troll move than the perk streaks that are now available to build that make a player with the right chain of special upgrades up to three times more deadly than someone without.

I don't think I've seen such a tone-deaf dismantling of a brilliant, working game like this in years. It's in dire-need of a do-over.