If you got your teeth well and truly stuck into the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War beta, you might be looking at what’s included in the full game. The Black Ops Cold War multiplayer beta featured two Fireteam Dirty Bomb maps, and six core multiplayer maps. Sadly, there’s only two more in the mix at launch.
That’s right, Black Ops Cold War only contains eight 6v6 maps for online multiplayer. These are Armada, Cartel, Checkmate, Crossroads, Garrison, Miami, Moscow, and Satellite. Of those, Checkmate and Garrison are the new additions. The Fireteam Dirty Bomb mode, which takes notes from Warzone, is still stuck with just the two beta maps, Alpine and Ruka.
A total of ten maps might not sound too bad, but it’s pretty weak for Call of Duty. Treyarch’s last entry, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, featured 14 maps although four of them were remakes. Black Ops Cold War‘s beta map list was also pretty extensive for a demo, making this launch lineup seem even worse.
The good news, is that Black Ops Cold War is utilizing a similar post-launch plan to Modern Warfare 2019. That means new multiplayer maps will be free, subsidized by microtransactions. Fan favorite Nuketown kicks off the post launch plan, when Nuketown ’84 adds a fresh coat of paint to the popular Black Ops map on November 24. Then, season one arrives on December 10, with new maps, weapons, modes, and the return of 2v2 Gunfight from Modern Warfare. The amount of maps coming in season one is yet to be revealed.
Guns, guns, guns
One area where Black Ops Cold War improves on Black Ops 4 is the amount of weapons on offer. Black Ops Cold War contains 29 weapons in total at launch, compared to Black Ops 4‘s 27. Due to game engine shifts, Black Ops Cold War‘s arsenal also feels decidedly different to play around with than the weapons of Black Ops 4. Black Ops 4 re-tooled a lot of the kit from Black Ops 3, resulting in a very similar feeling experience between the two games.
In truth, Black Ops Cold War feels a little barebones at launch. Having said that, I’m sure it’s been as hard a year as any to get an annual CoD release out the door this year. Hopefully, Black Ops Cold War‘s post launch plan is robust enough to keep us engaged.