[PS4] Call of Duty Black Ops 4

Since 2003, Call of Duty has been one of the go-to games in the shooter genre. Spanning multiple wars both past and future, there have been overlapping timelines, change of developers and gameplay tweaks, both for the better and worse. We have seen new game modes introduced and some scrapped entirely.

Black Ops 4 brings the total number of games in this Call of Duty series to 5

This year saw the release of Black Ops 4, the latest installment in one of the most popular Call of Duty branches. An almost direct follow-on from Black Ops 3 there are returning elements from all the Black Ops games and World at War.

Story

The story of Black Ops 4 is....

Wait, what?

That's right, for this Call of Duty appearance the story mode has been completely disregarded to make way for more multiplayer elements.  As someone who has been really intrigued by most of the stories in this franchise I have to admit I was a little disappointed when I found this out, but I kind of understand the reasoning.
If we are being brutal the story in Black Ops 3 was incredibly weak, possibly one of the worst of all Call of Duty games. Considering how much I enjoyed the Call of Duty WW2 campaign, I would say second only to Modern Warfare, the story for this game was always going to play second fiddle to other parts we will get on to later. Why bother wasting time adding in a campaign most people will ignore?
In which case, why have they bothered putting in these story cutscenes for the tutorials. For me this attempt to the in a story in the multiplayer is an abysmal idea. There is no real sense to it, and is never mentioned or used again in the rest of the game. A pointless addition.

The only area of this game where there is some sense of story is in the zombie mode. When released there were 3 different scenarios, one a continuation of a previous zombie story and the other 2 a brand new campaign.
The premise of this new story is actually decent for the setting, a woman has hired a group of expert burglars to retrieve a relic, stolen by an evil German scientist, on board a cruise ship. The relic is 'accidentally' used to unleash an evil plague, turning all the passengers on the ship into mindless zombies. Also the ship hits an iceberg and is sinking, giving those with a good history knowledge an idea of what ship you are on.
The second campaign appears to be set after the first, when the group have re-obtained the relic, they find themselves in a mysterious cave being compelled by a woman to drink from a fountain. This sends the four into a trance and they are transported to a strange arena.
They are then forced to fight against waves of zombies, crazy right, and tigers, oh wait that is crazy! At first glance it would appear to be set in Ancient Rome, but you soon notice the Egyptian, Greek and Norse areas that hint at this being a different dimension, which would explain the 21st century guns on the walls.

The zombie mode is more in-depth than ever before with the story, but doesn't make up for the lack of story mode

Graphics

To be honest there seems to be no massive improvement in graphics from this game to the third. That is not necessarily a bad thing as Black Ops 3 was still a great looking game, but it means it is potentially losing out on what other games are capable of.
The blackout mode is the most testing for the performance of the PS4 system, with draw distance playing a key part in a round being able to notice the movement of other players in the distance.
Perhaps if there was a story mode there would be an easier way to measure the graphical quality, but with multiplayer only modes the graphics really boil down to how the game can keep up with the fast paced action.

Gameplay

Call of Duty Black Ops 4 has 3 different game modes, 2 returners and a brand new one. The multiplayer is your typical Call of Duty shooter, fast paced action around small and medium sized maps. There are multiple game modes such as Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed and Capture the Flag, as well as both normal and hard-core versions of certain gametypes.
There have some changes in this version to the last. The most important of these is the way the health system has changed. The player will no longer automatically regenerate, instead having to manually heal up after taking damage. This heal is on a timer and is almost instant after hitting the button for it. At first I was dubious about this change, but after a few games I found myself healing naturally after firefights and sometimes getting caught out when I heal at the wrong time.
Equipment is also on a timer, including grenades and specialist abilities, while the specialist weapons make a return, working still in the same way as in Black Ops 3. Gone are the crazy boosting and wallrunning, making way for a more classic run-and-gun. Overall I would say it's an improvement on previous games, but still falls short of the older 360 era Call of Duty multiplayer games.

The zombie mode has expanded once more, now including specialist weapons that work in a similar way to the multiplayer versions. Other than that change it works the same way zombies has for a while.
There is an over-ruling objective mode that requires the survivors to reach certain places and perform certain tasks. All the while waves of undead will be attempting to slap you to death.

Then there is the new mode, in many ways the main highlight of the game given the amount of hype around it. Blackout is a Battle Royale set on a large island that features multiple maps from previous Black Ops games, such as Nuketown and Trainyard.

Blackout is the standout star of the game

The objective is to be the last man or team standing, and can be undertaken solo, in duos or as a team of 4. At the beginning of the round, every player has to jump from a helicopter that is on a random path over the map. Players start with nothing and must scavenge for guns, health items, attachments, ammo, armour and equipment. Then begins the rush to avoid getting caught by the rapidly advancing blue circle of death.

Longevity

Multiplayer games will tend to have good Longevity based on how enjoyable the game is rather than how much content is in the game itself. In Black Ops 4's case they have picked a perfect game mode to keep people interested in playing their game.
A typical Blackout match can range from a few seconds to up to 30 minutes based on how well the game goes. The important thing is that it's quick to quit out when you do lose, and start up another match almost straight away. Every match will play out in different ways and based on the starting loadout you are able to amass will change the way you approach the rest of the round.
Multiplayer has it's usual multitude of unlockable customization options from challenges, gameplay and level unlocks. The gameplay itself is good enough to waste away hours on at a time.
Zombie mode is the longest lasting for a single round, and does tend for me to get a bit boring to do too often in a short timeframe, but still offers that variety to be a decent option if you fancy doing a bit of PVE instead of PVP.

Summary

Black Ops 4 brings some new content and changes to its predecessors that seem to be successful. The biggest issue is a lack of a single player story mode, which would have provided that little bit more to the game. Normally I would just not score the Story category for a game like this, but the embarrassing attempt to shoehorn something in with confusing cutscenes, that would have been better to leave out, forced my hand. This was saved only by a decent Zombie campaign.

Story 5/10
Graphics 8/10
Gameplay 9/10
Longevity 9/10

Overall 7.5/10