Unfinished: Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Blackout BETA 09/11/2018

Black Ops 4 Blackout.

This game is getting dark!

They say this mode is for 80 players, but the 2nd round starts with 86 players.

How many 40s does it take to unlock Blackout mode?

Time to Blop Out with our Op Out!

Is this that "Blackout game" that I've been hearing about on the news

Legendary COD characters is actually pretty clever cosmetic idea for Battle Royal game. To think I though the 'Battle Royal Craze' would be over in 6 months, hell to think the 'COD Craze' is practically over is equally bizarre.

While the typical COD attachment & weapon porn makes quite a bit of sense for this mode, it's still pretty weird to me how you can spend all that time gathering all this stuff when a match can end up with you hardly encountering anything to shoot until the very end.

In the longest game they played here, they had all the equipment they could ask for, yet only encountered 2 humans within 15 minutes. At some point, having a smaller deathmatch map makes more sense to me if you're into the shooting of Call of Duty. The thing that made COD big.

I can sort of see the appeal of starting out with nothing and gathering resources to have a better chance at winning. But when every building looks like a gun pinata exploded in it, after the first 2-4 minutes of a game,everyone will have a reasonable option to shoot with and the whole appeal of the survival aspect is pretty much gone for me.

The inventory management part of this game seems pretty well done. Being able to automatically put attachments on your gun with a long button press seems like a smart idea

Final nitpick, That pick up animation looks strange.

@onemanarmyy: Your critiques can just be reduced to "I dont like Battle Royal games".

To Jeff's point about who may need this, this is a console shooter and might bring that formula to consoles better than battlegrounds cause I don't want to play fortnite. Also finally call of duty has come back to what I've been missing the most: wicked sick guitar riffs.

@onemanarmyy: You literally just described the reason a lot of people like battle royale games.

This game has some Attitude

I haven't played a single game of PUBG or its ilk. Seems weird that I've avoided it for this long. Love Murder Island tho!

e: still need to watch, but from the Bombcast it sounds like they could have done quite a bit more to differentiate it. As much as they claim to have, it doesn't sound like they really put a Black Ops stamp on it. Then again I've never played much of CoD either, so I probably have zero horses in this race. Just sounds like this could have maybe been more frenetic and close quarters.

I don't hear Snoop Dogg, this isn't Call of Duty.

@ssully: I can see the appeal of Fortnite & PUBG. But when i think about what made COD big, it's the gunplay & how snappy the game plays overall. A battle royale mode where you will get less chances to shoot your guns & where there's a lot of downtime due to the nature of the beast, just seems like a wonky fit to me. But hey, i guess COD needed to do something different, so i guess this makes sense.

@onemanarmyy: I totally agree with you. Battlefield seems like a more natural fit then COD for a Battle Royal game mode, but I definitely understand why they felt they needed to do the COD spin on the mode. Can't look at the success of PUBG or Fortnite and not try to get some of that pie.

For the: "why this instead of Battlegrounds" question, I'd say that Battlegrounds isn't on PS4. So, it has that going for it.

There's a market for BR on console that has better shooting than Fortnite. Especially with PUBG being bad on Xbox and PS4 having no other options than Fortnite.

I'm having a lot of fun with Blackout. Its biggest problem is that it's a controller shooter, and the FOV is too tight to have decent situational awareness. Both problems alleviated by playing on PC, but you shouldn't buy the PC versions of COD. It's left in a weird place that doesn't fit into my rotation of games even though I like it a lot.

Boy, those last two games, Jeff was only getting started. Too bad he didn't get to go a little harder.

This looks like a perfectly serviceable battle royale-type mode. I like how they've incorporated old Black Ops maps into this one

@how92: those guitars got me pretty hyped

This looks decently made and fine. I have no desire to play it despite having played most of the others really tho, already feeling the burnout hard on this mode.

That second finish though. Nice.

Disappointed by this. Expected them to work in perks and killstreaks in a fun way, but instead this looks very safe.

That inventory screen is very quaint. Oh controllers, how you simplify! Quick Equip menu is cool.

Jason: Can you hide in that porta potty?

Oh... not a porta potty

Jason: Can you hide in that well?

Oh, it's a fire pit.

Haha!

Doesn't seem as good as it could be, but already looks like a lot more fun than PUBG.

Yea Epic/PUBG could learn a thing or two from that inventory stuff, looks neat!

I think Jeff seems to be discounting the fact that this both looks and runs really nice for a console Battle Royale. The map is really well done, and while I agree with him about the healing being too fast, this is pretty cool overall. I think it's amazing that they were able to accomplish this on whatever engine they use for COD.

No thanks.

This really is just PUBG with Call of Duty shooting. It seems okay; as a person who enjoys playing PUBG, I'll check it out. Also, PS4 does have H1Z1, which apparently did pretty well on the console.

In every COD game, when the player is not up close to something like a wall, I feel like the player camera is about 8 inches off the ground. I guess that's an FOV thing.

I'm kinda surprised Jeff isn't more hyped for this. I've played a 20-30 hours of PUBG and < 1 hour of Fortnite, and this is exactly the BR game i've been waiting for. PUBG is too janky and serious, and Fortnite is building and 3rd person, not my jam. But PUBG with CoD polish and shooting seems like the perfect blend of casual and tactical gaming that i want from my BR. This might be the first time i buy a CoD since...Advanced Warfare i guess. I'm hyped so far, cant wait for the PC beta!

I agree. The performance for console is rather impressive.

Seeing Jeff just climb the fence out of that construction yard in a Call of Duty game IS THE WIERDEST THING. I'm freaking out over here.

There's a certain "je ne sais quoi" to Battlegrounds that this is missing. It's the imperfections and rough edges that make things truly interesting and this is just too... cohesive? Nice? I dunno.

This seems really well put together and a good entry point for COD fans who may not be into PUBG as much. It runs really smooth by the looks of things and the inventory changes are what PUBG should have been exploring since day one. As with all these games though (Battle Royale and COD) I simply don't get enough time online to "get gud"... so will likely and reluctantly give this a miss.

I'm actually really impressed they put this together in what was probably a short amount of time. I'm hopeful that this might lead to larger scale COD modes in the future, which might further step into Battlefield's territory. Seems good!

This certainly seems to fill a spot in the battle royale world, if you're looking for a more grounded version that actually runs and controls well on consoles. Other than that it looks fairly uninteresting for all their talk about trying to provide their own spin on the genre. And it's a bit awkward to be directly pulling from Battlegrounds as your primary inspiration at a time when PUBG is already falling off in popularity.

Though really there's no way I'm buying a pure-multiplayer game at $60 anyway, so not sure what I was expecting.

@silan: I don't know about the others but I think Jeff was always drawn to the janky and ramshackle nature of Battlegrounds - that oldschool mod feeling you don't get from games these days.

From what I've seen this looks to be exactly what a lot of people wanted, a PUBG that isn't a patchy mess, with the backing and polish of a large studio like Fortnite but with better gunfeel. Ironically I think a lot of people will be turned off by the polish - it's absurd but it is what it is.

This actually makes me quite interested in the new Call of Duty, and that's saying something, as I've not cared for it for years now. Battlegrounds, but with the polish of a Call of Duty? I might be into that. I get that some people are mad that every single AAA shooter is now doing the Battlegrounds thing, but this was clearly a smart move by the devs as far as I am concerned.

Welp, this actually looks like a pretty fun one of these. Rec Room Battle Royale kinda ruined me, though, because now I want all of the BR games to be in VR. Turns out that that's the secret sauce that makes me really like the genre.

the hand placement on that run animation is so dumb, given the FOV, it's like the character has his fists about a foot from his face and is just gyrating them pretending to be a train

Why would someone play Blackout over PUBG? Because PUBG is still a dumpster fire of cheaters, glitches, and general bs! CoD also handles better in every conceivable metric over PUBG so.. there’s that!

Well I am mildly interested. Couldn't get into Fortnite at all.

It's like PUBG except it doesn't run or feel like shit, which is a big deal especially for console players who still don't really have an option for a more serious battle royale game. PUBG is going to completely drop off after this and rightfully so, they rushed that game to launch for the GOTY awards and it still barely updates or runs like it should. Not to mention all the lawsuit stuff that really soured people on that company. This game is going to be huge, you can safely ignore their opinion on this.

I can easily see this replacing Fortnite for me. I love the gunplay and fun wackiness of Fortnite, but I have NEVER liked the actual building forts part. I simply suck at it, especially when my main focus is exploring and shooting enemies (and not getting shot at.) Can't wait to get the chance to play the beta!

Artistically bankrupt.

This map looks boring, generic and barren as fuck. As if someone slapped together a bunch of utterly mediocre prefab assets in Unity, without any consideration for themes and style.

That too. It looks hilariousy bad.

I have nothing to add to this.

I think the only game that did future guns really really well is Halo, i can't remember any game that did it just aswell, maybe Mass Effect 1?