Treyarch has officially unveiled Black Ops 6 Zombies, the highly anticipated return to the turn-based zombie-killing action game that Call of Duty has been missing for several years. But this is more than just a new episode of Zombies, it’s a fresh start in many ways.
While the story itself may be a continuation of the Dark Aether timeline from Black Ops Cold War, many of the gameplay mechanics, quality of life, and behind-the-scenes optimizations are entirely new and should provide a worthwhile experience for veterans and newcomers alike.
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Treyarch has announced a series of updates for Zombies that aim to make the experience more rewarding and customizable, and offer some clear improvements over all previous versions. Since Zombies requires an internet connection to play, there are now a number of options to help with saving and restoring.
First off, Zombies now has private matchmaking, meaning anyone can join their friend’s private game (assuming there’s space and the host allows it). But more importantly, solo players can now pause and save their match and load it up later to pick up where they (roughly) left off. If you stay idle long enough, the game will even auto-save your match.
With manual saving, you just need to make sure you’re at full health and not downed or dead. You also won’t be able to save after calling the exfil chopper. With Zombies now always online, it means solo players don’t have to lose their progress should their internet – or their Activision servers – encounter issues. For squad players, games will now continue to run – as long as the host is active – so anyone who has disconnected can rejoin and continue playing with their squad.
Black Ops 6 Zombies continues the quality of life exercise with a fully customizable HUD that you can change to match the old look (by removing the minimap) or tweak any individual component of. That means you can turn certain elements on and off, change their colors, and more. One thing that I’m particularly excited about is the ability to turn off Pack-a-Punch weapon camouflages, so weapons can still look like weapons and not toys.
Zombies also supports third-person for the first time, and you can switch to that perspective at any time, including the shoulder you’re aiming from. All of this and more will be available when Black Ops 6 launches on October 25 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
