If you were lucky enough to get in the first round of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 multiplayer beta, then you, like me, should get in on a few rounds of Blackout, the series's foray into the popular shooter genre Battle Royale.
Now, as the title of this article suggests, I literally just won my first match about an hour before writing this post. Because I like to style myself as different, and also maybe because I'm a little lazy, I haven't played that much of any Battle Royale game. I've played approximately two matches of Fortnite, and maybe three matches of PUBG Mobile (which is surprisingly fun).
Right off the bat, the feeling Blackout is perfectly suited to the Call of Duty M.O. Combining a fast-paced run-and-gun style with a wait-and-see method of gameplay may seem at odds, and for the amount of matches I've played, it has certainly been packed with more misses than hits, but the mode is unexpectedly...fun.
Blackout has three modes: Quads, Duos, and Solo. As can be inferred, Quad drops you in a four-player squad (including you), Duo pairs you with another player, and Solo means you're single and ready to violently mingle, with guns. I've only played Quad and Solo, and although I might play Duos, I have to shed some anxieties of talking to another person, one-on-one, first. Solo isn't bad, and the feeling it ingrains in the player is quite exhilarating, but I'm really not all that great at that particular part of the game mode.
Therefore, it both is and is not a surprise, to me at least, that the first match I won was on Quads. This is actually my very first time winning any game of Battle Royale, ever, and yet, I feel nothing.
For me, Blackout has provided a lot of nuance in the way I relate to players, trying to coordinate strike plans, and just survive in general. To get this out of the way, I'm awkward as heck when trying to speak to players online. And yet, communication is, in a general sort of way, critical to the mere prospect of a team's success.
It's really ironic, then, that on the first match I won, I seemed to be the only player with a mic. Of course, my other teammates could have all been in a party together, making fun of my silly profile name, but in trying to coordinate, I was simply shouting into the void, trying to direct my teammates to my position while cowering away in sniper towers and hoarding all of the first aid kits. I was so good during this match that once my team and I were finished off the lone survivor, I hadn't neutralized a single foe during the entire match. The most I got was perhaps a few shots on the guy once he had knocked out two of my other teammates. My more agile teammate was the one who shot the final shot.
But it feels a little odd to me that in all the matches I've played, the one where I was in the dark the entire time was the one that I'd actually score a victory on. Maybe it was the fact that we were tactically reduced to scanning the horizon for possible enemy players, instead of just running in, guns blazing, we ended up just hiding behind trees, taking shots at one another, until we got the final hit.
This is neither good, nor bad, it simply is.
If you play any Battle Royale games, you may be familiar with the tried-and-true method of loading, dying, loading, dying, and loading again. That is the perfect description for the majority of my experience. Sometimes I get one or two people before I get downed, sometimes I get no one.
If you watch the trailer above, it makes for a very compelling visual premise for what Blackout can be. But honestly, if you want to survive, you won't be going to Nuketown, or the Asylum (where apparently there are zombies?!), you parachute to an abandoned house where there is no one around, you loot it for weapons and gear, and then you hide, trying not to die. The majority of gameplay, like most Battle Royale games, is filled with cowardly meandering (at least in my case), dotted by the occasional firefight, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
Back to my original point, though, Blackout meshes well with Call of Duty. It feels similar to other Battle Royale games, and retains enough gameplay elements to not just be a copycat. It's unique, fun, and repetitive, just like they all are.
