So, BlOps 6 Multiplayer is fun.
Call of Duty has had a bit of a reputation for being rather dull and same-y for some time, and to break that reputation they tried a lot of wacky things to keep their hardcore players happy. This led to a lot of weird decisions like trying to replicate Titanfall's incredibly movement mechanics, but failing miserably due to map design choices that hindered players' movement freedom by comparison.
Call of Duty was never really a movement shooter anyway, at least not to me. It's always been about spray and pray, scope and hope type gameplay. Run, click heads, repeat until dead, then repeat until the match is over.
Call of Duty 2023 (the MW3 reboot) was the first COD in a while that I had played, and I was pleasantly surprised by the gunplay. The guns sounded nice and punchy, the sound design for accolade acquisitions and hitmarkers was super pleasant to the ears, and most importantly they had a lever action rifle that kinda sucked but was fun enough to use that I suffered through using it, just for that sweet, sweet gunlingin' cowgirl roleplay.
My biggest gripe with that game was its lack of consistency in player model designs. You had grounded designs that looked like soldiers distinct from each team, but you also had Snoop Dogg, Nikki Minaj, a whole ass man made of kush, anime catgirls, LITERAL cats, and even fucking WWE wrestler Cody Fucking Rhodes. Every new battle pass introduced a necessity to learn which anachronistic player model was on which team, which made identifying enemy player models impractical unless you were aimed down sight to reveal the other player's enemy-coloured name tag over their heads.
BlOps 6 still has this issue, with some weird ass fleshbot automaton lookin thing and zombies pulled over from the COD Zombies gamemode, but it hasn't quite gotten to the point of absolute brain rot yet. To be clear, I'm not against goofy and fun skins in shooters! But COD's implementation is a far cry from Fortnite, where every player model is basically team-agnostic and you just shoot anything that moves who isn't your squad mates.
So, given that the odd character design hasn't had time to fully congeal in this game yet, I feel as though the multiplayer still has some level of model consistency that keeps gameplay from turning into a spychecking mess.
The fantastic gunplay from MW3 carries over here with almost every gun feeling fun to shoot, aside from guns that typically don't gel with me like burst rifles (and the fact it doesn't have a lever-action rifle yet). The gamemodes are all very fun, with my favorites being Hardpoint (essentially King of the Hill) and Kill Order (a VIP-type gamemode where one player on each time is a "high value target" that must be killed to gain points). the SBMM doesn't seem to swing quite as wildly quite as frequently as it did in MW3, especially when partied up with similarly-skilled players. And for the most part, any gun is a viable gun if it's leveled to maximum. The omnimovement system takes a bit to get used to, but using it tactically and conservatively has been quite a lot of fun.
Overall, I'm having a pleasant time with the game. I'm not looking forward to the inevitable influx of confusing skins, but for now it's pretty enjoyable - especially with friends.