Black Ops Cold War: Where to Start Guide

Nicholas Sakadelis

Coming November 13th, Black Ops Cold War will launch across all platforms, bringing a large drop of new content for players to experience.

The game offers 3 very different core modes to play on launch, and lots of variety in each area. With all the new content, where should you start?

Campaign

The hunt for Perseus is on! Experience the brand new Black Ops campaign, set right after the events of the original Black Ops game.

Play with and as the iconic Black Ops trio (Frank Woods, Jason Hudson, Alex Mason) and some new characters, like Russell Adler.

“Welcome to the Black Ops Cold War Campaign: At the height of the Cold War, these three moments defined the early history of a newly formed group of CIA operatives. Their objective: to prevent global nuclear conflict through deniable operations, missions whose targets and sources remain off the record to this day.” – Call of Duty blog

The campaign will take you through a number of large and small scale operations while you try to hunt the mystery of who Perseus is. If you’re someone who prefers to not have anything spoiled, we recommend you start here, as you might see spoilers in your Twitter or YouTube feeds in the first week of release. Normally Call of Duty campaigns take about 8-10 hours to finish, depending on the level of difficulty. You can stretch the play time out by playing slow and really adventuring around the environments.

Multiplayer

Most of the community will start here in a rush to get their ranks rolling and experience all the new maps and modes. This year, Multiplayer isn’t just your standard rotation of basic game modes. We also have the Fireteam and Combined Arms modes as well. Here’s the multiplayer rundown.

Core Modes

The core multiplayer this year is back with plenty of new scorestreaks, weapons & equipment to use. These maps when compared to Modern Warfare will be much smaller and significantly more fast paced. Hop in here to experience the newest maps, level up weapons and play returning modes like Kill Confirmed and Domination, or try out the new VIP mode.

Combined Arms

New to the Black Ops franchise, Combined Arms is a large 12v12 scale gamemode set on specific maps. So far we have seen two game modes – Assault and Domination. Assault is a mode similar to Domination, however, there is one point both teams must fight to control. Once a team captures a point, the next point moves closer to the enemies spawn. The first team to conquer all points up to the enemies spawn wins.

Domination on the other hand is exactly how it is in core multiplayer, but with more flags and enemies.

Fireteam

Fireteam is another new part of Black Ops Cold War, and feels like a nice medium between Blackout and Warzone. It features the same plate armor system as Warzone and looting, yet has the Black Ops movement and weapons (there will be no MW weapons in this, unlike Warzone). Drop in as a squad of four in a 40-player server.

As of now, the only available mode is Dirty Bomb. In this mode, you are tasked with detonating as many dirty bombs as you can while fighting off squads of other players. Detonate enough bombs and you’ll win the game…. but be sure to watch out for the toxic fumes each detonated dirty bomb leaves on the field.

Zombies

For Black Ops Cold War, the signature Treyarch zombies is back, complete with new perks, weapons & the return of pack-a-punch.

The new map “Die Maschine”, brings us back to the root of zombies as a reimagining of World At War’s “Nacht Der Untoten”, the original zombies map.

Perks will have a new spin with 3 upgradeable tiers, weapons will now have rarities with varying damage values and you’ll even be able to drop into the game with your own customized loadout. Additionally, there is now scorestreaks, an armor system, and unique zombies field upgrades.

While playing zombies and figuring out all the new features, you’ll also be leveling up your multiplayer level and weapons as an added bonus, so no need to fear missing out on XP to try out Zombies. We recommend starting here if you have a solid group of 4 that finds excitement in exploring something completely new.