Jumping into Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 can be a little disorienting for people returning to the series after a bit of a hiatus. Thankfully, the game offers a "Specialist Headquarters" that warms up players by showing them how to utilise each character.
I'd just come home from work, a three-hour train ride, and I'd spent half an hour having a quick Call of Duty scrim with some former Counter-Strike friends. We'd largely abandoned CS competitively by that stage, due to a combination of work, fatigue with the scene or changing lives, and played Call of Duty 4 for fun instead.
It was still organised, but without the divisive thirst for blood. And that environment inadvertently led my Dad to make a passing remark one evening, a comment at the dinner table that I've never forgotten to this day.
"You're laughing a lot more these days," he said.
The latest Black Ops has had a much smoother launch than Call of Duty: WW2 last year. But is it any good?
There's no traditional campaign this year, but if you're happy with zombies and you liked the battle royale beta enough to pull the trigger before launch, The Gamesmen have a nice deal this week.
Showcasing vehicles, helicopters, supply crates and the usual gadgets you'd expect to find in a Call of Duty game, here's some brief footage from Blackout, Black Ops 4's battle royale mode.
When the makers of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 announced yesterday that the upcoming game will come with its very own battle royale mode, Blackout, they refrained from answering one big question: How many people will it support? The answer, it appears, is that developer Treyarch just doesn't know yet.
Today at an event in Los Angeles, developer Treyarch put on a show to reveal new info about Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, which will be out October 12 for PC (on Battle.net), PS4, and Xbox One. Seems like this will be a break from traditional Call of Duty in a whole lot of ways, as we expected.
If you'd like to see how Activision tackles the battle royale genre, and you don't mind seeing a little bit of mindless run-and-gun action along the way, then you can catch up with the next Call of Duty here.
It isn't quite official yet, but it's a near-certainty that the next Call of Duty is Black Ops 4. Rumours have been swirling about this for a few weeks now (as first reported by Eurogamer), and Kotaku can confirm via our own sources that those rumours are true. Plus, there's today's assist from a future NBA MVP.
