Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 Review - 8 Ups & 4 Downs

6. Blackout Is The Slickest Battle Royale Mode Out There

It's easy to scoff at CoD's decision to get in on the Battle Royale gravy train, but they'd be daft not to, really. While Blackout isn't a particularly revelatory spin on the genre, it is one of the best-engineered to date, even accepting the rather mediocre graphics.

Effectively taking the best from both PUBG and Fortnite, Blackout features the gritty "realism" of the former with the strong performance of the latter while ditching boring building mechanics and just focusing on the gunplay.

The map is, of course, absolutely huge, and while it's mildly disappointing that areas like Nuketown Island don't more closely resemble their legacy map counterparts, overall there's a decent enough diversity to the land to ensure it doesn't feel like just another generic Battle Royale game.

Much like the core multiplayer offering it doesn't bring a lot new to the table, but it refines the formula with fast load-times and the series' customarily snappy shooting while cutting away most of the BR bloat.