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Black Ops 6 leak gives naughty players access to the Max Payne-ish omnimovement system for the first time"Fluid", or frustrating?
“Fluid”, or frustrating?
Image credit:Activision
Image credit:Activision
I don’t play much Call Of Duty any more. My feelings about the series have settled back from self-righteous fury over itsPentagon-sponsored war-fellatingto a quieter, regretful sense that there have maybe been enough Call Of Duty games now, and that it would be nice if we could fill that infamous late October/early November release slot with, I don’t know, games about witches instead, or maybe just turn it into a public holiday and spend the week lying on a mattress regarding the ceiling. Still: I’ve skinned and filleted enough COD in my time to know thatBlack Ops 6’s new “omnimovement” system is going to ruffle as many feathers as it smooths. The short version is that it turns you intoMax Payne.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - Movement Overview | Xbox Showcase 2024Watch on YouTube
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - Movement Overview | Xbox Showcase 2024
As the cumbersome moniker suggests, omnimovement is all about 360 degree responsiveness. It lets you sprint, dive and slide in any direction at the drop of a bullet casing, and lets you rotate freely while prone in the bargain. It sits alongside some new assists - you can set your character to mantle and sprint automatically, and there’s a new “corner-slicing” gimmick that sees you peeking around surfaces automatically while aiming.
The idea, Activision claim, is to make the game both look and feel more “fluid” rather than simply upping the tempo. “It was never a goal with Omnimovement to just make things fast,” associate design director Matt Scroncetold Comicbook.comin June. “This isn’t the fastest Call of Duty game. Our average speeds - because you can sprint in any direction, and on average, you’re probably sprinting a little bit more - are a little bit higher. But it was never about making things fast.” Perhaps not, but it looks like it’s going to give some players the edge at close quarters. Possibilities include diving through windows and rotating as you land to headshot the poor sucker who thought they were ambushing you.
There are the usual concerns that the new movement suite will empower or disempower community favourite playstyles or techniques: omnimovement appears to have wrought the ignoble end of slide-cancelling, for example, though this may just be a limitation of the dev build. There are suggestions that omnimovement will create a new skill gap - omnimovement certainly seems built for showboating pros and their streaming audiences. Pretty much everybody I’ve read agrees it’ll take time to bed in, perhaps more time than is usual for a new COD quirk. I’m curious to know what the duty-callers of the RPS commentariat make of such things. We’ll have more to say at the end of the month, if not before - theBlack Ops 6 betabegins on Friday August 30th for selected players.
