The Call of Duty: Next showcase kicked off today, and with Black Ops 6 launching at the end of October, there were plenty of new details revealed for the game’s Zombies mode.
Treyarch spoke about the maps, describing Liberty Falls–the small West Virginia town location–as being deceptively calm when players first spawn in. Set in the heart of a Zombie outbreak, the map features VHS rental stores, cozy shops, and sidequests for players to explore.
Each map will have its own unique weapon, and for Liberty Falls, players can equip a jet engine that can suck up zombies and shred them up into bloody chunks. There are also new traps, including a life-size action figure in the comic-book store that can fire heat-vision beams from its eyes and slice up any zombies inside.
This year’s Zombies offering looks like a return to the basics of the popular mode, as players will have to deal with the undead menace in a traditional round-based format. There’ll be two maps at launch–the small town of Liberty Falls and the Terminus prison–and players can expect a mode that’ll make them sweat as they deal with hordes of enemies.
There are some interesting mutations to Zombies this year, and overall, Treyarch is aiming to make the mode feel rewarding while also growing the community of Zombies players. For example, the Essence currency can be used to unlock new routes of escape or spent on Perks to strengthen yourself against the ever-increasing challenge of the sprinting undead.
The other form of currency, Salvage, is found randomly from fallen enemies and can be spent on improving your equipment. Two big quality-of-life changes with Salvage are that you won’t have to worry about teammates picking up your loot, as it’s players-specific and there’s only type of Salvage now, compared to the normal and High-Grade Salvage that could be collected in Black Ops Cold War.
Another big change this year is the introduction of more movement options, as for the first time ever, players can sprint, slide, and dive in any direction while chaining combat maneuvers together. This is part of the Omnimovement system being introduced in Black Ops 6, which is one of the major upgrades to Call of Duty this year.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches on Friday, October 25, for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One. Game Pass subscribers will get access to the full game as part of their membership, but this doesn’t apply to Game Pass Core or the new Game Pass Standard tier subscribers. For more details on all the versions available, you can also check out GameSpot’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 preorder guide to see what you get in each edition.
