On top of being yet another generic military shooter like the other Call of Duty games, Black Ops 4 now shoves in a battle royale mode called "Blackout" for the sake of chasing that same trend. The driving controls in blackout mode are terrible as you need to move the left analog stick up to accelerate and the right analog stick left or right to steer. The ending of Blackout mode, however, undoes the ending of the campaigns from Black Ops and Black Ops 2 by switching Mason and Woods' roles. Even though it was clearly a forced addition, Blackout mode can still be very fun.
This game is also the first game in the series to not feature a campaign mode. This is extremely baffling considering it was one of the main pillars of the entire franchise (Not counting the specialist HQ mode). In fact, Treyarch actually planned a single-player mode but due to deadlines, it was replaced with a battle royale mode. There's also no reason to pay $60 for this game (along with its battle royale mode) since Modern Warfare 2019 has been more successful and on top of that, Activision had already released a free-to-play battle royale. Despite the removal of the Single Player Campaign, the game still has couch multiplayer, something rare in multiplayer only games. Unlike other main Call of Duty games, BO4 is heavily dependent on its playerbase due to its online nature and despite Treyarch's claims that they'll continue to support it, they stopped supporting the game after only a year, just like other entries in the series.
Although Zombies returns, it's stripped down with the Perk-O-Cola machines removed, most notably the Juggernog. The PC (exclusive to battle.net) and Xbox One versions have the same annoying problem in the zombie mode that both versions of Black Ops 3 got after a certain patch, with many models of zombie heads missing, especially in the case of the PC version.
While previous Black Ops characters such as Alex Mason, Frank Woods, Jason Hudson, David "Section" Mason and Raul Menendez had their original voice actors reprise their roles (making it feel more like a Black Ops sequel, especially after Black Ops 3), Gary Oldman does not reprise his role as Viktor Reznov; in fact fan-favorite character Viktor Reznov is an exception to this. Savannah Mason is also a very weak villain in comparison to Raul Menendez. It was also nice seeing Captain Price in a Treyarch installment of the Call of Duty franchise, even if all of his lines were directly recycled from the original Modern Warfare trilogy.
It has subpar graphics compared to Black Ops III. The lightning makes the game look cartoony by comparison and some effects like the water look significantly worse than they were in BO3. And, just like Ghosts, many maps and mechanics from previous Black Ops games are recycled.
Microtransactions and Supply Drops return from Black Ops III worse than ever, and to add salt to the wound, not only does the game have a season pass, but there's also a battle pass for the battle royale mode. Activision would later dial back on the pay-to-win features, but they did this after Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) was released, making the decision too little and too late. The care package score streak is overpowered. If you reroll a care package, you'll always get a very powerful score streak.
Just like other games of the franchise, the map design is linear. In fact Treyarch also made all the map packs exclusive to the season pass, meaning that you have to cash out a lot of money for the season pass; it was also timed exclusive to special editions of the game for a while. The Season Pass (or the Black Ops Pass) was locked behind a high-priced edition, though this was later reverted.
Overpowered weapons such as the Mog 12, which can hit enemies that are 60 feet/18 meters away, and the knife. The Specialist Abilities are also too overpowered, especially Nomad’s K9-Unit which is basically the Guard Dog from Ghosts with more armor and Zero's Icepick, which instantly destroys the enemy team's score streak as well as the enemies themselves. Along with the weapons, melee is also unbalanced as it deals 145 damage which leaves the player with only 5 health points, as well as what's called "shot-punching", which is when you shoot an enemy and then quickly attack them. This in turn leads to the result of most fights coming down to who attacks first. Even the weapon sounds are rather poor quality, with some of them sounding like they are suppressed and some say that certain weapons sound like Chopper propellers. At least the reactive camos look decent, and the syringe breaks the tradition of auto-generated health, just like Call Of Duty: WWII’s health packs.
Is this really the feeding force of Activision? Or is it because Activision Blizzard does not know what to do still?