I'm reviewing this solely from my experiences with Zombies. Is the game fun? Sure, well enough. The movement enhancements are a great leg up that I think most, if not all, players would agree with. I find that the guns have more recoil than I prefer, but never enough to be too bad. Really my opinion on this is just that it's Cold War 2, with some improvements and some drawbacks. It's more balanced, but I find that the level of power in CW was just plain fun, and the scaling difficulty curve of this game makes every game feel more stale; the brick wall you run into at round 31 is palpable. The writing is worse than Cold War's, but if you're coming to a Zombies game for story and characters after BO4's ending, you should really know better. All in all, it's fine. Not the best game in the series, but not terrible, either.

The reason I strongly advise any and all players to stay away from this game is the level of transparent greed that Activision has been soaking in for years, with it coming to a head in this game. A $70 game, with a paid *and premium* Battle Pass, and exuberantly priced bundles of cosmetics (e.g. skins for your guns and characters). If you're going to engage in these practices, you usually only do *one*, not all three at once. At every turn, the game hounds your ankles for more money, with the Battle Pass and Shop being visible from the main menu before the game itself, and advertisements for bundles laced into damn near every screen. Not to mention, these rewards are *not* purely cosmetic; getting a skin for a gun or grenade also permanently unlocks it, without even needing to use the skin, meaning that you are rewarded with progression skips for dumping more money into a game that you, again, already paid $70 for.

All of this is bad enough, but at worst, it's just frustrating and irritating, but maybe not enough to completely ward off any recommendations. What crosses the line for me and makes this into a downright slap in the face is the use of artificially-generated art in multiple of the game's assets. For a company to be so avaricious as to charge what Activision does for bundles and battle passes, only for certain "rewards" to be sludge lazily cranked out by a machine, when they're one of the most profitable and richest companies in gaming? It goes beyond being anti-consumer into flat out insulting. If the game doesn't give me the slightest bit of respect, and in fact goes completely against my respect, then why should I return the same?

If, in some pipe-dream future, Activision stops using AI, then I'll come back here and say *maybe* get it if you have disposable income and are willing to be harassed with the constant reminders to "BUY BUY BUY". But until then, please spend your time (and money) with companies that don't take your money and then directly spit in your face.

I'm reviewing this solely from my experiences with Zombies. Is the game fun? Sure, well enough. The movement enhancements are a great leg up that I think most, if not all, players would agree with. I find that the guns have more recoil than I prefer, but never enough to be too bad. Really my opinion on this is just that it's Cold War 2, with some improvements and some drawbacks. It's more balanced, but I find that the level of power in CW was just plain fun, and the scaling difficulty curve of this game makes every game feel more stale; the brick wall you run into at round 31 is palpable. The writing is worse than Cold War's, but if you're coming to a Zombies game for story and characters after BO4's ending, you should really know better. All in all, it's fine. Not the best game in the series, but not terrible, either. The reason I strongly advise any and all players to stay away from this game is the level of transparent greed that Activision has been soaking in for years, with it coming to a head in this game. A $70 game, with a paid *and premium* Battle Pass, and exuberantly priced bundles of cosmetics (e.g. skins for your guns and characters). If you're going to engage in these practices, you usually only do *one*, not all three at once. At every turn, the game hounds your ankles for more money, with the Battle Pass and Shop being visible from the main menu before the game itself, and advertisements for bundles laced into damn near every screen. Not to mention, these rewards are *not* purely cosmetic; getting a skin for a gun or grenade also permanently unlocks it, without even needing to use the skin, meaning that you are rewarded with progression skips for dumping more money into a game that you, again, already paid $70 for. All of this is bad enough, but at worst, it's just frustrating and irritating, but maybe not enough to completely ward off any recommendations. What crosses the line for me and makes this into a downright slap in the face is the use of artificially-generated art in multiple of the game's assets. For a company to be so avaricious as to charge what Activision does for bundles and battle passes, only for certain "rewards" to be sludge lazily cranked out by a machine, when they're one of the most profitable and richest companies in gaming? It goes beyond being anti-consumer into flat out insulting. If the game doesn't give me the slightest bit of respect, and in fact goes completely against my respect, then why should I return the same? If, in some pipe-dream future, Activision stops using AI, then I'll come back here and say *maybe* get it if you have disposable income and are willing to be harassed with the constant reminders to "BUY BUY BUY". But until then, please spend your time (and money) with companies that don't take your money and then directly spit in your face.