Black Ops 6 is both the John Wick and Mission: Impossible game I’ve always wanted

We finally got a good look at Black Ops 6’s campaign gameplay at gamescom 2024, and it showed an awesome blend of Mission: Impossible-esque spy shenanigans with the brutal but slick combat of John Wick.

The plot is straight out of Mission: Impossible – The CIA has been infiltrated by a shadowy force and our heroes have been branded traitors and have put together a special team to discover the truth.

The mission we saw at gamescom begins as a classic espionage story with the player infiltrating a glitzy event, talking to different high-profile targets, and using technology beyond its early ‘90s setting. It’s far-fetched, but MI fans wouldn’t have it any other way.

In classic Call of Duty fashion, it all descends into chaos and the guns come out. Here, Black Ops 6 brilliantly transitions from Mission: Impossible to John Wick.

In one scene, we see a slo-mo fight in a kitchen that could be straight out of a John Wick installment, where the player gets to decide whether to punch an assailant in the throat or whack them in the head with a chopping board, before dunking their head into a boiling-hot fryer.

Hand-to-hand combat in first-person shooters is rarely good, so a quick-time event that gives you some agency without simply mashing your fists or the butt of your gun into an NPC’s lifeless face is a welcome change. I don’t know how many of these hand-to-hand combat moments we’ll see, but I’m loving the slick brutality we’ve seen so far.

It’s not just going to be the hand-to-hand combat either, as Black Ops 6 brings the new ‘omnimovement’ system. Essentially, you can move, dive, or slide in any direction without slowing down, and this high-momentum gunplay immediately made me think of John Wick.

You’ll need to be quite good at the game to really feel like the titular anti-hero, but I can imagine some awesome playthroughs once players have learned the missions and can steam through with ease.

Black Ops 6 will be another globe-trotting adventure with the standard Call of Duty fare like driving tanks and shooting miniguns from helicopters, but the over-the-top spy missions, vehicle chases, and close-quarters action are set to perfectly combine two of Hollywood’s best action franchises.