Hello and welcome to another entry in our “The Big Question” series, in which we present an argument to you, the Eurogamer community, for further interrogation. This week: Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 vs Battlefield 6, or is there a third option waiting to strike?
Why this question? What year is it again? In short, Battlefield is taking on Call of Duty and the winner doesn’t seem inevitable for the first time in a long time. It’s a tale as old as time: plucky underdog from a huge mega corp takes on the reigning king from a huge mega corp, while also fighting against an even pluckier underdog from another mega corp. Such whimsy! What we’re saying is, which first-person shooter are you picking this year? Battlefield, Call of Duty – or is it Arc Raiders, or something else entirely?
Battlefield 6 is good, Black Ops 7 has had a mixed beta reception, and people seem excited about Arc Raiders
Off the back of a number of missteps Battlefield has been rocky, unable to capitalise on a Call of Duty franchise that has managed to plough through everything in its path despite the fact that players seem increasingly nonplussed with each new release. While CoD still seems too big to fail, Battlefield doesn’t have that luxury, and this year things seem to be heating up.
In Eurogamer’s Battlefield 6 review we say “Battlefield 6 clearly understands what makes the series special,” awarding it 4 stars. That’s great news, but are the two games really fighting each other? Well, sort of.
EA put out a Battlefield 6 trailer starring film-star Zac Efron that absolutely takes a jab at Call of Duty, and in a move that definitely isn’t an attempt to keep people away from Battlefield 6, Activision is running a Black Ops 6 free trial over BF6’s launch period. I think we can call this at least a spat, even if it’s not a full-on fight.
There is another game on the horizon, too, though, in the shape of Embark’s Arc Raiders. You might not see this as competition to either of these established mega games, but Black Ops 7 has been censoring the name Arc Raiders during its beta. Bizarrely, Battlefield 6 doesn’t get the same treatment. Releasing on October 30, right between Battlefield 6 (out now) and Black Ops 7 (14th November), Arc raiders is making a last-ditch attempt to tempt players with one final test weekend, starting 17th October.
It’s also, notably, from a slightly different subgenre of first-person shooter, as it’s technically an extraction shooter rather than your standard variations-of-team-deathmatch job like BF6 and CoD. That’s notable because the FPS scene has felt stale for some time now, with apathy rampant amongst its core playerbase. It’s been a while since something to the tune of PUBG, Fortnite or Apex Legends came along and properly shook up the genre, and extraction shooters, while popular, have never really made the step up from ‘big niche’ to ‘properly mainstream’. Arc Raiders might be the one to do it. A fun twist to all this is that Escape from Tarkov, the biggest extraction shooter out there, is finally leaving its long running ‘early access’ period next month too.
So what’s your choice? Playing them all is the easy (but expensive) option. I’d lean towards Black Ops 7 as I expect it’ll have the slightly better campaign (I’m old and struggle with the pace of multiplayer shooters these days), but realistically I’ll be playing Baby Steps – probably for another six months or so.
-Tom O
The big question, then: Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 vs Battlefield 6, or is there a third option waiting to strike?
