The latest installment of the Black Ops series was promised to be the most in-depth, user-friendly game in the Call of Duty series.

Every facet of the game, from multiplayer to zombies to the battle royale (if you did not know, there is no campaign), is supposed to be innovative and customizable.

So here I am, a long-time Call of Duty fan and someone who was excited for this new game, and here is my critique so far of the game.

As a precursor, I will not be critiquing Blackout, the battle royale mode, because I have not touched it at all, so I will start with the multiplayer mode.

Call of Duty multiplayer has traditionally been and is supposed to be simple: Pick your perks, grenades, guns and kill streaks and jump into online matches with guns blazing.

Black Ops 4 has the core mechanics of the multiplayer, but they have added a new element that was under question when it was announced: healing yourself.

In every game up to this point, your health would regenerate slowly over the course of a few seconds on its own. But in this game, you can just heal yourself.

When you take damage, you can just inject your arm with whatever it is that heals you and get back to full health right away. The catch is that the ability to heal yourself has to recharge for a few seconds.

Because of this, the game plays a little bit slower than past games. More often than not, players will sit in a corner or on a power position (behind a car, peeking over a ledge, etc.) and will fire off a few shots, hide and heal themselves, then go back to shooting.

The health for players has also been bumped up to 150, instead of just 100. The only downside is that you have to pump enemies with more ammunition to kill them, which is not too bad.

My biggest complaint with the multiplayer is that submachine guns are basically useless. 

Most assault rifles kill in four to five shots, while the submachine guns take five or more shots to kill. It is frustrating when I put six shots into an enemy with a submachine gun, and he kills me in four shots up close.

The whole point of submachine guns is to win gunfights up close, so balancing this issue is needed, in my mind.

Now, as an overall final judgment for the first week of the game, I would say it is worth the buy. 

It is very fun from my experience thus far, and I am trying to make more time for myself to grind it more.

Dillan Schorfheide can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].