After receiving an infuriatingly vague letter from his father stating that a "great trial" awaited him, a depressed man pretending to be doctor returns to his hometown inhabited entirely by socially-inept autistic british people who get pissed at you for asking the time of day to find that his father was murdered and the town is dying to a mysterious, seemingly unstoppable plague that can only be cured by force feeding magic potions with questionable properties to dying people on the street while every bastard within a one mile radius tries to stab you for breathing the same air.

Pathologic 2 makes it very clear that you cannot save everyone. This is kind of like Schindler's List: The Game in that it's entertaining to watch and certainly a good movie but you definitely won't walk out of the theater with a big-ass grin on your face after watching it. This game is depressing. Your friends drop dead left and right. You can choose who you want to save, but the town knows who you pick. If you only save people closest to you, the town's opinion of you will only worsen because ♥♥♥♥ me for wanting to save the people who aren't complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Great world building, fun to explore (with what limited time you have), and some genuinely memorable moments and set pieces. The biggest gripe I have with this game, however, is that there's barely any voice acting in it. If you initiate conversation with a major character, they'll say a sort of "catchphrase" line, and the actual dialogue will be completely text. Their (admittedly very expressive and well designed) faces are vignetted on the left of your screen when talking to them, text and dialogue options on the right, but it's complete silence. I feel like the immersion would be out of the park if a voice acting update were to be a thing.

If you don't like games that make you stressed, pass on this one. High stress, this one. People are trying to kill you, bacteria is trying to kill you, and everything and everyone is trying to break your mental fortitude. Who killed your dad? What's going on with the government? What is that gravity-defying Chuck E Cheese playground and what the HELL is going on in the theater? Are you helping people, or just making things worse? The less people you save, the less enemies you have, right? Am I a horrible person? Maybe I should just save myself and forget everybody. What did they do for me, anyways? Where is the hospital? Why don't we have a hospital? Why is the city doing so little to help their people? Why won't they give me more time? Is any of this real?

All these questions won't get answered, but you can sure as hell try.

If this game would've released at literally any other time than right after MW2019, it would've been hailed as the best COD in years. This is the last COD (as of now) that really has that classic feel to it. No tac sprinting, no weapon mounting, no openable doors, yet it still has a satisfying feel to the weapon animations like MW2019 did.

My problem with the last three CODs is that they all look and feel exactly the same. When your World War II shooter feels exactly the same way that your modern-day shooter feels, you're doing something wrong. All the maps and all the settings have the same dark, gritty atmosphere that just sort of blend together after a while. Every gun in their class feels exactly the same as the other guns in the same class but jarringly does more or less damage. MWIII especially dropped the ball with the shotguns this time around. They're almost completely useless.

Now, compare these games to Black Ops: Cold War and it's a completely different story. I feel like how much you enjoy a COD game easily depends on how good the maps are, so I'm going to talk about that for a second. I don't know how hot of a take this is, but I believe the maps of this game are, on average, the best bunch of maps we've gotten in a modern COD game. I can think of a couple maps I don't like as much as others, but I can't think of a single map that I genuinely hate whereas I dislike the bulk majority of maps in MW22. All the maps are visually distinct from each other both in terms of art direction and layout.

Whereas I said all the maps of the recent games feel like the blend together (I.E. bombed-out cars, destroyed buildings, sand, stuff on fire, etc.), Cold War just sort of drops you off in a location that looks like it had just recently been evacuated. A pristine, untouched mall, a massive boat in the middle of the ocean, a CIA safehouse in the middle of Moscow, and a beachfront in Miami— all of these maps feel like they haven't been touched outside of one or two set pieces that tell the story of the map. For example, in Miami, you can find an overturned bus next to some armored cars with a burning truck pinned against it. Perseus, the overarching antagonist of the game, ambushed the bus, which is a prisoner transport, to free an ally of his. If you're on the Warsaw Pact team, you're the ambushers. If you're on the NATO side, you're the response to the aftermath. The rest of the map is untouched because it just now became an active warzone. Almost every map (the exceptions being the Black Ops 2 remake maps and Nuketown) has a story to tell and I love it.

All of the guns feel satisfying, and there really isn't an overpowered meta in this game. Pretty much every gun can be put in the hands of the right person and they can make it work. The attachment system is great. They finally made dropshotting impossible unless you have a specific attachment for it. On top of that, the attachments actually feel like they make a difference. In the last two CODs, I've noticed that attachments barely seem to make a difference on their own and require you min/max to make even slightly a difference. Whereas in Cold War, you can slap a barrel on a shotgun and it instantly gives it +12% damage. I've also noticed that in MW22 and MWIII, a lot of the attachments and what they do don't really make sense? For some reason in those games, having a reflex sight increases your ADS time? In what universe does that make sense? It's called a reflex sight for a reason.

Pretty much every attachment can affect everything in MW22/III. The smallest suppressor affects your ADS speed. A vertical foregrip affects your sprint to fire speed. Everything ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ever affects ADS speed. In Cold War, every attachment does exactly what you'd expect it to do. A big vertical foregrip will help with recoil, but will decrease your shooting/moving speed. A suppressor will make your gun silent, but will decrease the range. A reflex sight will NOT MAKE IT SO THAT YOU ADS SLOWER. No different ammo types, no useless conversion kits, just easy gunsmithing.

And I haven't even mentioned the zombies or the campaign. In short, the campaign is fantastic. All the characters are memorable including old favorites like Woods, Mason, and Hudson. There's a really cool mission where you play as a mole in the KGB headquarters. Probably my favorite COD campaign mission, to be honest. It's a blast to play through. The zombies is easily the best zombies since Black Ops 3. To new zombies players, it's probably even better because of how easy it is to get into it. Unlike classic zombies that could only be ended by finishing the easter egg, Cold War zombies gives you the option to call in a helicopter and exfil every five rounds. Zombies also is the first zombies to offer permanent upgrades for weapon classes, perks, ammo mods, and field upgrades. These are a blast to obtain and they're game changers.

Overall, Black Ops: Cold War is just hands down (in my opinion) the best modern COD and to me, the best COD since Black Ops 2. That's probably a hot take given how MW2019 is hailed as the holy grail of modern COD, but I dunno. All things considered— that being all three modes, I feel Cold War is stronger. MW2019's co-op mode was awful.

(Ignore my hours, I have many on Battle.net)