The Cartel map in Call of Duty: Black Ops -- Cold War.
The Cartel map in Call of Duty: Black Ops -- Cold War.
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My impressions of the Call of Duty: Black Ops — Cold War beta

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

Activision’s Treyarch studio and Raven Software showed off the multiplayer beta gameplay for Call of Duty: Black Ops — Cold War this weekend on Sony’s PlayStation 4, and I played for a few hours, climbing to level 23 in the ladder. I’m still quite impressed with the multiplayer combat for this game.

I loved the addition of the new Combined Arms 12-vs.-12 map, dubbed Cartel, set in a drug lord stronghold in Nicaragua. I played multiple rounds of the Domination mode, where you have to capture a bunch of flags and hold them.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.