Welcome to Black Ops 4!
Call of Duty recently decided to drop any semblance of a single-player storyline and focus on competitive online multiplayer. Thanks to the craze started by Fortnite and PUBG, that includes a Battle Royale mode!
It’s called… BLACKOUT.
Frankly, it’s great! Call of Duty’s years of experience in smooth, quick combat and exciting first-person shooters formed an awesome game. We were getting a little tired of third-person Battle Royale, honestly…
But winning is hard! There are new challenges to face, and powerful techniques that may be used against you if you’re not ready.
That’s why we made the…
Guide to winning Black Ops 4: Blackout
Part 1: Preparation
Before hitting the field of Blackout, consider trying this out:
Play multiplayer
Like Fortnite, you need to get into fights to learn how combat works and find your favorite controller settings. If you start playing Blackout first, prepare to wait minutes at a time loading a new game, dropping in, and grabbing weapons you’ve never seen before…and then dying.
Instead, step into Team Deathmatch or another quick game!
After spending one minute joining, you can try tons of new weapons, get into fights again and again, and die as many times as you like! Well, your teammates may not like it, but you gotta start somewhere…
Before you reach player level 5, Black Ops allows you to try all guns and their attachments. After this, you start earning everything for good, and you may “borrow” teammates loadouts. Start figuring out what weapons work, what you like, and what the attachments do (scopes, extended clips, fast mags, long barrels, suppressors, and so on).
Also, try different characters and get a feel for their equipment and power-ups. Many things – such as the mesh mines, “Dead Silence” skill, and tomahawk – will be available on the Blackout map as pickups.
For our example, check out Ajax. Both his Ballistic Shield and 9-Bang are available in Blackout, but must be found on the ground:
Moving to blackout
Before dropping in Blackout, take some time to study the map. Every place works differently – from the hidden underground base at Nuke Town, to the enormous waterside facility of the hydro dam. Learn where they are so you can begin creating a mental picture.
Also… be especially sure to note where rivers are: you may find, like we did, that crossing water gets a ton of people killed. Forests? Good. Rivers? Bad.
Just sayin’.
Part 2: Inventory
Ah, the ol’ inventory management of Battle Royale games…
There are a few peculiarities to Blackout you’ll want to understand. If you played Multiplayer and understand how guns, equipment, and power-ups work, you’re well on your way.
But wait…there’s more!
Where to find stuff
As with many Battle Royale games, you’ll find items strewn throughout the map, mostly located in or on top of buildings.
There are also ammo chests, ordnance crates, and supply drops (the last two look the same, but one falls from the sky). All of these will have useful items: equipment, ammo, healing items, weapons, attachments for those weapons, and possibly even character challenges, for unlocking new skins. Look carefully for these chests: while pickups have a white outline to show you where they are, no storage containers will!
(NOTE: supply drops will be marked with a plume of red smoke, but you gotta find them on the map, wherever they drop.)
Choose your weapon
There are three things to note here.
First, gun attachments are available throughout the map because most of the weapons you find will not have any add-ons. Keep looking for scopes, silencers, better magazines, fore grips, long barrels, and more!
If you’re lucky, you may find a “tactical” weapon: these will simply be called “tactical” in a storage chest, or adopt a yellow outline when on the ground. They come with a full set of attachments and a few other boosts!
Also, when choosing your weapons, remember that Blackout’s map is huge! You can thrive in a multiplayer using SMG’s and shotguns, but we recommend having one long-range weapon on hand at all times for Battle Royale: at the very least, have a good 3x or 4x scope!
Third and last, on-weapon attachments don’t take up space in your inventory. Find anything you can, but be wary of keeping them around if you don’t/can’t need them!
Health items
Horde these.
Unlike Fortnite, where you can build cover, firefights in Blackout often come to head-on battles. Even if you win, you’re far more likely to take some damage. Be ready to heal up!
Equipment
Equipment ranges from the defensive (ballistic shield) to midway (mesh mines) to offensive (cluster grenade). If you have space, grab ’em!
When equipment piles up, we have a few suggestions. One, keep a few items for defense so you can protect your rear when the game reaches its finale. And two, offensive equipment is great but be wary: throwables can take a long time to be thrown! Prepare beforehand, don’t cook your grenade for too long, and remember that clusters rock!
(Rumor has it the cluster grenade has been nerfed…but they’re still great at dealing damage in a wide area!)
Be careful with power-ups
Finally, to wrap up the inventory notes: power-ups!
They look like green boxes on the field. Activate one or two at a time from your inventory screen. Each provides some form of benefit: making you move quietly (Dead Silence), increasing movement while crouched (Skulker), or dealing greater melee damage (Brawler).
Alas, we found most of them aren’t useful. At the very least, it takes great foresight to use power-ups well, and they can crowd inventory space. Be mindful what you choose, and don’t grab too many! They’re everywhere.
Our favorites:
- Dead Silence and Skulker, which were just mentioned.
- Engineer: makes vehicles visible through walls. They appear red when occupied by enemies.
- Looter: shows the outline of pickups through walls.
- Awareness: enemy footsteps are louder.
Part 3: Tactics
Finally, the best part! What can actually be done to win?
Land well, as always
If you’ve played Battle Royale, the basics are familiar: land near your teammates, land on top of a weapon whenever possible, and know the area.
There are a few differences.
Mainly, turn straight down the instant you jump. Physics matter in Black Ops, and diving at the start of your jump builds critical speed!
Also, as always, beware the storm. If you land at the edge of the Blackout map, you may find yourself traveling a long, long way for the next circle. Make sure there’s a vehicle nearby if you do!
(Oh, beware the storm in general, that’s Battle Royale 101)
Choose your battles
We can’t overstate this enough.
Black Ops battles are rough: since you must use environmental cover, chances are damage will be taken from enemies, this is true even for the best players.
With that said, there are no hard and fast rules for when to attack and when not to. However, we recommend having a game plan or collaborating with the team. Get a good position, be the third party when others are fighting, wait for teams to come out of the storm, crawl and crouch to get into better positions, take the high ground. Be strategic!
Planning may sound like a waste of time, but it isn’t! You can have even more fun when your battles are quicker and cleaner: taking out enemies in this way feels awesome!
Take it slow
Finally, take it slow. Black Ops tricks many people into thinking that a run-and-gun attitude gets the wins. In reality, disregarding cover to chase down a kill gets you shot, separates teammates from the others, and results in a lost game. Instead, patience, forethought, and teamwork make victors.
Final Thoughts
There’s something about Black Ops: Blackout that’s really exciting. It’s a first-person shooter, it looks great, skills matter, planning makes a difference, and teamwork gets the win. It’s everything we could expect from a Call of Duty Battle Royale!
Finally, remember to enjoy the ride. Go for the win, but have fun regardless. We hope you’re enjoying Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and look forward to seeing you on the battlefield!
