What are the Black Ops 6 modes? While you can always expect the bread-and-butter game modes to appear in every Call of Duty game, each new entry offers up some much-needed variety to ensure you’re not left in a Domination hole for the year. Black Ops 6 is no different, and this year’s addition, Kill Order, is a real treat for Halo veterans in particular.
The FPS game is already shaping up to be an explosive one on the action front, with plenty of shiny new Black Ops 6 weapons already confirmed. There are a variety of modes that should please any variety of bloodthirsty player. Read on to find out everything we know about the Black Ops 6 modes.
Black Ops 6 modes
The seven Black Ops 6 modes confirmed so far are:
- Kill Order
- Team Deathmatch
- Domination
- Hardpoint
- Face Off
- Gunfight
- Face Off Kill Order
Kill Order
If you ever had the pleasure of playing VIP in Halo, it shouldn’t take long to get up to speed with Kill Order. In this 6v6 mode, a player on each team is initially designated as the High Value Target (HVT) and gains armor. Killing the enemy HVT offers bonus points for your team. Each time an HVT is killed, a new player takes up the mantle. The first team to reach 125 points wins.
Kill Order is a fabulous game mode that requires your team to measure when it should be hunting the enemy HVT against protecting its own. The longer you can survive as the HVT, the better it is for your time as killing an HVT offers as many points as five standard kills. What’s more, HVTs earn double points each time they score a kill, incentivizing aggressive play rather than turtling.
For reference, here are the scoring values:
- Standard kill – 1 point
- HVT gets a kill – 2 points
- Kill onto an HVT – 5 points
It should be noted that a new HVT won’t immediately spawn once the previous one has been killed. If the enemy HVT is the one that’s died, use this time to bunker down your own to prevent a counter-assassination. Likewise, if your HVT has died then we’d recommend using the opportunity to mount an all-out attack while you don’t have to worry about your VIP.
Team Deathmatch
Team Deathmatch shouldn’t require too much explanation if you’ve played a shooter before. The concept is simple: load in and kill the enemy team more times than it kills yours. In Black Ops 6, TDM is still 6v6, and still requires you to reach a certain score to win the game. Though it’s not yet been confirmed what the score limit is, we expect it to be 100 as it was by the end of the Modern Warfare 3 era.
Domination
Another classic 6v6 mode, Domination is a simple zone control mode featuring three objectives that need to be captured and held to accrue points. These zones are designated ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘C’. Zones are now considerably larger in Black Ops 6, allowing you to reposition to a different angle post-capture while maintaining control of it. As with previous CoD titles, the more operators you get on a point, the faster it will capture.
In Black Ops 6, the first team to reach 200 points wins. While zones A and C should be simple enough to capture and hold for each team as they’re on opposite sides of the map, zone B is where the real action will take place – at least initially. There are many Domination games where one team will somehow snag A and C, leaving you pincered in on B. At times like this, pick one of the outer zones to push, rather than trying to fight on two fronts.
Hardpoint
It’s wild to think that it’s been over a decade since Hardpoint debuted in Black Ops 2, and the fan-favorite mode is back for more in Black Ops 6. Similarly to Domination, Hardpoint requires you to capture and hold a zone to accrue enough points to win – 250 being the score limit. However, in Hardpoint there’s only a single zone that moves to another pre-determined location on the map every 60 seconds.
The Hardpoint zone revolves around a fixed rotation, so paying attention to its pattern is crucial to getting the jump on the enemy team when it’s time to change location. In Black Ops 6 zone numbers have been added, which will help your team better understand where to push next. It should also be noted that some Hardpoint games will end before teams can reach 250 points due to the match timer running out. Should this happen, the team with the highest score when the match ends wins.
Face Off
Face Off is one of the best things to happen to modern CoD as far as we’re concerned. Originally introduced in MW3 (2011), Face Off was properly reintroduced in Black Ops Cold War, bringing hectic bouts on small maps. Well, guess what, shoot-n-die is back on the menu in Black Ops 6.
Face Off can be considered a modifier for other modes, maintaining their rules while removing killstreaks and pitting teams against each other on smaller Strike maps. In Face Off Kill Order, for example, you’ll still be hunting down HVTs, just in a much smaller arena. Face Off games are typically much more frenetic than their non-Face Off counterparts, even with the removal of killstreaks, so get ready to murder and be murdered a lot.
Face Off Kill Order
Face Off Kill Order combines the frenetic action of the regular Face Off game mode with the objective HVT focus of Kill Order. Try to protect your High Value Target in the smallest of spaces and prepare for absolute carnage.
Gunfight
Perhaps the least surprising inclusion in the Black Ops 6 modes outside of the core CoD staples, 2v2 showdown mode Gunfight is back on the bill. With randomized loadouts each round and no respawns, only the most versatile and prolific aimers will come out on top. Gunfight ends only when the required number of wins has been reached. As with Face Off, Gunfight takes place on the smaller Strike maps, so make sure you spend some time getting to know them when you jump into the game.
And that’s all you need to know about the Black Ops 6 modes for now. We’ll be keeping this guide updated as more modes are gradually revealed in the lead-up to launch and beyond, so be sure to keep an eye on it as we enter the final pre-release lap.
In the meantime, check out some of the other best multiplayer games you can enjoy right now. If you’re curious about what else is soon to hit our screens, make sure you consult our upcoming PC games guide.