Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War has some brutal executions

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This time they're in the singleplayer mode as well.

The takedown executions in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone, third-person finishing moves some of which were unique to specific operators, were a popular addition. Fans of knifing a person in the neck and saying something quippy will be pleased to know they return in Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War. But as well as the third-person finishing moves in multiplayer, there are now first-person executions in the singleplayer campaign as well—as players who have access to the game because they are definitely in New Zealand have discovered.

You can see a couple of the executions in the video above, which shows Redditor u/holybodyguard playing a campaign mission on an easy difficulty setting. The first takedown involves breaking an enemy's arm then shooting him through the jaw, and that gurgling sound as a dying man chokes on his own blood is the real cherry on the icing of this horrifying murder animation. The second opens with the traditional knife through the neck, which you'd think would be enough, but is then followed by a point-blank gunshot to the face before wrenching the knife out with a head-twist. 

Being in first-person certainly adds to the impact. And yet, while not as over-the-top as, say, a Mortal Kombat 11 finisher, they're still so ridiculous they're hard to take seriously as acts of violence rather than scenes from a particularly bloody cartoon.

Here's exactly when Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War unlocks in your time zone.

Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.