Black Ops 6 is wasting no time stinking up the joint with ugly skins

black ops 6 season 1 — (Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Pee-ew. What's that smell? If I didn't know any better, I'd say another FPS is stinking up the joint with gaudy skins. But it can't be Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 I'm smelling—that game just came out 1.5 weeks ago, surely that's too soon for its modern military art style to be bombarded by glowing demonic armor, streetwear bros in golden skull masks, and a guy with tree sap for a face and knives for shoulders?

Ah, nuts:

These are just some of the offerings of Black Ops 6 Season 1, kicking off on November 14. That means I have just seven more days to play a version of Black Ops 6 that matches the front of the box—military operators, spies, and armored grunts throwing down on maps where everyone looks like they belong. With the exception of Vault Edition zombie skins that already haunt my lobbies with their hideousness, the first week of Black Ops 6 is the most artistically consistent Call of Duty has looked in years.

I hadn't thought too much about it before being subjected to the contents of this incoming battle pass, but Call of Duty looking like Call of Duty for a change is a big reason why BLOPS 6 is clicking with me. But the clown show comes for us all.

I sorely miss the days when "Mastercraft" bundles, Call of Duty's highest-tier cosmetics with eye-watering price tags, were centered around creating ridiculous guns. When BLOPS Cold War got an SMG that was also a tape deck that played music, I pounced. In my mind, guns are the perfect confines for expression in an FPS—from my POV, the gun is the largest and most noticeable element on-screen, but other players aren't subjected to my questionable taste until I serve them up a killcam.

Honestly, it's not Mastercraft bundles producing the worst odor. Battle pass filler is the real problem—the less distinct, thinly veiled palette swaps that games routinely shove into the middle pages of a 100-tier battle pass to maintain an illusion of value. Nobody actually wants this stuff, but you get it on the way to something better, and equip it while you're there because why not? I'm talking bargain bin makeovers where none of the colors match, I'm talking making random elements glow so that suckers believe it's special, I'm talking about this garbage:

Putrid. Oh well, this stuff is obviously popular, so it's not like I'm gonna change where the wind blows.

I do have to believe, however, that the talented artists pumping out these skins see the value in thematic consistency—why else would they make a normal human operator the face of every season when they could've gone full Fortnite years ago? The standard operator you get with the Season 1 pass, Sevati "Sev" Dumas from the BLOPS campaign, looks badass.

Not "buy this $10 battle pass" badass, but I would consider dropping a few bucks on a special toggle that makes everybody else look like one of the default Black Ops 6 skins. Now that's innovation.

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Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.