Latest Call of Duty: Cold War patch adds a new hardcore mode

Cold War's Gun Game mode
(Image credit: Activision)

Treyarch is showing some love to its most hardcore players in a minor Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War patch. Live now, players will find a brand new hardcore option for Moshpit, a variety playlist that cycles between CoD's most popular modes and maps. Also in the crosshairs are a few particularly troublesome Outbreak bugs and fixes to the competitive League Play mode's ladder system.

Read up on the full patch notes below:

Multiplayer

  • Rapid Fire Moshpit: Added HC Rapid Fire Moshpit to Quick Play.
  • Season Challenges: The "Guerrilla Warfare" Season Challenge now tracks kills from any weapon that the player picks up, not only from weapons from players they’ve killed.
  • Daily Challenges: The “Helping Hand” Daily Challenge now properly tracks Spy Plane assist score.

League Play ladders

  • If the player gets incorrectly placed into a "broken" Ladder, playing another match will put the player into a functional Ladder.
  • Addressed an issue that could cause other names on the Ladder to be blank.

Zombies

  • Added various stability fixes related to Objectives in Outbreak.
  • Resolved an issue that prevented completing the objective if a player carrying a canister left a co-op match in progress.
  • Resolved an issue that caused graphic corruption when using upgraded Frenzied Guard Field Upgrade.
  • Addressed an issue where a player could not listen to three Radio Transmissions in "Firebase Z."

As a CoD fan that frequently feels like the game's time-to-kill has gotten too long in Cold War, I welcome more attention paid to the hardcore playlist. I still haven't gotten over Cold War's switch to larger health pools over Modern Warfare 2019, but I can get a taste of the good days by venturing into hardcore TDM and Domination. Video game guns usually feel better when they're more lethal, after all.

Case in point: my new favorite Call of Duty zombies mode is first-person Dead Ops Arcade. Who needs Outbreak when you have infinite ammo LMGs, zombies that disintegrate like they're made of paste, and deliberately over-tuned power ups?

Morgan Park
Staff Writer

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.