Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is bringing back its fan-favorite Zombie mode, but it’s not just a copy-and-paste job from a previous title. In a giant, detailed post on its website Thursday, the developers at Treyarch not only revealed its new map Terminus, but revealed a ton of new quality-of-life updates.
While the return to round-based gameplay was shown off in press previews in June, the developers also promised that there was even more in store. Some of the more lowkey, impactful additions involve letting players pause a solo match if they want to take a break or allowing friends to jump into in-progress co-op games.
On Terminus, up to four players will have to break out of the maximum-security prison on the island while dealing with hordes upon hordes of zombies. Treyarch also revealed the second launch map, called Liberty Falls, which is situated in West Virginia during a Dark Aether outbreak and amid the fallout of a dimensional rift. So yes, the zombies mode in Black Ops 6 does follow the Dark Aether storyline from the previous games.
How these rounds work will be familiar to veteran Call of Duty players. They’ll have to complete objectives while balancing two currencies — Essence and Salvage — which can be used to remove obstacles or upgrade your kit. Essence is used specifically to access objective-related items and unlock doors, and you can now split the cost with your teammates.
However, if you’re new to Zombies, there will be a new guided mode to help newer players get through the main and side quests. It’ll be launching later in the season to “protect the sanctity” of the default experience with all its Easter eggs and discoverability, but promises to be helpful for players who might not know how to progress through the sometimes complicated main questline.
Some of the other changes were expected. One of the largest changes to Black Ops 6 is Omnimovement, a new traversal system that allows players to sprint in four directions, making it easier to avoid gunfire. Similarly, Zombies will have Zombimovement, which is basically the same as Omnimovement, but with a funnier name.
Treyarch says there’s even more to come, with more details being revealed on August 28. You can also check out the blog post for all the granular changes coming to Zombies.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.