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After four years in development, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will finally hit shelves on October 25, and its publisher Activision started beta for the highly-anticipated installment of the Call of Duty series.

ABS-CBN News was able to get early access to Black Ops 6, and here's what we think so far, based on around 6 hours of gameplay.

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Right off the bat, you get the works: the multiplayer menu, and the options for both Zombies mode and Single Player Mode. For the open beta, Xbox Game Pass members, those with early access codes, and pre-order buyers of the game can access the multiplayer option only.

You also get the you also get the Core Moshpit, the Face Off mode, and perhaps one feature can change the landscape of the game, and the first-player shooting genre in general.

Omnimovement

Its developer, Treyarch, touted Black Ops 6’s omnimovement mechanics, which allows players to slide, dive, and rotate in any direction. Immediately upon start-up, there will be a tutorial to learn about specific mechanics that’ll be handy for catching enemies off guard for easy kills.

New 'Call of Duty' and 'Borderlands 4' games announced at leading show Instead of relying on running and gunning your opponents, players can get crafty by utilizing this new movement feature to their advantage -- dodging shots from the enemy team, using in-game reflexes to look for resting spaces in between obstacles, and more.

It’s exciting to see how this mechanic can change the dynamics of both casual and personal play. But since it is an advancement from previous Call of Duty installments, the mechanic will take time to get used to, especially for casual players.

Personally, it took me a few hours of Team Deathmatch and Hardpoint to get used to the method. But once you master it, you'll be able to hold out on your own on the map, if you're not already overwhelmed by gunshots and scorestreaks from all over the map.

In one of its most bizarre features, Call of Duty 6 allows you to take your opponents hostage, which takes a lot of skill to get used to especially that you also have to consider the omnimovement mechanic and how players are frantically moving around the map to get frags. Your opponent can even speak to you through the mic when you're being used as a meat shield.

Not for the weak

Competitive shooting games in general can get quite toxic, and the Call of Duty franchise is no stranger to that. So let me just tell you this in advance: It's not for the weak of heart, but it doesn't mean Activision isn't doing anything about it.

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While I wasn't able to encounter anyone toxic enough in my lobbies, Activision has an AI feature which can detect and ban people violating their communication guidelines.

Among other things, it might require a more powerful PC to play at the highest settings. I used a Lenovo Legion Pro 5 with 16.0 GB of RAM installed, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070Ti laptop GPU, with an an Intel Core i7 for the processor. Oh, and you need around more 85GB of memory to install the game on your computer.

I had to update my GPU to the latest driver, and other players may have to take note of this beforehand, too. Since it's in Open Access, a few bugs and crashes were expected to happen and you're occasionally asked to run the game on safe mode.

In my case, it wasn't optimized yet for third-party replay apps that I have been using such as Outplayed, but I can stream the game on TikTok Live Studio just fine. But overall, I'm able to overcome small hurdles and still play the game without any major hiccups.

Despite these setbacks, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a promising entry into the FPS department, given the unique features it's introduced to players of the celebrated franchise.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be available on PlayStations 4 and 5, Xbox Series X|S, Windows, and on Steam from October 25, but pre-orders are ongoing.