Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is certainly up there with the very best the series has ever produced. Even though some of the maps may be underwhelming in multiplayer, the actual gameplay is stellar.
But it’s also hard work for new or casual players, or those like myself that have been out of the game for a few years. Watching your opponents sliding around like they’re on ice and popping you off before you can get meaningful shots in can get disheartening.
But there’s a simple way you can help yourself work on some of the fundamentals. Jumping into Hardcore mode certainly makes it more difficult, but it can also make you a better player. I, by no means, would call myself a good player, but playing Hardcore every now and again has absolutely helped my overall skills.
Hardcore will help you focus on the basics
While it may look at times that just spamming an SMG is the best way to get kills, that isn’t the case. The best players have impeccable aim, awareness of their surroundings, the angles on the maps, and good movement.
So how, I hear you ask, is making the game intentionally harder going to make you better at these things?
For one, because it’s easier to die, and you don’t have a mini-map, unless a UAV or Scout Pulse is active, you’re immediately more focused on the action right in front of you. On what you can hear, checking sight lines, making more deliberate movements, and becoming more aware of your surroundings.
I found that having no mini-map was a big help in actually learning the nuance of the different maps. Instead of constantly looking at it for the pings, I’m looking around much more, spotting new angles, taking in the details. It’s helped retrain my game brain not to keep glancing away at the top corner and just be better at using the map.
In tandem with this, because it’s so much easier to die, you’re forced to keep moving and think about where you go next, rather than just leap and slide into the middle of a firefight. If you learn to make yourself harder to hit in Hardcore, you’re going to be harder to hit in the main playlist, too.
The biggest benefit for me has been improving my first shot. Getting a good first shot in will always give you an advantage, and Hardcore mode will force you to get better at it. Your first shot or two is all the difference in Hardcore, and by playing this mode it didn’t take long before I felt like my aim, first shot, and reaction times were getting better.
What I don’t recommend, is that you spend much time playing Nuketown in Hardcore mode. The spawns are so broken that it’s easy to end up spawn trapped by the opponents and be killed the instant you drop back into the action.
The important thing you must do is to stop obsessing over your KD ratio. You’re going to die a lot, just get used to it. You’re going to come up against players who play differently, slower, camp more, because they are obsessing over their ratio. Just put it out of your mind and focus on improving yourself. That goes for any game mode, really.
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Bonus: Grinding weapon camos is quicker
As an added bonus, if you’re on that camo grind and feel like it’s taking too long to get the 100 headshots requirement to clear all the regular tier ones, jump into Hardcore.
Because of the lower health players have, a headshot will almost always be a one shot kill, whatever weapon you’re running. If you’re seeing your favorite content creators already with the Dark Matter camo, there’s a good chance they were playing a lot of Hardcore to maximize their headshot returns.
Once you get into the more specific challenges to unlock the higher tier camos, Hardcore can still be a useful place to rattle them off a little quicker.
