Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War review – plenty of carnage, not enough Kraftwerk

PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X; Activision
The sixth conspiracy-fuelled blaster has airstrikes, zombies and macho platitudes a-plenty, but its lack of 80s pop culture is a missed opportunity

In the brave new era of battle royale, where games are free and everlasting, the concept of paying 60 for an annual first-person shooter release has begun to feel a little outdated. Nevertheless, here is Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the sixth title in developer Treyarch's series of conspiracy-fuelled historical blasters, this time taking us to the dawn of the Reagan era and channelling movies such as Apocalypse Now, Jacob's Ladder and The Parallax View.

As ever for CoD, you're not getting one game, but several: an action-movie single-player story, a range of multiplayer competitive options, and the co-op horde mode, Zombies, where four players fight together to survive as long as possible against the incoming undead.