Specialists, weapons, equipment, gear, perks – with the launch of Black Ops 4, you’ve got a huge helping of new toys to play with. Now’s your chance to get in there, have some fun and find out what you like.  To help you get acquainted with everything new, we’ve brought back some classic modes, some riffs on those classics and some all-new modes making their Call of Duty® debut. 

To help you make the most of your Multiplayer experience, we’ve compiled some useful knowledge on all the modes in one place. Give these a once-over before you jump in a match to ensure you fully understand what’s required to win and, possibly even more importantly, what your opponents will be trying to do to stop you.

Control
In this all-new mode, teams alternate between attacking and defending two objectives, similar to the points in Domination and Hardpoint. First team to win three rounds wins the match. But, here’s the twist: each team gets 25 lives. Once those lives are used up, you lose. It’s a game mode that fosters and rewards a more cooperative, tactical style of play. Seraph can give you a leg-up in securing an area by planting her Tac-Deploy close to an objective. It’ll keep a helpful flow of teammates streaming onto the objective.

Heist
ANOTHER NEW MODE? Yes, indeed. It’s an all-new bit of business full of tense corner peeks, capturing, tactics, money and RULES. Complete the Heist by grabbing the cash bag and delivering it to the objective. This game has a lot of tricks up its sleeve including no respawning, no Create-a-Class and earning money in-game to purchase upgrades to a bare bones starter loadout. Want to learn more? Sure you do. Check out the deep dive into this exciting new mode on the Call of Duty Blog. 

Search & Destroy
Life is precious . . . especially in Search & Destroy. There are no respawns in this mode as two teams alternate between defending and attacking 2 bomb sites. Don’t expect to simply sprint around the map and wipe out the entire team in this one. It requires considerably more caution than most other modes and tactics are crucial. Recon and his unique intelligence-gathering skills are invaluable in this mode because you’ve only got one life to live. Torque’s area denial and mobile cover is also worth a hard look. Need cover while planting or defusing a bomb? Just throw up his Barricade.

Domination
One of the most popular objective modes in Call of Duty, three areas of the map (A, B, C) must be captured and held to get points. The more areas you control, the more points you get. You switch sides once one team hits 100 points, first team to 200 wins. The ebb and flow in this mode depends largely on how often your team’s spawns change, or ‘flip’, to the other end of the map. Points A and C are usually considerably easier for a team to control as they’re the farthest apart, while B, typically centrally located, will make for the most hotly contested fighting. Every Specialist has a crucial role to play in Dom, but Battery’s explosives and Firebreak’s Purifier can clear out multiple enemies at once as they try to capture or hold an area. Also, a well-timed deployment of Crash’s Assault Pack and TAK-5 health boost can give your team the extra oomph it needs to capture a heavily defended point.

Team Deathmatch
This mode is as pure it gets: two teams, one goal – eliminate the opposition. How your team and your opponents go about doing that will vary as wildly as anything you encounter in the game. Want to lock down a particular area? Send Nomad’s K-9 Unit on a patrol or heat up the other team with Firebreak’s Reactor Core. Every Specialists ability amplifies different playstyle, so find yours and have fun with it.

Kill Confirmed
The mechanics are the same as Team Deathmatch, but there’s a twist: you don’t get points for kills, you’re competing for collected tags. When players die, they drop tags. Whoever collects the most enemy tags wins. It’s a fun, tactical spin on a classic mode that adds a hell of a lot of flavor. Just taking out enemies won’t be enough; you’ve got to collect receipts for those owns if you’re going to come out on top. Ruin’s Grapple Gun is a good way to quickly get to that enemy tag in a pinch.

Hardpoint
A classic, objective-based mode centered around controlling specific areas, Hardpoint demands you capture and hold a rotating series of objectives called, you guessed it, “Hardpoints”. The longer your team holds the point, the more points you get. The rotating nature of these objectives means large deficits can be made up in relatively short order. If a point pops up right near your team’s spawn, you’ve got a strong advantage and a decent shot at holding the area for a bit. If you want a Specialist whose an expert in area denial check out Firebreak. His Reactor Core can set fire to any enemies in the immediate area and the Purifier shoots lethal flames to finish the job.

Capture The Flag
It’s the game you played as a child, digitalized and with more fights. Your mission: capture your opponents’ flag and return it to your base to score. Whichever team with the most captures at the end of the round wins. Crash’s health boosts and Recon’s intelligence gathering obviously play-up in a situation where you have to traverse an entire map without dying to return a captured flag. You know what else helps you get places quickly? Ruin’s Grapple Gun.

Free-For-All
Solo standouts only need apply, here. No relying on your teammates to cover your six. It’s just you, your Pick 10 and your wits against the world. Duke it out among seven solo opponents as you race to hit the score limit. Stealth and intel often play up in this sort of mode. For our purposes, that means Recon’s Vision Pulse. For a stealthy takedown, Prophet’s Seeker Mines are sure to give your enemies a nice surprise.

If you only take away one thing from this blog, let it be this: there’s no shortage of ways to experience Black Ops 4 Multiplayer. So, get in there, mess around with what’s familiar and what’s new to find out what suits you best.