Call of Duty: Cold War? Yes, please.

The Black Ops games in the Call of Duty series have always had fun storylines, so let’s talk about the fifth installment of this amusing series.

We've got a job to do.

Released in the Fall of 2020, you start the game playing as returning main character, Alex Mason. A new character, Russel Adler, walks with you as another returning character, Frank Woods, meets up with you all.

Taking place during the Cold War, the team chases an enemy to the rooftops and it is here where you learn that you have the option to kill or capture an enemy, just as Adler throws another enemy off of the rooftop.

After finding out some information, a failed assassination attempt on one of the bosses leads to an insane high speed chase on a runway at an airport. Of course, with plot armor, Mason and the rest of the team escape without a scratch, despite having their vehicle tipped over from an exploding plane. It is here that the team learns of Perseus, a known Russian operative with plans of world domination – as one has when they are a bad guy.

Enter your character - Bell:

With orders to stop Perseus from total chaos, you suddenly switch to a character known as Bell, along with meeting more new characters such as Park from MI6, an old friend of Adler’s named Sims, and Lazar, who is more for action than words. Within the safehouse, it is now available to the player for you to interact with each character and see the character dynamics of each person as they interact with you and each other. Also, answers to comment and questions are multiple choice for the player.

Vietnam:

The first mission as Bell has the mystery figure (as you can choose between male, female, or non-binary) going through a flashback to the Vietnam War, where they were fighting alongside Adler and Sims. During this flashback, Bell remembers encountering Russian soldiers who had intel on Perseus during that time. Bell also remembers securing a nuclear bomb during that time as a fail-safe in case things totally went south.

Berlin:

After the flashback to Vietnam, the team gathers over the Berlin Wall to find and capture or kill a man named Anton Volkov, who has a direct connection to Perseus. After doing some surveillance on an associate of Volkov, named Kraus, you sneak into the apartment of Kraus and get yourself captured. But this is a good thing, as it leads you directly to Volkov.

It is good for me to mention here that I allowed everyone to survive unless it was an actual kill mission that happens with regular enemies.

With information from Volkov, Bell and Woods travel to a Russian fortress in the woods to gain more information on Russian activity. After an intense fire-fight that Woods insisted on getting involved in, you find out that Jason Hudson knew about a stolen nuclear bomb that Perseus obtained. And it is a bomb that is part of Operation Greenlight.

Time for a fight:

In a fun cutscene, Woods confronts Hudson about the bomb, as Adler wants to know more about Operation Greenlight. Hudson explains, as Adler also assigns Mason and Woods to head to the mountains to get more intel to know what Perseus plans next. There are some Easter eggs in this level for those who have played the previous Black Ops games. After extracting a mainframe from the mountains, the team finds out that the information they need has been wiped from the mainframe.

The KGB:

With very few options to find Perseus’ next move, Adler takes Bell to the KGB headquarters building undercover as an inside source helps them infiltrate with access cards and uniforms to fit in (it is also here that not only does Adler speak English and German, but also is fluent in Russian). After almost wiping out the entire KGB, the team is able to get the names of sleeper agents that Perseus might activate.

Traveling to Cuba, the team fights their way to the nuclear bomb and discover that Perseus now has access to all the bombs in Operation Greenlight. Bell is injured, a team member is lost, and we are told we know more than we actually know (that will make sense shortly).

Surprise!

Low and behold, we are actually a brainwashed Perseus agent who survived earlier in the game. It was the CIA who manipulated our minds and made us think we were in Vietnam with Adler and Sims. The player was being used the entire time to gain information for the CIA and find out what Perseus was planning all along.

With the truth revealed to us by the team, we now have to make the choice to either tell the truth of Perseus’ location or lie about it and lead the team to their deaths.

I, personally, told the truth because I didn’t want to blow up the entirety of Europe with the push of a button from a known threat to the entire world.

The ending depends on your decisions from the game, but ultimately, it is suggested in the next game, Black Ops 6, that telling the truth was the canonical ending to the game.

Conclusion

Is this worth the play? I would say yes, if anything, to be introduced to the new characters and interact with them. Right now, as of September 2025, you can get Call of Duty Cold War on Steam for $60, Playstation 5 for $35 (via Amazon), and Xbox for $28 (also via Amazon).