Huh: Black Ops – Cold War has a Fallout-style lockpicking minigame

(Image credit: Activision)

It's Black Ops – Cold War time! YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, MAGGOT? The rootenest-tootenest thrillride of a shooting campaign where... you pick locks like a Bethesda RPG?

The lockpicking happens in a mission starring a Soviet double agent sneaking around the KGB's Moscow headquarters, which we've previously described as being like a tiny Hitman level. Stealth missions aren't new to the series, but this kind of minigame is (Black Ops II apparently had a 'trigger action lockpick' but I don't recall that ever being used).

When I tried to google the history of lockpicks in COD I only found out that IGN had described the above as "a classic spy trick", which is probably news to any real-life spies who read games websites. The implementation here is pure Bethesda: find the angle and hold it. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but it feels a very weird fit in Call of Duty.

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."