For the first time, Black Ops 6 Zombies will let solo players pause their game, and squad players reconnect if they drop out

Treyarch has officially unveiled Black Ops 6 Zombies, the highly-anticipated return to the round-based, zombie-slaying action Call of Duty has been missing for several years. This is more than just a new episode of Zombies, however, it’s a fresh start in a number of ways.

While the story itself may be a continuation of the Dark Aether timeline from Black Ops Cold War, a lot of the gameplay, quality of life, and behind-the-scenes tweaks are entirely new, and should make for a rewarding experience for veterans and newcomers alike.

Treyarch revealed a host of updates coming to Zombies that should make the experience more rewarding, customisable, and offer some clear upgrades over all previous iterations. Because an internet connection is required to play Zombies, there’s now an array of options that should help with saving and recovery.

For starters, Zombies now has private matchmaking, meaning anyone can join their friend’s private game (assuming there’s room and the host allows it). More importantly, however, solo players can now pause and save their match, and load it later to pick up where they (roughly) left off. In fact, if you sit idle long enough, the game will automatically save your match.

When saving manually, you just need to make sure you are at full health, and aren’t downed or dead. You also can’t save after calling the Exfil helicopter. Seeing as Zombies is now always-online, this means solo players won’t have to lose their progress, should their internet - or Activision servers - run into any issues. For squad players, games will now continue to run - so long as the host is active - allowing anyone who disconnected to rejoin and continue playing with their squad.

Black Ops 6 Zombies continues the quality of life train with an entirely customisable HUD, which you can change to match the legacy look (removing the minimap), or tweak each individual component of. That means turning certain elements off/on, changing their colours, and more. One thing I am especially excited about is the ability to turn off Pack-a-Punch weapon camos, so weapons can continue looking like weapons and not toys.

Zombies also supports third-person for the first time, and you can switch to that perspective at any moment, including which shoulder you’re aiming from. All that and more will be available at Black Ops 6’s launch on October 25 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.