The ’80s Action Hero update arrives tonight at midnight and brings both John Rambo and John McClane as operators. If you’re not a huge ’80s action movie nerd, then you’ll also be happy to note that the update brings new maps, a new Scorestreak, new equipment, new weapons, a new Zombies quest and world event, and much, much more.
Including a weapon tuning pass for Black Ops Cold War. Light machine guns and pistols are both getting a bullet velocity boost to give them a bit more relevance in the current meta, while sniper rifles are getting extensive tuning to nearly all aspects of their performance.
The biggest change to sniper rifles? The addition of flinch.
“We’ve created a sniper-specific flinch that moves the weapon aim while being hit,” writes Treyarch in the update notes. “This flinch is more pronounced in ADS. Attachments that reduce flinch have been factored into this feature update.”
Most first-person shooters feature some sort of flinch while getting shot to account for the fact that… well, you’re being shot, and therefore aiming should be a little bit more difficult as your body gets riddled with bullets. Depending on the sniper rifle or the gun you’re being shot with, this could completely ruin your aim and relegate snipers to their intended role of an ambush predator.
Along with flinch, snipers are all getting a pass for a metric Treyarch calls “ADS Momentum.” This is the speed at which sniper rifles can rapidly enter and exit ADS and imparts a feeling of weightiness to the weapon. The bigger the sniper rifle, the harder it is to go into and out of ADS. Treyarch notes that ADS Momentum doesn’t come into play if you’re aiming from a full hip fire position, and only when you’re going from partially out of ADS and back into ADS.
Besides that, all sniper rifles have had specific tuning to their bullet velocity, ADS speed (which is the speed you enter ADS from the hip), one-hit-kill potential, and various attachments and their effects.
The full patch notes go over everything in more detail, so check ‘em out here. The ‘80s Action Hero update arrives tonight at midnight EST (9 PM PST).
