Arachnophobia mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is arguably scarier than actual giant spiders

We’ve seen some unique approaches to arachnophobia modes in video games as they’ve started to become more popular in recent years, but nothing quite like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s new approach. Activision’s solution somehow makes everything even scarier, by stealing zombie spiders’ legs and turning them into something worse.

“For the first time in Black Ops 6 Zombies, the new Arachnophobia toggle feature will be available,” Activision wrote in a post. A post explaining the new accessibility features in Black Ops 6 On her blog. “This setting will allow players to change the appearance of spider-like enemies in Zombies without affecting their gameplay.”

This all sounds perfectly reasonable and good. After all, arachnophobes are far from unusual these days, even if their methods are rarely the same. Developer Coffee Stain chose to replace spiders with adorable images of cats in Satisfactory, for example, while Obsidian’s Grounded — a game positively packed with the stuff — allows players to dial in spider details all the way to the “virtuous circle.” Meanwhile, the solution offered by Dragon Age: The Veilguard is scorched earth, which simply wipes out the game’s entire spider population.

However, Black Ops 6 developer Treyarch’s approach to the spider problem is something else entirely, as the studio appears to have taken Obsdian’s “floating bubble” solution as a starting point by removing the legs of zombie spiders and then stopping there. What would be good if the end result was some kind of giant mutant shrimp? Sperm?! – It couldn’t have been more annoying somehow. Still, at least the nightmares won’t be spider nightmares, I guess?

Elsewhere in its post, Activision highlights a couple of interesting new accessibility features for the Call of Duty series, including asymmetric hearing compensation settings – allowing players to create custom audio profiles and adjust separate settings for each ear. Which is something I’d definitely like to see more games adopt, speaking as someone who’s been hearing-impaired since childhood.

Black Ops 6 also includes an expanded high contrast mode designed to help players with poor eyesight or color blindness by allowing them to toggle the “dark background” setting or customize the outline colors of allies and enemies. This of course came as a surprise to some players at launch after they booted the game to discover that everyone was blue.

Additionally, Black Ops 6 features what Activision calls Intelligent Motion, which aims to help players with motion issues reduce input by reducing and customizing button and stick operations. This is in addition to new HUD customization features, used to switch between layout presets and adjust minimap colors, as well as support for the Xbox Adaptive Controller and Sony Access Controller. It is now also possible to pause and save during single Zombies matches.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series