Warzone’s “terrible” Rebirth Island update is giving players headaches

The CODtoons event has brought a major visual overhaul to Warzone’s Rebirth Island map, but players have quickly slammed the change.

After the event, which also brought American Dad’s Stan Smith as an Operator, went live in Black Ops 6 and Warzone on July 18, fans quickly noticed that Rebirth looked very different. The usual realistic look has been swapped for the cel-shaded style we’ve seen in various maps and skins in the past.

Although just a temporary tweak, the new-look map isn’t tucked away in a separate CODtoons playlist. Instead, it’s become the new default for all regular Resurgence matches, and players are already sick of it.

Warzone players slam cel-shaded Rebirth

As soon as the change came into effect, social media became flooded with posts criticizing the “terrible” look of the map and urging the devs to bring back the original.

“Is there a way to turn off the cartoon effect on Rebirth Island? This has to be one of the ugliest things my eyes have ever looked at,” said one player in an X post, before another added:

“Cel-shaded rebirth island proves that COD cannot help themselves when it comes to actively making their game worse with every single update.”

Even popular Warzone creator JGOD wasn’t impressed, posting: “Chat kept spamming it was bad, but what is this??? LMAO.”

The main issue appears to be the lack of visibility caused by the cel-shaded art style, which makes it tough to make out distant enemies and objects, causing one Reddit user to ask: “Can anybody actually see anything with this stupid rebirth update?”

Others are simply finding the map too jarring to look at for extended periods of time: “New Rebirth Island reskin be giving me a headache omg.”

The CODtoons event is currently scheduled to end on August 7, the same day that Warzone Season 5 is due to begin. But given the negative response, it remains to be seen if the devs release an option to turn it off before then.