Despite its yearly success, the Call of Duty franchise had been hitting a quality snag in recent years. Even though it seemed like the series had mastered the yearly release cycle, the current era exposed cracks in the well-oiled machine. You could blame the pandemic, the developer switch ups, or the diminishing returns of nonstop annualization. All of it reached a low point with the cobbled-together mess that was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III in 2023.
On the eve of the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it was encouraging to see the first entry released under that umbrella bring a promising turn-around. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 arrived after years of decline following the franchise’s soft reboot with 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. For the first time in nearly half a decade, Treyarch and Raven Software were given enough time to put out a package that felt well rounded. With a solid campaign, a revitalized multiplayer suite, and fun zombies offerings, there was real hope the series could claw back some long-lost quality.
Which is why the announcement of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 felt like a massive red flag. The last time the franchise tried back-to-back entries under the same sub-label, the follow-up ended up being one of the worst games in series history. Seeing the same developers of last year’s solid entry handling the very next game instead of rotating to another studio made it easy to assume this year’s installment was not going to receive the same time, care, or attention.
Now that I have gone through everything Black Ops 7 has to offer, I can say that, while some parts of the package turned out alright, others confirmed my worst fears. What we got is one of the most lop-sided entries in the series, draining much of the good will last year’s game had earned.
Campaign: Jumping the Fonzie
Set in the year 2035, Call of Duty Black Ops 7 acts as the canonical follow-up to the future timeline from 2012’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Ten years after that game’s ending (to which there were two, and this game makes one official canon), you step back into the boots of David Mason (now voiced by Milo Ventimiglia from Heroes and This Is Us fame). Mason is pulled back into duty after a new video of his recently deceased nemesis Raul Menendez, apparently alive and well, begins circulating. As Mason and his JSOC team look into Menendez’s return, they uncover an organization, called The Guild, that’s planning to destabilize the world with a hallucinogenic compound known as the Cradle. Mason’s dealings with The Guild, their elusive leader Emma Kagan (played by Kiernan Shipka from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), and the full after-effects of the Cradle lead to one hell of an acid trip.
Frustratingly, Black Ops 7 ends up retreading the same story beats that defined the later portion of last year’s campaign. The fact that both games revolve around a hallucinogenic chemical makes me think that, at some point, Black Ops 6 may have been conceived as a dual-narrative campaign in the style of Black Ops 2, and this was the future storytelling they were planning before the team pivoted and they kept this as leftovers. It feels like they decided halfway through to stick to the past timeline and expand the concepts Raven Software introduced in the 2020 Black Ops Cold War campaign, which made last year’s entry better because of it.
That might explain why Black Ops 7’s story feels so inert and empty. Despite fumbling its final act, last year’s narrative gave me hope there was a real reason to revisit classic Black Ops lore after Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 abandoned it entirely. Black Ops 7 thoroughly wastes that opportunity. As a follow up to Black Ops 2, it fails to say anything new and mostly exists to run through a list of “remember this from Black Ops 1 and 2” member berries while your character is tripping on the strongest edible known to man.
This is the franchise’s third attempt at a co-op campaign after Call of Duty: World at War in 2008 and Black Ops 3 in 2015. Those older games tried to shoehorn co-op into a traditional Call of Duty structure. Black Ops 7 does the opposite. Every design choice goes all in on co-op. The result is a campaign that is actively hostile to anyone playing alone because the thing commits the cardinal sin of being a stitched together blend of Warzone, DMZ, and Zombies, repurposed into a flimsy excuse for a story mode.
Black Ops 7 is so committed to its multiplayer DNA that, even if you disable matchmaking, the campaign behaves like it’s a custom match with bots. You do not get AI squad mates despite them appearing in cutscenes and chatting in your ear. You cannot pause, even when playing alone, because the game insists it is a live match. There is no difficulty selection. The game claims to scale difficulty based on player count, but after testing both solo and co-op, I felt no difference at all. Solo play is miserable. If you must see the campaign, find a group of friends or matchmake. There is a reason the mode is literally called Co-op Campaign.
If you thought Modern Warfare III’s Open Combat missions were a pathetic attempt at reusing Warzone assets, you have not seen anything yet. Black Ops 7 fully homogenizes its campaign design by lifting multiplayer maps and the makeshift Warzone/DMZ-style map Avalon and using them wholesale for almost all of the eleven missions, with tiny exceptions being a few runbacks through older, distorted levels from Black Ops 1 & 2. The result betrays everything that makes a Call of Duty campaign what it is supposed to be. There is no mission variety and no curated set pieces. Instead, you get PvE enemies with sloppy AI and a shocking amount of bullet sponge nonsense that turns the whole thing into a poor imitation of a Left 4 Dead-style level, but ten times more of a slog.
Some of that slog crosses into “so bad it becomes entertaining” territory. The campaign’s full embrace of Black Ops’ brand insanity has to be seen to be believed. You drop a giant machete scorestreak on a hallucinated Menendez in the first level. You fight a mutated Frank Woods who turns into a three headed plant monster (a Plant Woods, if you will). It is so utterly batshit ridiculous, I respect the commitment. Going through it with four friends while high or drunk probably turns it into the video game equivalent of watching Tommy Wisseau’s The Room.
Batshit as it is, those moments, unfortunately, do not hide what the campaign represents. It is clearly the area of the package that suffered the most from Raven having to build this campaign in parallel with last year’s game. To give some credit, the design philosophy here is so completely different from Black Ops 6, you could at least say they at least tried something bold. The endgame activity on Avalon, which functions as a PvE version of Modern Warfare II’s abandoned DMZ mode, even shows some promise.
But different is not the same as good. Despite the occasional entertaining insanity and the early potential of the endgame, turning the campaign into a Frankenstein of the other modes does not do the series any favors. Last year reminded us what a solid, fully featured campaign can feel like, even with its flaws. As a follow up to both Black Ops 6 and 2012’s beloved Black Ops 2, Black Ops 7’s campaign feels like an insult to the subseries and makes me question the wisdom of continuing it if this is all they have left to say.
At least it looks and sounds good.
If I were to score the campaign alone, it would be a 3 / 10 – “Terrible”
Multiplayer: Jumping Jacks
Ok, enough yapping about the abysmal campaign. Time for the main course. How does Black Ops 7’s multiplayer stack up against Black Ops 6?
Unlike the last back-to-back sub-label attempt with Modern Warfare III, which launched with remastered maps from 2009’s Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and no new ones, Black Ops 7 is a more complete original offering with 18 maps available at launch. Sixteen of them are for traditional 6v6 matches, and two are for the new large-scale 20v20 Skirmish mode. Thirteen maps are brand new, and three are returning maps from Black Ops 2. All of them are split across the usual lineup of modes, like Team Deathmatch, Free for All, Kill Confirmed, Hardpoint, etc.
On paper, Black Ops 7 hits all the content beats you expect from a full Call of Duty release. The real changes are more subtle and mostly under the hood. Last year’s game introduced the 360-degree Omnimovement system which made everything smoother at the cost of turning the multiplayer into a sweaty circus. Black Ops 7 keeps that foundation but brings back some high mobility for the first time since Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare in 2016. Instead of full wall running, however, this game opts for wall jumping. It tries to bring back the controversial mobility without alienating the boots on the ground crowd that has loudly dictated the franchise’s direction since 2017.
At the same time, Black Ops 7 pulls back movement by almost eliminating tactical sprinting, a feature that has been standard since 2019. If you still want tactical sprint, you need to equip it as a perk in your Pick 10 loadout. Even then, enabling tactical sprint also slows your normal movement even more. With the new perks and additions feeling more vital here than the ones in Black Ops 6, this tradeoff ends up working. Movement feels finely tuned and more in line with older Call of Duty without sacrificing the advancements made. It is a welcome correction after how ridiculous things got last year.
After years of loud requests, Black Ops 7 is also the first entry to fully drop skill-based matchmaking as the default across all modes. Since the 2019 reboot, SBMM shaped every match. Removing it now throws every type of player into the same pool, regardless of skill. Hardcore players finally get easier matches and less constant sweatfests. On the flip side, average players are now at higher risk of being crushed and curbstomped.
There is a chance that the more open nature of matchmaking helps some players grow their skill ceiling, but that is theory at best. I consider myself a middle-of-the-road Call of Duty player who can top a leaderboard occasionally, and, for me, the lack of SBMM has been a net neutral. I have not run into endless sweatfests or constant stomps, but plenty of others claim they have, so your experience will vary. And for those that still want SBMM, there is a separate playlist where it is enabled, but it’s just a moshpit of modes. No SBMM is the true play this year.
As for the maps, I have not found as many annoying maps like half of last year’s selection. Nothing feels like the huge maps that broke Omnimovement or the tiny ones that were spawn camping disasters. The biggest problem is that the futuristic aesthetic makes too many maps blend together. Outside of color differences, several of them feel interchangeable. Once again, the returning Black Ops 2 maps stand out as more distinct and memorable than the new ones, which continues to be a long-running issue for the series where older maps consistently outshine modern ones. From the newer selection of maps that made an impression, I like the futuristic Japanese cafe map “Toshin,” the biome variety of “Exposure,” and the robotic labs in “The Forge.” The rest fall into the category of fine but forgettable. They play well enough, but none of them blew me away.
Overall, the multiplayer side of Black Ops 7 makes it through mostly unscathed. Some additions are smart improvements over last year’s game. Others, like the return of high mobility and the removal of SBMM, are riskier swings that could divide the community. Last year’s introduction of Omnimovement was a genuinely game-changing shift. This year’s tweaks feel more subtle and less immediately impactful. Time will tell whether they move the franchise in the right direction.
In the shadow of an insulting campaign and remembering how bad things got with Modern Warfare III, Black Ops 7’s multiplayer feels stable, confident, and fun, if not particularly groundbreaking.
If I were to score the multiplayer on its own, it would be a 7.5 / 10 “Honorable”
Zombies: Jumping Teeth
Even though Zombies has become part of the larger Call of Duty identity with all the rotating studios, it will always be a Treyarch staple. The mode is almost always at its best when they are leading the charge rather than assisting someone else.
My relationship with Zombies is the same every year. It is a fun diversion with a small launch map pool, the excitement tapers off, and then I return when the map selection grows over the next twelve months. It has been my routine with the franchise forever, and I always enjoy the end result. I do not see Black Ops 7 being any different.
That said, the initial Zombies offering this time is slightly more robust than Black Ops 6, which launched with only one map until Season One arrived. Black Ops 7 gives you two maps right away and brings back Dead Ops Arcade, the top down mode that has not appeared since Black Ops 3.
The main star this year is the big map “Ashes of the Damned.” It continues to follow the usual Zombies cast and their completely nonsensical storyline. It mostly exists as a flimsy justification for the mode’s existence, but, considering how ridiculous this year’s campaign is, both sides are weirdly on equal footing this year. Ashes of the Damned is a large scale map with a simple gimmick. You repair a car and then drive it across the terrain. It reminds me of Black Ops 2’s Tranzit launch map, only this time you actually drive the vehicle instead of getting chauffeured around. I am usually hesitant when a Zombies map tries to be too big, but the car gimmick has a novelty to it that works here. It feels curated rather than slapped together like Modern Warfare III’s Zombies mode. This is the map where I am most curious to see what the eventual Easter egg looks like, especially for the psychos who live for that stuff.
If Ashes of the Damned is too large for you, the other map is Vandor Farm. It is a tight, focused layout that feels closer to something like Nacht Der Untoten. On the flip side, I personally find it a bit too small and visually dull compared to older focused maps, but it definitely fits the needs of players who want something straightforward.
A major addition here is that there is a mode now, at launch, that supports traditional Zombies rules right from the start. That means no loadouts and limited guidance, which is how Zombies functioned before it evolved into the guided, progression-based experience it has been for years. I never minded the modern loadout system, but a lot of purists prefer the original grind of starting with nothing and building your kit from weapons in the map. Black Ops 6 eventually added that option later in its lifecycle, and now Black Ops 7 offers it at launch. I am always in favor of more options, and, so far, it feels like they found a decent balance between offering the newer guided version while giving the old-school purist style for those who want it.
Zombies may never be the mode that holds my attention the longest at launch, but I cannot deny the addictive loop of score chasing and Easter egg hunting. Like every year, I think the mode will be at its best once the full map roster arrives over the next twelve months, but Zombies is the one part of Black Ops 7 that genuinely feels like a step up from Black Ops 6 on day one. For a package that is so lop-sided in other areas, I cannot imagine dedicated Zombies fans feeling shortchanged by what they get out of the gate.
If I were to score Zombies on its own, it would be an 8 / 10 “Superb”
After being reminded last year what it feels like to enjoy an entire Call of Duty package, it is disappointing to see the series land on shaky ground again because one part of the game is so horrendously bad that the rest of the package has to barely hold it together.
I cannot stress enough how insulting this campaign is. On its own, it is one of the worst things I have played this year. If all you want is a campaign, understand that solo play is a miserable experience and any enjoyment you get will come from dragging friends along to witness the same abysmal insanity. Otherwise, skip it entirely.
If you care more about multiplayer and Zombies, the changes to multiplayer feel promising, and Zombies is noticeably more robust than last year. Taken as an average, the package is decent. But after last year’s step forward, and after twenty years of annual releases, decent is not enough.
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