Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 takes the series back to the future, but it’s haunted by past mistakes. As the follow-up to last year’s Black Ops 6, this shreds all good will it earned. It feels very much the disaster that was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III in 2023, a game marred by baffling decisions and execution is like déjà vu here. From its online-only campaign that’s not single-player, to another lackluster zombies mode, to an uninteresting multiplayer suite on autopilot, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is a game that barely resembles its namesake that’s so forgettable.
Co-op Campaign
From the outset, there’s no illusions to what’s going on here, this is called “Co-op Campaign”. It is not a single-player experience, and the game does nothing to treat it like one for anyone who prefers to play alone. You can play it solo, but you’re subject to needing to matchmake if you choose not to fill the squad, and play on a server instead of your local machine. Surprisingly, a mode built around co-op will not insert three AI companions for you to run around with. If you decide to go this route, you will be completely and utterly alone during the campaign despite every cutscene showing four people in them. You don’t get to select a difficulty, so the tasks laid before you aren’t challenging, but it’s some truly asinine decision-making.
I’m not sure if it was the packet loss banner that would constantly come up on my screen, or the fact that I couldn’t pause my game, but there’s a definitive lack of immersion while playing Black Ops 7 that I can’t shake. While it’s true that there’s no checkpoints or saving mid-mission, you can die as much as you want as you’ll just respawn near the next objective. Now, you can’t leave the mode or the game without completing the mission, else you will have to start it over. I died a few times and suffered no real penalty, despite the lack of a proper checkpoint system. If you pause the game, there’s a strict fifteen minute timer before you’re kicked to the main menu, and potentially losing progress. But hey, you can switch between first and third-person from the menu, so that’s cool, I guess? If I had anything nice to say about the campaign, it would be this: I like that you level up weapons in the campaign, but it’s something that’s also immersion breaking.
Co-op Campaign (cont’d)
Off the heels of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 just one year ago, Black Ops 7 is actually a direct sequel to Black Ops II of all things, but also incorporates elements of Black Ops 6 like Avalon and The Guild, who formed during the events of that game. Milo Ventimiglia plays David Mason, the grandson of the venerable Alex Mason. Michael Rooker returns to Call of Duty as a new character in Mike Harper, who is on Mason’s squad. Then you have Kiernan Shipka, who plays Emma Kagan, a CEO in the middle of everything. Milo does the best with what he’s given, but the writing doesn’t do him any favors. The cinematics are what carry the story, meaning the gameplay is disconnected from the events going on. It just serves as a vehicle to get you from one cutscene to the next. Overall, the campaign lacks weight and meaning across its 11 hollow missions and roughly five hour runtime.
Anyone who played Black Ops 6 will be right at home, because a lot of the game re-uses the Avalon map, and places it into the future. The game doesn’t do as much globe-trotting as its predecessors, but visiting a futuristic Tokyo has a great aesthetic. Seeing the future of psy ops is actually a frightening view, and actually insane. There are boss fights in this game, and rather lame to partake in. There are glimmers of greatness, that are immediately squandered as it tries to tap in to psychotic breaks. There are times where it feels like it’s trying to be Alan Wake 2, but can’t muster the right tone to achieve it.
Co-op Campaign (concl.)
Endgame
Before we leave the topic of the campaign, I want to talk about “Endgame”. Upon completion of the campaign, is a hidden extraction mode that’s actually rather decent. It’s a mode where 32-players work together to defeat enemies and complete assignments before extracting via VTOL. It’s an interesting experiment to say the least, with some solid rewards for use across other modes if you get a successful extraction. With it being so buried, I don’t know how many will get to experience it for themselves. And while it’s good for what it is, it’s nothing groundbreaking or the “DMZ 2” you’d want it to be.
Multiplayer
The bread and butter of any Call of Duty game is its multiplayer. For Black Ops 7, it’s an unexciting, bland, and overall uninteresting offering. Perhaps the most interesting change this year is the removal of Skill-based Matchmaking (SBMM). Instead of analyzing how you play and how well you do or don’t do, the game will no longer match you against like-skilled players. It’s something the community has been requesting it for years and now we have it. It’ be interesting what happens from here. This can definitely be a slaughterhouse for the first ten to fifteen levels. But as you start to unlock weapons, gadgets, and familiarize yourself with weapons, you do get used to it. There is a toggle to do “standard” matchmaking which does employ a minimal amount of SBMM, if it’s something you crave.
There’s really not a whole lot new to the multiplayer. You can now wall hop when coming across angled or steep surfaces. This can lead to some clever plays and movement, but doesn’t really move the needle on enjoyment. The omni-movement system we got in Black Ops 6 returns, and does seem a bit smoother to use than before. Beyond that, Black Ops 7 doesn’t feature any new modes. Overload is a new mode introduced last year, and is back here. You’ll find all the tried-and-true modes like Team Deathmatch, Gunfight, Search & Destroy, and Kill Confirmed rounding things out. Even the emotes are re-used from last year’s game.
Multiplayer (concl.)
The game includes sixteen maps at launch, built for 6v6 encounters. And there’s two large maps, built for 20v20 players. Standout maps are Express, Hijacked, and Raid – all three of them are remakes from Black Ops II, and still hold-up today. At the time of this writing, Nuketown 2025 also makes its return, and its iconic layout doesn’t disappoint. For some actual new maps, Homestead is a great one for its lanes, but also the overwhelming aurora borealis that’s going on while playing it. Imprint is a snowy base with a mix of indoor and exterior that works well, and reminds me of Summit from the original Black Ops. The rest of the maps aren’t all that memorable, and the remakes are the ones that end up wanting to play on the most.
As you rank up, you’ll be unlocking new weapons for use. And the weapons are recognizable to their modern-day counterparts, like the M15 which performs like an M4. Or the Carbon 57 SMG, which is like a rotated P90. There’s no shortage of finding a simile weapon to something today. Simply using these weapons will rank them up. Then there’s gadgets, normally something you don’t talk much about. But the new “psych grenade” is something we should be talking about. It does a great job of making the person on the other end of it hallucinate other enemies, making them question reality and be something different from stun, smoke, and flashbang grenades.
Loadouts can be built like you’d expect, selecting the guns, gadgets, and perks that compliment your playstyle or challenge you’re chasing. Perks have three classes assigned to them: enforcer, recon, and strategist. Select three of the same type or color, and you earn a specialty that compliments that classification. Scorestreaks are standard fare, with a robotic dog aptly named D.A.W.G. ugh, but there’s UAVs, hellfire missiles, napalm, sentry turrets, and the like to call. I just wasn’t very excited to unlock anything as everything is so cookie cutter and repetitive.
Zombies
It’s no secret that I have a hard time enjoying the Zombies mode in Call of Duty games. Call of Duty: World at War was just peak for me, and here we are so many years later, unable to replicate what worked so well. There are four modes of play: Standard, which is a round-based mode where you need to extract at the end. Survival has you standing and fighting over rounds of increasing difficulty. Cursed offers minimal guidance to all players as you work to survive the onslaught of zombies. Then you have Dead Ops Arcade 4, my personal favorite of the bunch that offers a top-down (and sometimes first-person) view of zombie slaying, in an admittedly arcade way for chasing a high score. You can play all modes solo or with up to four players, as one would expect for this mode.
Zombies does feel more like a continuation of what Black Ops 6 built, and I think it’s a good one of those modes. But I still think gobblegum is a dumb name for power-ups, and offers no real value. That said, it’s all so similar that it might not feel all that new despite its setting, story, and characters that propel the zombie-slaying story forward.
Now, this is an absolutely gorgeous game, that runs at blisteringly fast. With every setting maxed, I’m able to easily achieve 100fps. Using DLSS and Frame Generation can help boost a lot of that. Now, enabling Ray Tracing tanks performance, which is fine for campaign and zombie, but in multiplayer there’s too much of a degradation of performance to allow it. I ended up turning it off altogether, but still impressed with the visuals.
My PC Specs:
– Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
– Intel Core i9 13900K @ 5.8GHz
– ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360 ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
– G.SKILL TRIDENT Z5 6000MHZ 64GB (32×2) DDR5 RAM
– ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
– WD_BLACK SN850X M.2 (4 TB)
– LG UltraGear 34GP950B-G (21:9 Ultrawide @ 3440×1440)
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is ambitious but aimless. It’s just so forgettable, in a year with so many other great games, is not the year for there to be a bad Call of Duty. The Co-op Campaign is aggressively against solo players, Zombies is recycled, and Multiplayer has barely enough things to keep you going. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is a big swing and a miss for a series that should have been a home run.
A Steam code for the Vault Edition was provided by Activision for review purposes
