The Call of Duty franchise has a long-standing tradition of delivering high-octane action across its various modes Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 arrives with a mix of anticipation and trepidation, especially following last year’s praised Black Ops 6. This latest installment, however, proves to be a deeply divisive experience, struggling to find a consistent footing across its offerings. It’s a game that oscillates wildly between exhilarating highs and frustrating lows, presenting a package that feels as uneven as they come. While one major component shines brightly, others stumble, leaving players to weigh whether the sum of its parts justifies the whole.
A Mixed Bag of Sights and Sounds
When it comes to the technical aspects, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 offers a distinctly mixed bag. The audio design continues to be a standout feature, maintaining the series’ high standards. From the moment you load into a match or mission, the soundscape immerses you. Every gunshot, explosion, and character voice line is well crafted, contributing to a nice visceral experience. The weapon sounds, in particular, are great, each firearm boasting a distinct and satisfying punch that adds significant weight and feedback to combat.
However, the visual presentation tells a different story. In an era where graphical fidelity continues to push boundaries, Black Ops 7 feels somewhat left behind. Visually, it registers as a step backward from what we might expect, or at least a plateau. It neither looks truly stunning nor overtly offensive; it exists in a peculiar middle ground. Character models, environmental textures, and special effects often lack the polish and detail seen in contemporary titles or even some past Call of Duty entries. The silver lining here, though, is its performance. Despite the graphical shortcomings, the game runs smoothly, delivering a consistent and high frame rate across various platforms. This buttery-smooth performance is crucial for a fast-paced shooter, ensuring that responsiveness and control are never compromised, even if the visuals aren’t cutting-edge.
Campaign: A Collaborative Nightmare
For many, the single-player campaign has historically been the beating heart of a Call of Duty game, offering cinematic storytelling and memorable set-piece moments. Black Ops 7, however, takes a radical and deeply questionable detour with its campaign design, transforming it into a purely co-operative, online-only experience. This fundamental shift immediately alienates solo players, as there are no checkpoints or traditional save points within missions, meaning any disconnect or failure sends you back to the very beginning. Furthermore, the decision to offer no AI companions for solo players trying to tackle a campaign clearly designed for a team is baffling. Playing solo means truly being alone against overwhelming odds.
This design choice creates a host of immersion-breaking moments, particularly in cutscenes. Watching a cinematic where your entire team is present, only for your character to deliver monologues meant for a group, feels bizarre and disjointed if you’re playing by yourself. While the underlying story itself harbours some genuinely interesting concepts and narrative threads, these are tragically drowned out by the frustrating gameplay mechanics and bizarre structure. The narrative potential is squandered, leaving players unable to fully engage with the plot due to constant frustrations.
The level design is another major point of contention. Gone are the days of tightly crafted, linear Call of Duty maps that guide players through intense, focused encounters. Black Ops 7’s campaign predominantly features large, open-ended environments where players have a greater degree of movement freedom, albeit still bound by fixed mission objectives. While the idea of open spaces can be appealing, in practice, these areas often feel like a drag. With enemies seemingly around every corner and from every direction, navigating these expansive maps becomes a tedious chore, feeling disconnected from the series’ signature fast-paced, cover-to-cover combat. When not in these vast, open areas, players are occasionally shunted into “nightmare maps” – twisted, macabre versions of levels from previous Black Ops games. These segments often culminate in boss battles that lack any real finesse or strategic depth, typically devolving into bullet sponges that simply test your endurance rather than skill.
It’s particularly disheartening given the immediate precedent. Last year’s Black Ops 6 delivered one of the most acclaimed campaigns in the franchise’s history, setting a high bar for storytelling, set-pieces, and player experience. The stark decline in quality and fundamental design philosophy with Black Ops 7’s campaign feels like a baffling step backward, making it, without exaggeration, one of the worst campaigns in the series’ long and storied history.
Multiplayer: The Saving Grace
If the campaign is Black Ops 7’s Achilles’ heel, then Multiplayer is its shining armour. This is where the game truly justifies its existence, delivering an experience that not only meets but often exceeds expectations. The core gameplay and weapon mechanics from last year have been further improved upon, resulting in a multiplayer experience that feels incredibly fluid, responsive, and satisfying. Movement is slick, gunplay is tight, and hit registration feels consistently accurate, making every encounter feel fair and skill-based.
What truly elevates Black Ops 7’s multiplayer is its map design. After years of hit-or-miss maps, this iteration presents some of the series’ best work in recent memory. The maps are intelligently designed, offering a perfect blend of tight choke points, open lanes for longer engagements, and verticality that encourages diverse playstyles. They promote constant action, strategic decision-making, and a healthy flow of combat, catering to both aggressive rushers and more tactical players. The variety in environments and layouts keeps things fresh, ensuring that each match feels distinct. Playing through the multiplayer mode is pure, unadulterated fun, and its quality is so high that it genuinely makes you almost forget the abysmal experience of the campaign. For many, the strength of this multiplayer alone will be enough to carry the game and provide countless hours of engaging competitive play.
Zombies: Stable, Yet Stagnant
The Zombies mode has carved out a dedicated niche within the Call of Duty community, offering a unique blend of horror, survival, and co-operative gameplay. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’s Zombies mode is certainly much more stable than its campaign counterpart, offering a reliable and functional experience. However, much like the campaign, it suffers greatly in comparison to last year’s Black Ops 6.
Last year’s iteration of Zombies brought fresh ideas to the table, featuring more variation in its maps, a clear overarching story, and defined objectives that pushed players forward. Black Ops 7, by contrast, largely reverts to a safer, more traditional formula, with less emphasis on objectives and a return to the classic wave-after-wave defense. While there are some attempts at weaving a story into the mode, and a bigger map to explore, these elements feel underdeveloped. The map, despite its size, often feels empty and boring, lacking the intricate design and compelling secrets that made previous Zombies maps so engrossing. The focus shifts back to simply surviving endless hordes, which, while still providing some entertainment, feels like a step backward in terms of innovation and narrative engagement. It’s a mode that plays it safe, which for some might be comforting, but ultimately leaves it feeling very lacking and somewhat uninspired compared to the more ambitious and varied approach of its predecessor.
A Game of Extremes
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is, without a doubt, a game of stark contrasts. It’s an experience that is as uneven as they come. The campaign is a bewildering misstep, a frustrating and largely unenjoyable experience that fails on multiple fundamental levels, easily earning its place as one of the weakest entries in the franchise’s history. The Zombies mode, while stable and functional, plays it too safe, offering a somewhat bland and uninspired return to form that pales in comparison to the more ambitious designs of recent years.
However, the game finds incredible redemption in its multiplayer. With refined gunplay, fluid movement, and some of the best map designs the series has seen in years, it delivers an exceptionally fun and addictive competitive experience. It’s a joy to play and truly encapsulates the fast-paced, engaging action that Call of Duty fans crave. Ultimately, whether Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is worth your time and money will depend entirely on your priorities.
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