It’s pretty staggering just how consistent the Call of Duty franchise has been over the last two decades. A new game every single year, bouncing back and forth between studios and sub-series, it’s remained at the top of the FPS genre for three console generations. But maybe that crown is slipping? Maybe we need to start thinking of them in terms of even and odd-numbered Star Trek movies? Black Ops 7 is not an even number…
Black Ops 7 Multiplayer
Let’s start with the real heart of the Call of Duty franchise and Black Ops 7’s multiplayer. A year on from Black Ops 6, and this is largely a continuation from the highs of that game. You still have the omnidirectional movement that keeps everything fast and fluid, you still have the solid loadout system with perk synergies building to specialisations, and you’ve got plenty of maps that generally lean in on Treyarch‘s strong lane-based design style.
Many of the maps also take advantage of the main addition to this year’s gameplay: wall-jumping. We’re far from the excesses of the jetpack era of Call of Duty, but this is a nice nod to those sci-fi infused titles, giving a little more verticality, a snifter of additional movement flexibility. Of course, the near-future setting means you’ve also got more turrets, robot DAWGs, active camo, and a killstreak that gives you a gun to shoot through walls – it’s feels filthy to see yourself get sniped like this on a deathcam, but compared to other killstreaks, it’s really no more or less lethal.
In general, the TTK does feel a little faster again, which combined with the speed of motion could be pushing this game out of your comfort zone, but if the 6v6 Call of Duty multiplayer is all you want in life, then Black Ops 7 has you covered. But what if you want something bigger, with vehicles and more tactical? No, please don’t leave! Uh, there’s the 20v20 Skirmish mode!
This tries to cover off that large-scale battle angle, with two big maps, vehicles and a rolling set of capture, destroy, takeover and escort objectives. If anything, it ramps the pace up even further, since you spawn high in the sky and can wingsuit to pretty much wherever you like on the map, even barrelling straight through windows and into objective zones. Far from being an antidote to Battlefield 6, though, it’s all too often just madcap and finds itself in this no-man’s land between these rival franchises.
The Co-op Campaign & Endgame
After the good, even great showings in the last two Black Ops games for their single player campaigns, Black Ops 7 is a major misstep. We’re jumping ahead from the Cold War and Gulf War to a decade after the events of Black Ops 2 and returning to David Mason and his team. The story tugs on narrative threads from across the series, mixing in the Cradle from Black Ops 6 for a twisted sci-fi psychological thriller. Except it’s just not even remotely thrilling.
The campaign bounces back and forth between sections set in the open world map of Avalon, which is filled with bland human and robot soldiers for The Guild, and then nightmare reimaginings of events from each character’s past. That means revisiting plot points from Black Ops 2, such as a version of the Battle for LA with roads twisting through the air all Inception-style, or fighting a giant version of Harper on the deck of an aircraft carrier, but it even goes back to fighting zombies in a rerun of the Vorkuta prison break.
I’m all for Call of Duty experimenting with the format of the campaign, and the Black Ops series has done this more often than not, with narrative branches, side missions, hubs, and more. Black Ops 7 just misses the mark, from enemies having health bars, to not having AI buddies when playing solo, and just how bland The Guild are as enemies and how rote the horror monsters are.
It soon becomes clear that this was, in part, about leading into the Endgame co-op mode, taking the template from Modern Warfare III’s Zombies in a different thematic direction. This gives you the full map of Avalon to play in as an extraction shooter, gating areas behind the level and gear of your chosen Operator, doling out missions and then having you get out safely with everything you’ve found.
It’s purely PvE, with dozens of other players able to team up on the fly and take on the higher-level missions and scenarios, and there’s some fun Cradle effects, like a random little game of prop hunt. But it’s really not exciting building up to the end of the Endgame events, as you’re largely fighting against fairly boring enemies and completing basic missions. There’s also the tonal whiplash you felt throughout the campaign, as zombies and other fantastical elements are thrown in for the heck of it.
Black Ops 7 Zombies
The more traditional home of co-op in Call of Duty is its Zombies mode, with Black Ops 7 picking up the convoluted Dark Aether narrative from last year’s game. The Ashes of the Damned map is huge, with six key areas to reach and explore, joined up by a bunch of roads and other smaller points of interest shrouded in The Fog. It’s big enough, in fact, that you need to hop into a pick-up truck – nicknamed Ol’ Tessie – to get around. She’s a battered workhorse of a truck, able to smash through hordes of zombies, but only for a limited time before she takes too much damage and needs repairs. Later upgrades, though, put a mean turret on top and Abomination Heads that can blast streams of zombie-frying lightning.
The problem with this, of course, is that it means your co-op party really needs to be on the same page. Anyone can jump into the truck and just drive off, leaving others with a sprint through the danger-filled Fog, unless they happen to be at the garage in the Ashwood area, where you can summon Tessie back or teleport to her for a fee. You really want to play this mode with friends and voice chat, especially if you’re trying to follow the Easter Egg story path.
Thankfully, there’s other ways to play. If you prefer the classic Zombies feel, you can play Cursed mode and start off with just a pistol, while a Directed mode for the main quest is coming soon. There’s also a pure Survival mode, which takes the Farmyard section of Ashes of the Damned, and simply gives you waves to battle through. No frills, no nonsense, just classic Zombies on a pretty confined map, and since I’m really not invested in the story, it’s really my preferred way to play this mode.
There’s also the return of Dead Ops Arcade, the top-down zombie shooter which puts over-the-top weaponry in your hands at every opportunity and progresses through a nonsensical quest with apes and chickens. You can actually play it in first person the whole time now, and some power-ups will still switch you to this view anyway. There’s tons of rooms to battle through, tons of excess, and it’s easy to slide into, but it doesn’t really feel novel anymore. Dead Ops Arcade was a secret mode for a secret mode just as indie games and retro aesthetics were coming into their own in the early 2010s, but 15 years later and the indie scene has moved on to explore many more genres, mash-ups and riff on these ideas in more engaging ways.