Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 review - A strong multiplayer and Zombies mode offsets a dull and poor campaign

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is a fascinating game, in that it is a direct follow-up to last year’s Black Ops 6 that, for the most part, abandons everything that made it one of the strongest releases we have seen for a while.

As a result, Black Ops 7 feels like a muddled release that doesn’t quite warrant a new game, even if the multiplayer and Zombies are an excellent refinement of its predecessor's offerings.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’s campaign is also a direct follow-up to 2012’s Black Ops 2. Main character David Mason is Alex Mason’s son, and the game connects characters from across the Black Ops timeline like Troy Marshall from Black Ops 6.

There are even some fun nods to the beloved Black Ops 1 that offer some highlights.

Emma Kagan, the CEO of evil robotics company The Guild is using Raul Menendez and a Fear Toxin to consistently torment Mason and the other characters with nightmares from their past or their worst fears.

This is where Call of Duty Black Ops 7’s campaign gets pretty wacky.

The series has always played around with supernatural or Lynchian narrative beats, but here it feels like a runaway train, and not in a good way.

After the first mission, and once you kind of accept this is the nonsense we're dealing with, it isn’t as jarring to see a huge horde of Zombies support you as you break out from Vorkuta prison, or have to fight a giant Harper who spits out attacks from his mouth.

Alas, it isn’t really what I wanted from the Black Ops 7 campaign. Previous campaigns in the series were memorable because they kept things grounded while fiddling around with some of these ideas.

The bigger, more fundamental problem with the campaign is that it just feels like it wasn’t treated with the care and respect that campaigns in the series usually receive, especially after the excellent Black Ops 6 campaign last year.

Here you blaze through everything in about four hours, hopping between the linear levels and exploring Avalon, the endgame map, which is like a giant battle royale map. This cadence is dreadful and Avalon is a bland conglomerate of dull objectives, bullet-sponge enemies, and reused areas and maps from Black Ops 6 and other games.

It just feels tacked on and has almost no actual relevance to the larger story taking place in the background.

On top of that, because of this endgame mode, campaign co-op now has a full progression system which just dilutes the actual campaign even more with level pop-ups, camo unlocks, random power upgrades, and Warzone style caches to find weapons.

That endgame experience is also pretty dull after an hour or two. While it is interesting to see Call of Duty experiment with a PvE style extraction shooter mode, the enemies you fight are almost all reused enemies from the Black Ops series or from the Black Ops 7 campaign, the objectives are boring, and it’s just a grind to level up your operator until you reach the final boss.

One area that really shines though here with Black Ops 7 is the multiplayer, however. I enjoyed the Black Ops 6 multiplayer, but Black Ops 7 feels like the closest we have ever come to going back to the golden era of Call of Duty between the years of Black Ops and Black Ops 2.

The entire experience feels reminiscent of Black Ops 2, with a similar time to kill, a dozen or so returning weapons from that game, and maps that feel inspired by the design and flow that made that game’s multiplayer so special.

Gunfights feel so much better than they did in Black Ops 6 and the wall jumping as a splash of Black Ops 3 and Advanced Warfare’s jetpacks, growing the skill gap in the game without feeling too overwhelming for players to deal with.

The weapon selection is stronger and the maps are outstanding, some of the best we have had in Call of Duty in a long time.

Some favourites include Toshin which has great visual design and also flows fantastic with some key power points, and back alleys to flank around. Blackheart is also a strong map which takes the idea of creating a tight, small map and executes it better than we have seen in the past.

You can even level up and add bonus abilities to your scorestreaks, grenades, and field upgrades that deepen the class system without changing the structure drastically, as this iteration is the best we have had in a while.

The progression supporting that multiplayer is also a refinement of what we saw with Black Ops 6. There are more challenges to earn and more pinnacle rewards to go after.

Camo challenges have been simplified to be slightly less frustrating, while still requiring a lot of time investment. But now every weapon has two prestiges you can go through, as well as an additional 150 levels after that once you reach Prestige Master with unique camos to earn throughout that grind, and a unique pinnacle camo for each weapon, most of which are classic camos from the Black Ops series.

There’s a lot of nostalgia here that appeals greatly to someone who grew up with Call of Duty during the Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2 era, and whose favourite Call of Duty is the latter. The removal of the strict skill-based matchmaking is also the best decision the franchise has made in years.

With Zombies, the focus here is on Ashes of the Damned, which asks the bold question, “What if we made TranZit again from Black Ops 2 but didn’t make it ghastly to play?” Yes, Treyarch is back with another big map but it is miles better than TranZit.

While it isn’t a direct remake, there are a lot of fun nods and similarities such as the return of T.E.D.D., the bus driver who rides around the vehicle in this map, an armoured truck called Ol’ Tessie.

It’s a pretty fun map, although the experience does lose the condensed, focused feeling that Black Ops 6 Zombies had. There’s a lot to do and even more to keep track of but the map is teeming with Easter eggs, fun side activities to get free perks and ways to upgrade your gun.

It’s enjoyable in the same way most of Black Ops 6’s maps are, and the map does seem to signal a return to form when it comes to the narrative. It looks like Treyarch is finally bringing the sprawling storylines of the series together to lead up to an impactful conclusion.

This is where Black Ops 7 feels like it makes a lot of the same mistakes the lambasted Modern Warfare 3 (2023) did. While every element here is much stronger than that game, with the multiplayer being the best we have seen in years and Zombies also being a robust continuation of the storyline, it does just feel like an expansion pack to Black Ops 6.

The once treasured Black Ops storyline feels like it was an afterthought with this game, and the endgame mode that replaces it isn’t nearly engaging or exciting enough to warrant the campaign being mistreated in this way.

If you are really into the Black Ops Zombies mode and multiplayer, then Black Ops 7 is worth grabbing, but if you plan to spend most of your time elsewhere, then you can skip this year’s mixed entry.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is available now on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.

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