Like death and taxes, Call of Duty is inescapable. For over 20 years, Activision’s military shooter has been an annual staple, arriving each fall just in time to make bank amid the holiday rush. With that level of ubiquity also comes malaise, and nowadays it’s newsworthy just to hear that the series is doing something vaguely interesting (if not necessarily good), rather than just more of the same.
Last year’s edition, Black Ops 6, was one such entry that managed to shake things up enough to stand out. After an extended run of mediocre at best — and at worst, totally anemic — releases, 2024’s Call of Duty felt like a breath of fresh air, if only by default.
With a single-player campaign set in the Nineties, the game’s story had a deliriously fun espionage hook that harkened back to the series’ heyday of the original Modern Warfare trilogy and early Black Ops titles. The competitive multiplayer updates were strong, too, with a slew of well-designed maps and the return of classic prestige systems that had fallen to the wayside in recent years. The biggest innovation was the new omnimovement mechanic that, while not earth-shattering, genuinely made the controls feel different and more immersive. Hell, even the side-piece zombie mode felt meaty enough to be its own meal.
But good times can only last so long — the gods of quarterly fiscal reporting must be satiated. And so, we’re back for another go around; out with the old, in with the new. It’s once again time for another hard reset on what gamers mean when they casually say they’re playing Call of Duty.
This year, it’s Black Ops 7 — which breaks the series’ habit of alternating between different sub-series between each entry. Previously, you’d get Modern Warfare, then Black Ops, et cetera, but for the first time since the early days, we’re getting a direct numbered follow-up in the subtitle. Based on Rolling Stone’s time with game (which is currently available to the public in open beta), it feels like the franchise could’ve taken a breather.
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A gluttonous gameplay buffet
Like last year’s Black Ops 6, the newest iteration isn’t lacking for content. As detailed in the game’s big reveal, Black Ops 7 will once again be bursting at the seams with gameplay modes — somehow, even more than before. There’s the robust story campaign, which follows the events of 2012’s Black Ops II, which will be fully playable cooperatively with friends. There’s even an “Endgame” experience, which opens up a 32-player mode set within a unique map after completing the story (which doesn’t even count toward the game’s actual competitive multiplayer mode).
Black Ops 7 returns with even more versions of existing modes than before, enough for multiple full-length games.
Activision
As of yet, the campaign hasn’t been available to try as part of the beta (and likely won’t be available until the full release) but the narrative’s near-future setting of 2035 also informs the core multiplayer experience — swapping out the low-tech weaponry and visual design of the Nineties-set Black Ops 6 with pseudo-sci-fi gadgets and gear. At launch, there will be 18 maps to compete on and 30 weapons to unlock, with dozens of customization options allowing users to fine tune their guns’ scopes, grips, barrels, and more. Just about everything can be tweaked, even down to grenades and non-lethal gear, creating an endless stream of upgrades and rewards that can be obtained through busy work. For diehards, there’s an extremely dense list of camo skins to unlock for each weapon to show off just how much Call of Duty you play, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Then there’s the game’s zombie mode, now called Ashes of the Damned, which has been touted as having the biggest round-based survival map ever for this side-portion of the series. For those familiar with the previous lore of Black Ops II and 6’s zombie campaigns, the whole thing is now supposed to be a generational mash-up of different characters from across the timeline, and features tons of new and returning items with nonsense names like Perk-a-Colas and GobbleGums.
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Black Ops 7 will also bring updates to Call of Duty’s most popular offering, the free-to-play battle royale Warzone, in the forms of an all-new map called Haven’s Hollow. With everything else to try, we barely even scratched the surface on that.
Zombies mode has a new structure with branching paths, yet somehow feels less meaty in the process.
Activision
Suffice to say, Black Ops 7 has a lot going on. It’s once again three (or more) games in one, explicitly designed to be the only thing its creators wants you to play for the next calendar year — until the next one, that is. But is it worth that investment?
‘More’ doesn’t mean ‘better’
Look, you already know if you like Call of Duty; no new version of the game is going to suddenly awaken a rabid passion for the franchise in a non-believer. For some, Black Ops 6 might’ve come close. Its new control scheme and emphasis on quality modes substantially improved the game in ways that attracted lapsed players back into the fold. At a high level, Black Ops 7 seems content to mostly coast on the good will garnered from last year’s successes — but that doesn’t mean it’s just more of the same.
The biggest changes to the Black Ops formula come twofold: high-tech futuristic weaponry and a new wall-jumping mechanic that let’s players literally bounce off walls like coked-up jack rabbits. Although both could be compelling novelties, neither improves the game. In fact, they actively detract from it.
The new wall-jumping mechanic means that threats are cartoonishly arriving from all angles.
Activision
No one has ever accused Call of Duty of being subtle, but this year’s big additions are borderline gratuitous. While Black Ops 6 toyed with a more grounded, back-to-the-basics approach of UAVs, airstrikes, and attack choppers as scorestreak rewards for tallying enough points or kills, the speculative fiction framework of BLOPS 7 means everything requires a heightened tone. The battlefield is now filled with ludicrous shit like two-wheeled RC bots, quadruped robots (called D.A.W.G.s), pocket-sized aerial drones, and full-on automated mechs. In a game as frenetic as Call of Duty, where lizard-brained reaction time and twitchy gunplay are king, the constant onslaught of tech from all sides feels like a lot to manage.
It’s a common occurrence to break concentration on what’s going on with the human element of a match to chase down buzzing drones (which come in packs), or have to constantly listen for the high-pitched motors of wheeled assault toys to avoid being killed half a dozen times over. While the glint of a sniper’s scope still spells death, now players can use high-powered rifles on thermal targets through walls halfway across the map. Anyone can be a hologram, too. Or, you know, flat out invisible.
It’s not the first time Call of Duty has gone full science fiction — and to be fair, it’s not really that. Spend enough time going down a YouTube rabbit hole on paramilitary advancements, and you’ll find that all of this is real or soon will be in some form or another. It’s just that it feels so far removed from what made Black Ops 6 work. Coincidentally timed to release just a month after EA’s Battlefield 6, a game much more committed to realism than even the most straightforward Call of Duty entry, Black Ops 7 is giving cartoon energy.
While cool on a surface level, the array of robotic scorestreaks make the game chaotic even beyond the twitchy human element.
Activision
The wall jumping is emblematic of the issue. Bunny hopping is nothing new for first-person shooters; spamming the jump button to confuse foes is a decades-old tactic. But now players are bouncing parkour-style horizontally down corridors and scaling multiple stories for a close-range shotgun blast at whim. The games have always been fast and loose with physics, and the omnimovement system only exasperated it by giving everyone the Matrix-style power to shoot backward while careening down a flight of stairs. But what until recently felt like dumb fun now feels just dumb.
A flavorless dish
At its core, Black Ops 7 still plays like Call of Duty. Anyone who’s stayed with the series or even just dipped in and out can still read the terrain. The gunplay is still tight and responsive, and the level design remains easy enough to glean and strategize around. All the modes, from Team Deathmatch and Hardpoint to the “capture the flag”-based Overload are familiar and quick to comprehend. They’re just not that enthralling.
A lot of it boils down to the game’s new aesthetic. Whereas Black Ops 6 relished in the texture of its period setting, giving players maps ranging from a warlord’s villa filled with luxury cars or dilapidated bus depots overgrown with foliage, BLOPS 7 has a superficial glossiness to each of its levels. While locations like a solar panel farm in the Australian outback fit the bill for near-future ground war, the result mostly feels sterile, amounting to a bunch of empty pathways bathed in stark daylight. One map called Forge is a research facility (read: bland corporate office building) whose most interesting feature is a rotating carousel at its center that creates and removes cover on loop. One of the more ambitious levels is Imprint, a snowy complex that feels ripped from Inception with an angled elevator lift at its heart that shifts laterally between planes.
Multiplayer maps are bland, even when they’ve got a unique hook at their center.
Activision
While all are serviceable enough to compete in, none of them stand out as anything special. In basic multiplayer fashion, there are bottlenecked spaces for ambushes, and everything loops together just fine for flanking. But overall, they’re among the least inspired map designs the series has seen in a while, with what little flourishes exist (like spinning platforms and lifts) mostly amount to flavorless fondant rather than actual icing on the cake. There’s also the issue the many insta-death areas that require wall jumping to traverse. Levels like the oil rig Blackheart are just a circle, but one route around must be jumped across like a trampoline park — that’s the extent of creativity for many.
The half-minded design extends to the zombie maps as well, which mostly consists of a bunch of little claustrophobic mini-regions to survive in for a few rounds before moving onto the next location using an armored truck. Black Ops 6 featured some of the most thoroughly well-crafted expanses to battle the undead hordes. Here, each feel underbaked as a series of pitstops in a larger connected world of nothingness. Even the truck driving sections lack impact, despite the ability to literally run over waves of zombies with a crunch. They’re just short interludes that give the appearance of a branching path journey; basically, playable load screens where you can end up dying.
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Although the full release will add even more content to indulge in (on top of a slow drip of seasonal updates to come), what’s been shown so far of Black Ops 7 indicates that fans are facing another down beat era for the franchise. After bringing their A-game with Black Ops 6, the developers at Treyarch and Raven Software seem to be checking off the boxes to adhere to their corporate mandate of never letting any single entry live longer than 12 months. Maybe it’s time for Call of Duty to take a year off and catch some kip.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 launches on Nov. 14 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
