Call of Duty: Black Ops 7

Written by Rob Larkin on 11/19/2025 for PC   PS5   XSX  

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is what I imagine a Call of Duty game would look like from a development team that was simply tired of making Call of Duty games. I have no way of knowing if anyone at Treyarch actually felt that way, but it is such a departure from “the formula” it almost feels like a cathartic release of sorts. There are certain expectations for installments in this franchise. While every mode in that expectations checklist is delivered, so much of the game is an attempt to implement new, bigger, and bolder ideas—but not always pulling it off.

So, what is “the formula” for a Call of Duty game? Well, we would typically first jump into a single player campaign, complete it, and never touch it again except for maybe one extra run for trophy cleanup. Then the Multiplayer maps would do the heavy lifting to power us through the seasons while the zombies mode scratches any narrative itch as secrets get unlocked and the map of completing the mode unfolds. With Black Ops 7, each of those modes are certainly present but additional elements and systems have been incorporated in from multiple other genres. It ticks all the boxes but then kidnaps the boxes, bounds them together with the duct tape of a unified progression system, then force feeds them additional gameplay elements until they burst at the seams.

The single player campaign, technically, isn’t single player anymore—it’s co-op. This is fine if you want to run and gun with some buddies but has drawbacks, such as even when playing solo with matchmaking off, you still can’t truly pause the game. Mission checkpoints have also largely disappeared. There is a forgiveness there in when you die you can respawn in and actually keep all progress made towards a given objective. This is especially helpful if your demise was an untimely one coming maybe halfway through a stand against a wave of enemies while defending an objective point.

Now, even solo you can check back in wherever you left off rather than having to start fresh each attempt. I’ve seen complaints that some players were getting really frustrated at the difficulty of trying to play the co-op campaign solo but given the generous respawn situation I mostly breezed through it. I can only think of a single mission where I died more than twice in the whole campaign.

I don't think it's a skill issue, I think it might more of a playstyle thing. I tend to settle in on a loadout of a longer-range rifle and high-capacity machine gun to pop headshots in and out of cover in between mowing down anything close up after a quick weapon swap. Maybe that just matches the challenges more than a run-and-gun style, but in any case, I didn't have any qualms with the difficulty. The downside, however, is that if you need to actually unplug in the middle of one of these missions you will have to start from the beginning all over again when you do make time to rejoin.

The campaign also doesn’t follow much of the classic story beats either. Once upon a time CoD games were more like Band of Brothers holding a bridge against a Nazi raid earmarked with the clang of an M1 expelling its last round. This time around we are set 10 years in the future, meshing cutting edge technology from Advanced Warfare with the psy ops elements of other Black Ops titles and basically ripping up the script of a largely coherent narrative to instead go all in on the mind-bending druggy elements. Whereas previous Black Ops titles might have thrown a mind trip in towards the end for a single mission, in Black Ops 7 we spend almost the entirety of the campaign employing mind trips as basically the sole defining characteristic of this whole affair.

Ultimately it doesn’t pay off because much of the story is just a string of nonsense. The trippy mind bend used to be a narrative trick to make an unexpected left turn at the end of a campaign. But at this point I think we're all expecting that trick, so instead we spend the entire campaign getting high on our own supply. I didn’t actually mind it so much. Just rolled my eyes and moved on. But others in the GN writers room basically quipped that the insanity of the campaign was making them not want to play the rest of the game, and I get it.

If you’re expecting any sort of classic hero squad buddy war story on the front lines, this ain’t it. You are instead going to be fighting a giant plant monster that would not seem at all out of place in a Borderlands game, before platforming through a level of floating bricks where Crash Bandicoot might feel right at home, and later taking down a titan than might as well be holding up the earth like something out of a Destiny raid. The mind trip is what allows these insane story elements to exist, so Treyarch just pushed all the chips to the center of the table on that story beat.

The mind trip unshackles the game from reality and even lets you add in things like killstreaks with giant machetes falling from the sky on certain mission points. But unshackling can feel dangerously too close to untethering, and I don’t begrudge anyone who feels the campaign simply got away from them on this one. If you do allow yourself to suspend expectations and just take it for what it is—a silly video game—the sections can be fine fun, though.

What the campaign most sorely lacks however, is any semblance of an epic mission—and that's...fine. Not every entry in the franchise is going to have a banger like "All Ghillied Up" or "No Russian," but when you're mixing in waves of mutant spiders into the campaign alongside soldiers for hire and future robot kills squads, you're kind of limiting yourself to fingerpainting across your canvas. There were some decent missions—the latter half of a prison escape sequence stands out and an early foray that started stealthily on the back of a luxury yacht and ended running and gunning rooftop to rooftop were pretty good. 

And the endgame of all of this departure from the norm is the final mission—aptly titled Endgame. It’s less a mission and really just an open world to run around in, complete missions for XP, collect new and better guns, and level up to be able to tackle harder Zones in the map. It feels very Far Cry in a way given its open world in enemy territory but also is a bit of an extraction shooter running a 45-minute timer with extract points that push you into a final onslaught to clear the LZ from the mini-boss before the last chopper out of Saigon lifts off.

It’s decent and serves as a good way to push the universal progression football further down the field with another play in the playbook than just PvP. While it mimics both an open world or extraction shooter, it does end up being something a little bit less than either—as the lack of any interspersed narrative missions detract from a true open world game and the lack of a PvP element removes the dread of constant jeopardy of an extraction game.

If you want PvP, then of course there is plenty of multiplayer to be had. This is probably the most consistent mode from "the formula," even if things like the RPG elements of universal progression or the slight tweaks to rapid movement and wall hops do provide small changes that drag the mode ever so slightly forward. There are a ton of launch maps for PvP with more coming with season pass content, so there is a lot to enjoy there. And I think overall, the gunplay, the slicker movement, weapons, loadouts, kill streaks are all pretty cool.

Then you have zombies, one of my favorite parts of any CoD entry. This time we get some clear objectives with map markers and on-screen prompts to guide us through the early narrative points. There are certainly plenty of secrets tucked away as well, or so I was promised. The map is bigger than ever, and a pickup truck has been added to motor your way from one point of interest to the next. This is a blessing and a curse because while this does make the map the largest ever, it does seem to just be putting a bit of dead space along the motorway in between those islands where things actually happen. Its bigger for bigger's sake, not because its size really adds any tangible benefit.

You can pimp your ride with upgrades like a rocket boost, front-mounted beams, and a turret. The mode as a whole is as calmly frantic as always—waves outnumber you even though the actual threats tend to mostly lumber forward. You have ample opportunity to run around in circles and reposition with reloads as you whittle down the hordes, and moments to catch your breath in between rounds and resupply. Then of course as you progress you will eventually be popping off giant flying meatballs in a race against time against a hungry demon cowboy who would very much like to eat your soul. It's the kind of par for the course insanity of zombies that makes it the thrilling game mode it is, and while those types of story beats do seem out of place in the campaign, they're right at home surrounded by the undead.

Black Ops 7 swings for the fences and packs so many ideas into its game modes. While many of the changes fail to land and the story is nonsense, ultimately what it is trying to do is give all players more game to play. You can progress through co-op not just PvP. You can enjoy seasonal story content through events that will be time-gated in Endgame. I am informed that Season 1 will be the largest seasonal content drop in CoD’s history, incorporating things like rampaging mutant dinosaurs into the Endgame. You are not just forced into biding the majority of your time locked into PvP until the next CoD installment.

This isn’t the best CoD ever, but it is the biggest and does have the most to do.

It’s not like Call of Duty is going anywhere. This game is a critical part of the annual gaming calendar—its release basically marks the start of the holiday season. It’s a part of the cultural zeitgeist. I mean, it becomes a point of contention in anti-trust cases and pumps out installments on that annual cycle for a game that is already too complex for an annual cycle. Maybe "the formula" has gotten a little stale. Previous attempts to shake things up, like Vanguard, were woefully bad in my opinion. 

Black Ops 7 is overstuffed and many of the new elements are a bit out of context, but the key is to figure out how to keep and build upon the best bits. If Treyarch wants to evolve this game, then it needs to be careful to not just throw the baby out with the bathwater on the stuff that doesn’t land. Figure out what is working and can be iterated upon while dropping the choices that are a bridge too far. 

Even much of the present criticism seems overblown to me. We live in an era where folks do love to be mad online and stoking those flames seem to garnish better attention than keeping a level head. I get it that AI slop is bad and it is pretty obviously employed in Black Ops 7 in many non-gameplay assets. So yeah that’s bathwater, throw that out and do better. Also the overly long unskippable cutscenes, maybe not toss them but at least add a skip button. I love Michael Rooker as an actor, but if I’ve seen the cutscene once already there is no reason for me to sit through the rerun.

The nonsense story and going all-in on hallucinogenics seems like a bathwater, but it does allow you to introduce new enemy types and boss battles in interesting ways. Sure, maybe I do want to try and fight the Iron Giant because that movie was sad and made kids cry and its only because of leaning into the nonsense that we can live out that promise in Season 1. Maybe this just isn't the game for those types of things. It's up for debate. The Endgame in general, not bathwater. There needs to be a more compelling reward to engage in it and more jeopardy to survive it but I think it's a very good idea to introduce seasonal elements outside PvP and organically extend the playing hours we can plonk into the game. 

This is not your father's Call of Duty, and not the Call of Duty that many fans probably wanted. But it is the biggest and boldest Call of Duty we've ever seen. Some of that is due to overstuffing it with ideas, but there are some tangibly positive takeaways that we can pan out, sifting some gold from the muddy river. If you wanted a dyed-in-the-wool military buddy squad simulator, these are not the CoDs you are looking for. But if you just want to shoot some guns and decompress in a video game, and not for a moment forget this is just a silly game, you can find your fun in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.