Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Review

“It’s been a few years since we’ve seen a Black Ops game” is how a Black Ops review usually begins, but here we are with Black Ops 7 just a year after the release of Black Ops 6. Given the back-to-back Black Ops, you might expect 7 to be an incremental release of 6, but that’s not entirely the case here. The most subtle change is to the multiplayer action, with Black Ops 7 being less twitchy and bouncy than 6. This isn’t a full “boots on the ground” transition, but those of you like me who prefer things to be a little more tactical will appreciate the decreased emphasis on moves that would get a soldier quickly killed IRL.

Call of Duty games have been brushing up against full integrated progression for a few years now, but in Black Ops 7 full integration has finally been realized. Everything you play in the game – single player, Zombies, multiplayer, and even Dead Ops (yes, Dead Ops has returned) – will increase your player level and give you access to unique unlocks. So, if you’re like me and want to hit the campaign first, you won’t be jumping into the multiplayer action at level one once you’re done.

Since I’ve already let you know that I am a campaign kind of guy – it’s what got me into Call of Duty in the first-place years ago – let’s start there. If you’ve played the Black Ops games from the beginning, then you’ll know that as far as narratives go it’s the most twisty and, shall we say, not the most consistent and easy to follow of stories in all of the various Call of Duty sub-universes. Since Black Ops has not necessarily felt the need to maintain a single narrative thread, the story in Black Ops 7 draws far more upon the events of Black Ops 2 than it does from other games in the series. If you didn’t play that game or simply can’t remember the story from a game that you played thirteen years ago, well, you’re kind of on your own. There’s no in-game story recap or the kind of flashbacks that can help bring you up to date. However, the devs behind the game apparently realized the need for a least a small recap, so they released this video before launch which I will share with you here:

When you’re ready to jump into the campaign, you may be momentarily confused as to where to find the single player campaign. Well, that’s because there is no single player campaign – the entire campaign in Black Ops 7 is co-op, so there’s only a “Co-op Campaign” menu selection. That’s not to say that you can’t play on your own, though, you can still solo your way through it and the game will scale down the difficulty since you’ll be all on your lonesome. You can even mix things up as you go along, decide whether or not to play each individual mission on your own or with up to three other players. When I was speaking with the devs behind the campaign, they said that the sweet spot is three players – not that you can’t complete the missions with a different team size, just that the level design is best experienced with three players. The cutscenes all feature a full squad of four – David Mason, Eric Samuels, Leilani Tupuola, and Mike Harper – no matter how many players are in your squad, which is fine unless you’re the purest of purists.

When going co-op, you’ll wait in a matchmaking lobby just like in multiplayer to tag up with friends or internet randos. It is possible to bring your friends into a mission even if they are behind you in the campaign, but they won’t be able to collect any of the progression goodies from the prior missions until they actually play them. I’ve played the missions solo and in three and four player squads, and the biggest difference that I noticed is that it simply takes longer to complete missions playing solo than if does with some squadmates because the enemy count seems to stay roughly the same.

The cross-progression does indeed help those who campaign first – by the end of the first mission I was level seven, had leveled-up a couple of weapons, and scored a blueprint unlock as well as all of the progression unlocks that come to those who reach level seven. Play a couple of missions, and you’re ready to begin multiplayer with custom loadouts and higher tier weapons.

Now that we’ve got the logistics sorted out, we can move on to the campaign itself … and it’s probably not what you were expecting from a Call of Duty campaign, not even a Black Ops one. Without spoiling too much of the story, I can tell you that a hallucinogenic gas created by The Guild leads to some very interesting battles and situations.

This is also the first Call of Duty that features boss fights – and not fights against a powered-up nemesis, but genuine, honest-to-goodness boss fights that require learning attack patterns, weak spots, and everything else programmed into the brains of platform gamers. Now you may be initially put off by this news, but I had more fun with the Black Ops 7 campaign than I have in Call of Duty for a few years now. Purists will just have to accept that they’re not in classic World War II scenarios as in Call of Duty: Vanguard after all, and are instead fighting in surreal landscapes against imaginary enemies that can kill you.

The enemies in this year’s campaign tend to require a lot more damage before dropping down – the battles certainly aren’t realistic in a tactical sense, but they feature plenty of “out there” enemies so you’re not in Kansas anymore anyway. Ammo is in abundant supply, both in caches and from enemy drops, and you have plenty of opportunities to swap out weapons and tacticals, find new gear and abilities, and even pick-up score streaks. If you don’t like the weapons you brought into a mission, don’t worry, there will be plenty of opportunities to change them as you play. You’ll even occasionally happen by an upgrade station that will let you instantly boost the rarity of one of your carried weapons.

There are eleven missions in the campaign in all, and expect to put in about six to eight hours depending on the type of player you are. In the past, once you’ve completed the campaign you were pretty much done with it, unless you were a completionist who missed a piece of intel here and there, but Black Ops 7 provides a couple of ways to keep things going. First of all, I was told that you can expect new missions and story content to be released as a part of future seasons. Yay, finally! Secondly, once you beat the campaign and make your way through a Marvel movie style end credits sequence, you’ll find yourself wingsuiting your way into the End Game.

End Game is an evolved version of Spec Ops. In End Game, you enter an enormous map filled with missions and random encounters. And you won’t be alone. You can team up with a squad of up to four players and you’ll see other player squads on the map as well (up to 32 total players per instance). You don’t have to worry about them taking you out – this isn’t Warzone – but you can certainly work together to make things a little easier for each other. The cross-game integration means that you’ll encounter enemies from both the campaign as well as Zombies. There are even Destiny 2 style Public Events in which players can converge to take down powerful enemies for big rewards.

End Game does feature its own separate player progression – you begin at level one and can progress up to fifty, with the game divided into zones suitable for progressively higher-level ranges. In addition to leveling-up (fifty is the initial max level), you’ll be able to expend points in skill tracks to specialize your role – Gunner, Surgeon, Tactician, Berserker, and Bulldozer. The catch to all of this is that it’s rogue-like, so if you want to keep the gains you’ve earned you need to execute a successful exfil. There is a match timer, so you’ll need to be sure that you exfil within fifty minutes of beginning play.

End Game will also benefit from seasonal content. The team at Treyarch provided me with a sneak peek at some of the encounters planned for the future, including a zombie T-Rex and a giant robot – so giant, in fact, that you can infiltrate its outer shell and wreak havoc with its innards. Cool stuff.

I had a lot of fun with the campaign, and End Game will provide an interesting way to keep the co-op play going, but now let’s move on to Zombies. First off, early access to the game did not mean early access to the new Zombies story and puzzles, I’ll have to try and figure things out with everyone else when that content drops after launch. I did however spend a fair amount of time with the level-based progression, even achieving a run to round 41, although, full disclosure, one of my squadmates was a developer on the Zombies team at Treyarch.

For those of you not too familiar with Zombies mode the basic premise is simple; see how long you can survive against waves of ever-increasingly tougher enemies. You’ll have the opportunity to find new weapons and upgrade them and get your hands on other resources that can be carried with you into future matches – but only if you successfully exfil first. Push your luck too far, and you miss out on all of that new loot as well as the XP bonus that comes with a timely bugout. An exfil can be attempted beginning at round 11, and then at each five-round interval after that. When an exfil is possible, you will see a phone booth and its phone will be ringing. Answer it and the exfil will begin. You’re not out that easily, though, as first you’ll need to defeat a powerful enemy (and its friends) before you are safely whisked to the summary screen.

The map in Black Ops 7’s Zombie iteration, dubbed Ashes of the Damned, is a hub-and-spoke design. There is a central area – Ashwood – interconnected to additional areas. The routes between them run through The Fog and are uber dangerous and meant to be traversed via your truck, Ol’ Tessie. As your team drives down the narrow paths between the zones, you’ll have to contend with attacks from vicious hordes of fast-moving zombie crawlers and landmine like growths along the road. Should Tessie fail to stand-up to the beating, you’ll likely quickly succumb to the attacking hordes. You’ll be able to increase your chances of survival by spending scrap to purchase upgrades at a garage in Ashwood. There’s a lot available (and planned) for Tessie beyond a stronger body like a zombie plow attachment, ray gun headlights, and a jet engine.

Each of the zones in Ashes of the Damned – Janus Towers Plaza, Vandorn Farm, Exit 115 (a classic roadside diner map), Blackwater Lake, and Zarya Cosmodrome – plays a bit differently and can feature unique enemies (watch out for zombie cosmonauts at the Cosmodrome). Vandorn Farm features a large open central area with a couple of small structures, for example, while Blackwater Lake features some long looping paths built for kiting zombies in pursuit. They also each have their own unique combination of the various upgrade stations, which encourages teams to actively move from zone to zone rather than camping out at a favorite. There are jump pads available in the zones that can be used as quick travel points – the trick is that they need to be activated first. And if the idea of hitting the road often during a match doesn’t appeal to you, you can play Vandorn Farm in a pure survival mode.

Part of the fun of Zombies comes from all of the weapons, power-ups, and upgrades available. Colas that bestow perks, ammo mods that can turn zombies into your allies or launch fireworks on impact, and, of course, GobbleGums with all of their various effects, spawns, and bonuses. You’ll find many of these things returning from Zombies modes past, but I found myself really liking some of the new additions like the new GobbleGum Requipment that refills your equipment slots for you. And then there’s Toxic Growth which is a new upgrade that spawns a patch of toxic thorns. I found it really effective to lead zombies towards and wait for them on the other side of it. I could really mow them down as they struggled to make their way through the thorns and took toxic damage as they did. It’s good to see that Augment Research has returned, allowing you to power-up ammo mods, field upgrades, and perks even further.

Anyone who’s enjoyed Zombies mode in the past should be happy with Ashes of the Damned. The map structure and zone variety, as well as the way the various stations are spread across different zones, really do add a lot variability to each of your runs. In older Zombie modes you could find yourself settling into a routine in which each time you played you’d basically follow the same script, but Ashes of the Damned gives you a lot of leeway to experiment and try out new approaches.

And while you are in the Zombies mode portion of the game, make sure that you don’t miss the other game mode option lurking there. Dead Ops 4 is a complete arcade style game contained within Black Ops 7 – you could easily see an indie game like it on Steam going for $20 or more. Dead Ops 4 is a twin-stick shooter that owes a lot to Smash TV, if you can remember that game from the 90s or its rebirth on Xbox Live Arcade fifteen years or so ago. The game’s title screen is certainly an homage to the 90s arcade cabinet, with its painted overlay surrounding the periphery of the screen. Once you start playing, though, you’ll find that the game’s tribute to the past does not extend to its graphics, which are high-res and use way more colors than a 16-bit palette could ever deliver.

The story is basically that Papa the ape has stolen your chicken and you want it back. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, most of the levels involve wiping out all of the zombies entering the room that you’re in from the doors at the cardinal positions. Different weapons will spawn into the room as you’re playing, giving you a boost to your firepower. That boost will be even greater if you pick up the same weapon again as they stack to power-up your firepower. Various forms of treasure from gold bars to golden calves will drop in as well, and grabbing these will boost your score for the run.

The gameplay is challenging – even for those who have played plenty of twin-stick shooters before – and making it to the end will take patience, practice, and some luck. As you make it farther down the path to Papa, the zombies get tougher and you’ll face some new, and shall we say, interesting, varieties as well.

It’s not all arena rooms, though. The level designers certainly had some fun adding additional variety to the mode. I don’t want to spoil all of the fun here, but expect some trap-filled challenge rooms or R.C. Pro-Am style races in your future.

The Casual mode of Dead Ops 4 is challenging enough, but Standard mode is available if you want to really push your skills (a Hardcore mode is apparently on the way as well). Want even more challenge? Try playing the mode in first-person, which takes away the situational awareness advantage you get from a top-down perspective. And conversely, if the challenge proves to be a bit too much, Dead Ops 4 can be played in co-op with up to four players total. Should you buy Black Ops 7 just for Dead Ops 4? No, but it’s a great bonus to get what is essentially an entire game as an extra bonus/diversion with Black Ops 7.

OK, so now I’ve finally reached multiplayer. Let’s start with the game feel, which as I mentioned a few thousand words ago is a little less twitchy/bouncy than Black Ops 6. There are still parts of some of the maps where wall running and vaulting are necessary to navigate some of the pathways, but these are more isolated and less of an overall feature. You’ll still find plenty of players who like bouncing like bunnies or sliding into home plate in every room, but it feels like that style of play isn’t necessarily as advantageous or necessary as has been the case in the past.

Returning modes from the previous games include the usual mix of kill-focused (Free-for-All, Team Deathmatch, and Kill Confirmed), objective-focused (Control, Hardpoint, and Domination), and team modes (Search and Destroy, and Kill Order). And don’t worry, Gunfight is still there, a fan-favorite mode (at least for me) in which one or two player teams face off against each other on smaller maps with a random loadout and the directive to eliminate the other team. Personally, I’m still partial to the objective modes, although I do have a soft spot for Kill Confirmed. There’s a new team mode in Overlord, which requires one team to successfully bring a device into one of two enemy zones – a kind of asymmetrical CTF mode. I like it more than Search and Destroy, but not as much as Kill Order, for what that’s worth.

My favorite addition to the multiplayer modes is Skirmish. Teams of up to twenty players battle on a map that’s larger than those used in other modes, but not so big that you spend a third of the match trying to walk to where the action is. Objectives are random and can be placed anywhere on the map, and there’s usually three of them active at once. You may need to capture and hold a zone, or hack a device and protect it until it completes its task.

Vehicles such as APCs and choppers are available in this mode, which is always fun, but I particularly liked the way that spawning is handled. Rather than spawning into set zones or on other players, you spawn by wingsuiting into the map. This allows you to pick where you want to deploy and come in anywhere from ground level to the top of a building. You’re still vulnerable while you’re in the air, but picking off players as they wingsuit in is a lot more difficult than ambushing a spawn location and getting a handful of quick and dirty kills. There are two maps available at launch for Skirmish, the battle within the walls of a Medieval fortress Tide, and the high-rise business park of Edge. I usually limit my playlist to Control, Domination, Hardpoint, and Kill Confirmed, but in Black Ops 7 I’ll be in Skirmish far more than any other mode.

Black Ops 7 of course comes with more weapons than you’d want me to just list out here, as well as a full gunsmith customization system that allows you to tweak them even further to suit your playstyle. I really like that you can generate a code for each build, allowing it to be shared with other gamers. Of course, they’ll need to have all of the requisite weapon and attachments unlocked and available first. The capability to copy the full build from another player in a match is awesome. If you see someone wreaking havoc on your team, you can copy their build and try it out yourself in your next match.

Another nice addition to the game is overclocking. Gaining experience with a tactical, lethal, upgrade, or scorestreak will allow you to select one of two overclocks. These usually make things faster to use or add a new capability. For example, overclocking the D.A.W.G. scorestreak will give it the capability to deploy a supply pack and trophy system when used.

Black Ops 7 launches with sixteen maps (plus the two dedicated to Skirmish) that provide for a variety of environments. I liked seeing Hijacked return; I really do enjoy the way that the luxury yacht setting captures the very essence of three-lane map design. It’s not the only map returning from Black Ops 2 – the beachside mansion of Raid and the bullet train station of Express make a welcome comeback. The new maps cover the usual run of environments for Call of Duty, from rural outposts to city centers, from industrial centers to small towns. Personally, I enjoyed the Alaskan wilderness setting of Homestead, the claustrophobic drilling platform of Blackheart, and the Japanese feudal castle Den, but I can’t say I disliked or tried to avoid any of the others.

I have to add a final caveat at this point. I played through the game on a PC provided to me to get a first look at the final game. I don’t know what’s involved in getting your rig ready to play the game, or how it will perform on older PCs, so pay attention to the recommended specs. For those of you who are console gamers, I did subsequently spend a chunk of time with the game on a PlayStation 5, and can report that it performed admirably on that platform in addition to the PC that I used.

This is by far the longest review I’ve written this year, but it’s hard to do justice to all of the gameplay that comes packed into Black Ops 7 otherwise. And I enjoyed all of it – this isn’t one of those iterations in the series that disappointed me with its campaign or frustrated me because it twitched out the multiplayer to the point of ridiculousness for the sake of YouTube and TikTok. It will take some time to make your way through the campaign, the Zombies mode story, and to hit Prestige in multiplayer, and from what I’ve seen that’s planned for future seasons, there is a lot more gameplay coming in the future. Overall, Black Ops 7 is the best Call of Duty game I’ve played in a few years.