People buy Call of Duty games for the multiplayer gameplay. The series has had some classic campaigns in the past, but the days where people spend extra time grinding through each mission on Veteran mode while dodging dozens of grenades are over. Most players might play through the campaign once, but there are many more that'll just dabble in a single mission or ignore it entirely. Shooting mindless NPC soldiers is nowhere near as satisfying as taking down other players -- people just like you -- with the same weapons and options they have available, the only differentiator being your skills and strategies.
But that doesn't mean the campaign is pointless. 2018's Black Ops 4 didn't have one, and it was still a success, but the negative reception from fans meant that publisher Activision hasn't ran the risk of skipping an annual campaign since -- even if the multiplayer, Zombies and Blackout battle royale modes were well received.
They probably should've skipped the campaign for Black Ops 7, though.
Game development budgets have inflated rapidly over the past two decades, and 2020's Black Ops Cold War cost $700 million USD to make. That's one of the reasons why -- post the Microsoft acquisition of Call of Duty publisher Activision-Blizzard -- the series has shifted away from its two or three-year development schedule. 2022's Modern Warfare II was followed up by 2023's less impressive Modern Warfare III, and now 2024's brilliant Black Ops 6 is being followed by 2025's messy Black Ops 7.
In essence, the series is now seeing true, new Call of Duty installments followed by what amounts to DLC expansions. Black Ops 7 is packing an original campaign, sure enough, but it's basically just more of the same from Black Ops 6, only not quite as good.
Black Ops 7 is set in the year 2035, a decade after the events of Black Ops II, and continues the story of characters long-time Call of Duty fans will be familiar with. While Black Ops 6 sparsely used hallucinogenic gasses to contextualize some non-traditional campaign missions which featured zombies or horror scares, Black Ops 7 uses gasses in almost every mission to give the developers the ability to just do whatever they want -- or whatever they can. Your four-man squad uses mind-linking technology to share hallucinations and browse the memories of others with the same tech in their heads, and therefore, most of the stages involve zombies and reused maps and missions from previous Call of Duty games.
Black Ops' Vorkuta mission -- a prison escape fraught with danger -- is one of the most memorable and iconic campaign sequences in the entire series. Black Ops 7 allows you to revisit the memory of Vorkuta, only there are zombies everywhere, and it's boring now. In another mission you'll fight through the Hijacked map -- a mega-yacht out at sea -- while NPCs spawn from every corner. In another mission, one of your squadmates becomes emotionally unstable so you must enter his mental space in order to shoot down a giant version of him while being chased by -- again -- zombies. Black Ops 7 reuses recognizable and classic maps and setpieces, while completely misunderstanding what made them memorable in the first place, and the new stuff is of comically low quality. Not even having friends join you for the co-op campaign improves the experience enough to make it worth playing.
The Zombies experience is decent enough, if you're still a fan of the Zombies mode, but the maps here have once again ballooned in size, and Ashes of the Damned is the biggest round-based Zombies map in the history of the series. I'm not sure who thinks larger Zombies maps benefit the game at all.
There's also a new Endgame mode that was locked behind campaign completion prior to a recent update, and this is similar to the Zombies mode from 2023's Modern Warfare III, only without the zombies, and located on a new large-scale map. You'll fight your way through increasingly dangerous zones to get more equipment and weapons, and you'll lose what you've gathered if you don't extract before the end of the mission. It's fine, but once again, shooting mindless NPCs isn't as interesting as facing off against real people.
Finally, there are the traditional Call of Duty multiplayer modes, and we're happy to say that they're pretty good. Black Ops 7's tight selection of weapons and maps rejuvenates the classic multiplayer formula, and you won't be forced to discard your lobby of players between games either, allowing natural rivalries to form with whomever you're put in a match with. It feels as close to classic Call of Duty multiplayer as the series has in nearly a decade, and not even the eyebrow-raising wall jump mechanic can ruin that.
It doesn't salvage the rest of the experience, though. Black Ops 7 feels like an expensive expansion to last year's release, mostly consisting of content that's either lackluster or just unappealing. If you're only interested in the series to play the multiplayer mode until the next release, then Black Ops 7 is one of the best, but if you're looking at the package as a whole, it's one of the biggest disappointments in years, especially when seen as a sequel to Black Ops 6's substantial campaign, modes and mechanics. The game even features what appear to be AI-generated calling cards, which is yet another factor that makes this release feel rushed compared to past entries.
Ultimately, if you buy Call of Duty annually for the multiplayer, you've probably already purchased Black Ops 7, but if you're still on the fence, then it might be worth waiting, or even looking toward Battlefield 6 for a fresh and robust FPS experience in 2025. Black Ops 7 doesn't do enough to impress or refine what Call of Duty is, and will likely leave new owner Microsoft thinking hard about the next steps for the series.