Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 review – Update requires restart

I took my time with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. By now, you've probably seen the response to it from countless others. It hasn't been enthusiastic, to put it kindly, resulting in some of the worst scores the series has seen in its 20 year legacy.

I didn't want to contribute to beating a dead horse. I kept playing, jumping from the campaign to the multiplayer, zombies mode, and endgame content before activating the seasonal challenges as they rolled out in the first monthly update.

After all, Call of Duty, like Battlefield, is a service title at this point rather than a standalone release. When the next edition launches in a year, Black Ops 7 won't look the same as it does now. It will still retain elements that make it a Call of Duty title, but it is designed to become whatever gets the fanbase to engage and spend more.

As with Battlefield, I can only review what Call of Duty is right now – not what it will be in the future. And right now, it's a miserable experience that only vaguely and in the most distant terms reminds me of the franchise that I once loved.

Right off the bat it's clear that Call of Duty is no longer interested in the finely crafted rollercoaster experience that has defined the franchise to date. In its place is a dreary slog through a half-open world – itself a setup for the upcoming Warzone update – that isn't designed for single-player. That becomes even more obvious once the game bluntly tells you there is no pausing during missions and the entire campaign is online-only.

That means no breaks, no checking maps, nothing in-between rounds, which are surprisingly long and nowhere near the exhilirating rushes of Michael Bay -style mayhem seen in prior games. And if you have a poor connection, you're in for an endless series of glitches and rubberbanding as the game treats the gameplay as it would an online multiplayer session.

Some will wonder why it matters, as Call of Duty has historically had a focus on the multiplayer segment, but it does. This is where some of us still get our kicks and learn the mechanics before we dive into the other sections of the game. In the past, the campaign has been home to some deliriously fun and campy storytelling, showcasing what an near-unlimited budget and talented crew can accomplish.

None of that is present here. Instead, we're forced to slog our way through an increasingly tedious world of celebrity cameos, clipshows of past moments, and inane genre-hopping that only detracts from the big picture.

Simply put, it isn't fun to play. The enemies are all the same, the boss battles feel like they're cast-offs of an MMO, and there's never a sense that you're playing anything but an afterthought thrown together from existing material at the last minute.

Things don't get any better in the multiplayer mode, which has strayed so far from the original mission statement that it now feels like the home to the endless hordes of try-hards and griefers instead of a community of all skill-levels.

The weapons, which are all a mix of future-fantasy with AI slop skins, have only a set few that overpower all others. This means that playing with anything but the meta-loadouts is asking for trouble, and even then you're probably going to have a bad time. New kill streaks include snipers that shoot through levels and even more gear that serve as legal wallhacks.

Balancing a multiplayer game like this is always a challenge, but Black Ops 7 feels so wildly out of focus that it begs the question who it's even meant for. The emphasis on verticality is another addition that is too little, too late, as the levels themselves don't keep up with how players move about the place. Everything feels like it's trying to catch up to Titanfall 2 from nearly 15 years ago.

The 20-player skirmish mode is a similar hodgepodge of ideas that never goes anywhere. It's like a midway point between multiplayer and Warzone, but with little thought to how the skills work in cramped maps that aren't quite small enough to keep up the pace, but neither are they big enough to allow for any sort of tactics.

As a result, despite a wealth of maps right out the gate, Black Ops 7 feels recycled and boring even when it overloads players with material. There's a lot of content, but none of it is memorable. The best parts are remastered maps of the past, which says a lot about how bad the situation is right now that we have to keep returning to a well from 10, almost 15 years ago.

Then there is the case of the AI slop, which is everywhere in Black Ops 7. For a game that starts at 70 Euros and goes well past the 100 Euro mark for the full edition, it is inexcusable that so much of its content is the laziest and ugliest AI generated crap you can find.

It poisons every aspect of the product. Whatever comes next has the question looming over it: was this generated with Grok or the likes of it?

The zombies mode comes out as the best of the bunch, though it feels even more aimless than ever before. It is now so far into its own thing that one wonders why it isn't split off entirely into an expanded standalone product.

There's a lot to do in the newfound "campaign" of sorts, and even the arcade mode is as addictive as ever. Played with friends, zombies offers a surprising amount of fun and the closest approximation of what Call of Duty once was.

But it's a sideshow, not the full thing, and it only highlights just how poor everything else is. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has no longer an identity. It is a marketing platform for no AI-ridden skins and tie-ins that feel increasingly desperate. Every new movie or game gets a skin pack, each costing more with every passing month. This was never a hardcore simulation of any kind, but it's not like you ever had the risk of seeing Jay and Silent Bob fight off Ninja Turtles, either.

That's because Call of Duty no longer sets trends, but chases them, and it does so with increasingly wobbly strides. It wants to be Fortnite because Fortnite makes a killing, and Activion is willing to destroy everything that made this brand iconic in search of short-term profits.

Eventually we all outgrow certain things we once loved. Perhaps now it's Call of Duty's turn. It was a good run while it lasted.