So I’m a Call of Duty fanboy, always have been and I want to say always will be but man…. I’m being pushed to breaking point.
I genuinely thought that strong competition from Battlefield this year would be healthy for the FPS genre and that COD would start to heal. Turns out I’m wrong and we’ll all still just buy slop in a desperate attempt to recapture the glory days of the PS3/360 era. Don’t think that’s happening any time soon.
For anyone interested, the game might be worth it if you’re super invested in Zombies (Ashes of the Damned is okay), and like the yearly Multiplayer grind, just don’t come in like me – expecting a follow up to 2012’s incredible Black Ops 2. What awaits is not that; the “Co-op Campaign” is a soulless, recycled experience that doesn’t even resemble Call of Duty, and yep, we’ve got the latest FAD in here as well – AI garbage.
Make Treyarch great again
After the release of Black Ops 4 I was very worried for the future of Treyarch’s titles, and with good reason. Studio heads David Vonderhaar (Multiplayer/Blackout) and Jason Blundell (Zombies) left the company and I always wondered why – this is why.
Back to back releases of the same series (two Modern Warfare games and then two Black Ops games) just isn’t working, much in the same way as 2014, 2015 and 2016 gave us back to back to back futuristic “boots off the ground” games. This is weird as more studios work on Call of Duty now then ever before (Raven have been supporting for many years now), especially as in the aforementioned golden era it was just two. During the seventh generation it was just Treyarch and Infinity Ward making their games on a 2 (later 3) year cycle and it worked, so what went wrong? Was it loot boxes? Skill-based matchmaking? Theme destroying skins? AI slop? Genuinely running out of ideas? All of that? This one hurts as I’m a Campaign guy, I play them all because I like the stories, the characters, the set pieces, the villains, and how each game’s Campaign mode sets the tone for the Multiplayer and the maps you play on. That just isn’t seen in Black Ops 7 and it’s a damn shame.
So here it is, the Black Ops 7 Campaign. Oh god, the Campaign. If you can call it that, as it’s basically a parody of itself at this point. It’s the worst, 1 out of 10. The only COD Campaign I’ve literally just sprinted through to finish it (and hilariously you can and run straight past enemies). It’s worse than Vanguard, worse than Modern Warfare 3 (2023), worse than “train go boom”. You can’t play on veteran difficulty any more (or any difficulty for that matter), it doesn’t have checkpoints, you can’t pause it. In Campaign. Playing solo. Incredible.
So apart from the above why is it so bad I hear you ask? Well I’ll tell you why, then I’ll show you. It’s a lazily written, terrible looking, badly voice acted cringe fest, that stitches crap missions together with a Warzone-esque main sandbox area that players can run around in after they finish the ‘story’.
It uses multiple assets from previous games, over-relies on celebrity appearances, and just phones the entire thing in, missing the mark entirely. It’s clearly designed for co-op, as seen when your teammates suddenly disappear after cutscenes when playing solo (there aren’t even AI teammates), and I can’t believe the developers didn’t learn their lesson the last time they attempted it. In fact it’s worse here, with bullet sponge enemies with health bars, a boss fight against a turret, a boss fight against a Resident Evil monster, and I’ve already given up. They even do Menendez dirty. Oh and seasonal Warzone story updates don’t count, they’ve been doing it for 5 years now and it sucks.
I truly believe that it existing the way that it does is actively disrespectful to the game that it is poorly attempting to be the sequel of. My favourite Call of Duty game. For shame.
If the next game is Modern Warfare 4 Infinity Ward need to bring something to the table or we’re done here. Classic Campaign is the only way – Infinite Warfare’s was good, Modern Warfare (2019) was good, hell give me Ghosts 2, or better yet something fresh and original that has actual passion put into it by people who play the games or just stop, please. Rant over, thank you for letting me get that off my chest. Can’t wait for next year’s instalment. 🤡