Black Ops 7 Is Call of Duty’s Sloppiest Entry To Date

In my first three hours playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, I sprinted across over half a dozen well-designed maps, gunning down foes and capturing objectives. Its core mechanics are as silky smooth here as they’ve been over the last 20 years. But in the middle of a match on the snowy, multi-laned map Homestead, I had the epiphany that I was totally on autopilot. I couldn’t remember any particularly interesting moments that had happened in the time I’d sunk into the game so far. And in a year where popular multiplayer games have become increasingly about moments, this felt odd.

Anytime I sat down to play Black Ops 7, I couldn’t say I was excited to do so. That’s not to say I didn't have fun. In typical Call of Duty fashion, there are enough modes and oddities to make this worth the $70 asking price for those still hooked on this annualized series and ready to pump another 1,000 hours into its live service.

But just a year after the series had such a strong showing, one that got me playing after 15 years away from the series, the sheen already feels like it's worn off. This is certainly a newer Call of Duty with all the expected bells and whistles. But across all categories, I can’t say that it stands out against much of the stiff competition it finds itself facing in 2025.

Fun with the Bare Minimum

This year’s Call of Duty campaign is a direct sequel to fan favorite, Black Ops 2. It tells the story of David Mason and his squad of ragtag soldiers tracking down the alleged whereabouts of international criminal Raul Menendez. Meanwhile, a technology mega corporation known as The Guild has set off the suspicions of the intelligence community that it's somehow involved in this reemerging global threat.

There’s nothing here for newcomers. As someone who didn’t play any of the Black Ops games before last year, the larger familial revelations around Mason and his older colleagues meant nothing to me. Making things worse is just how predictable it all is. There’s little mystery around The Guild’s scheme and intentions. Your squadmates are given the illusion of depth and internal conflict in playable scenes before the game rushes you off to the next combat scenario. And worst of all, it’s an ugly game to look at.

The surrealist level design that makes up a big chunk of the game isn’t as subversive as the developers probably thought it was. It’s a real shame too, because I love the idea. Contrary to popular belief, I think Call of Duty is at its best when it's weird and trying something off the wall. But Black Ops 7’s idea of “weird” is a bunch of reused assets from other modes and previous games haphazardly slapped together to feel like a new thing. And the slapdash nature of it all is obvious from the very start.

The campaign’s saving grace is that it's meant to be played in co-op. This design choice comes at a very big cost. Those jumping in solo won’t see AI companions fighting alongside them (despite constant chatter from them in missions). Call of Duty’s signature cinematic setpieces are replaced with waves of enemies spilling out of monster closets and bullet sponge bosses. You can’t even pause the game, as the entire campaign is technically a multiplayer instance.

But if you’re playing the campaign as it was designed, Black Ops 7 is undeniably fun. It’s fun to zoom around a large Warzone map taking out enemies, even if those enemies are devoid of any intelligence. It’s fun to shoot at a building-sized Michael Rooker when flanked by friends talking about how silly it all is. And the game’s grand finale (a half-step towards the extraction shooter mode destined to be expanded in the next game) is fun enough to warrant replays, something the developers are mercifully adding to the list of multiplayer modes just a week after launch.

Call of Duty is unabashedly in its friendslop era. It’s simple, mindless entertainment that gets by on basic social mechanics and scenarios built for co-op. Whether a franchise as big as Call of Duty (nine studios worked on Black Ops 7) should be given the grace to emulate what most studios a tenth of its size do out of necessity is a different story. And compared to those much more compelling games, like R.E.P.O. and Peak, Black Ops 7 is undeniably the least interesting of the bunch across 2025’s favorite subgenre.

But for what it is, Black Ops 7 delivers a fun distraction for four players to run through before literally being funneled into the main draw of the game: the multiplayer modes.

Multiplayer Saves The Day

There’s so little to say about Black Ops 7’s standard competitive multiplayer mode when it simply follows the series formula to mostly fine results. For most people, this is essentially the same experience that players had last year, with a few tweaks that reflect the near-future setting. Players can now wall jump, allowing them to reach higher parts of a level quickly. It’s a nice, if not minor, addition to last year’s omni-movement system, which returns this year.

Certain aspects of omni-movement have changed. Some of your versatility, such as the ability to aim down sights while sprinting and diving, has now been locked behind specific assignable perks. Tactical sprint, which lets you bolt across maps at top speed, is also no longer a part of the game’s base movement.

For someone playing casually, such as myself, this made for a slightly more grounded and methodical experience compared to Black Ops 6. For that reason, Black Ops 7 gets the slight edge for feeling a tad more approachable, even if it comes at the cost of dampening the most mechanically exciting additions of last year’s game.

“...with just two maps at launch, vehicles that aren’t fun to drive, and little incentive to slow down and coordinate with teammates, Skirmish ends up feeling like a poor man’s Battlefield 6.”

Maps in this year’s game excel, as they are a little easier to understand compared to last year's. They're based on lanes rather than wide open spaces. The simplistic design works well with the more tactical feel of its combat. In particular, the maps Hijacked, Toshin, and of course, Homestead, were my personal favorites.

The big new attraction is the 20 vs. 20 mode called Skirmish. It’s set on bigger maps where players can use a wingsuit to close the distance between mandatory objectives. It’s essentially a spruced-up version of Ground War from past games. But with just two maps at launch, vehicles that aren’t fun to drive, and little incentive to slow down and coordinate with teammates, Skirmish ends up feeling like a poor man’s Battlefield 6. Black Ops 7’s mechanics just lend themselves better to the more intimate 6-on-6 battles the series is known for.

Meanwhile, Endgame, the new mode that acts as the final chapter of the co-op campaign, fares much better. It’s a 32-player extraction shooter that lets players drop into a large map, clear objectives to collect caches with valuable unlocks and rewards, and pulling out before dying and losing it all. And there are some ideas here, like the escalating difficulty that comes with trying to nab just one more reward. My interest was piqued by what this mode could evolve into in the next game.

But like Skirmish mode and Black Ops 7’s campaign, I can’t say that Endgame is doing anything better than the games it imitates. Those interested in checking out the extraction shooter genre are much better served by titles that offer a much more fleshed-out, dedicated experience.

A Series Way Off Course

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Black Ops 7’s use of generative AI for certain visual assets, such as prestige icons and in-game calling cards, is head-scratching, to say the least. The calling cards that have a Studio Ghibli-art style to them, a common theme in some AI-generated art this year, went viral as users pointed out how AI-generated they looked. While Activision says AI tools “empower and support” the many teams who worked on this game, I can’t help but see this as emblematic of all the ways the series is cutting corners this year.

This isn’t the first time Call of Duty’s leaned on generative AI. But at the very least, its usage was cordoned off to seasonal load screens and dumb, one-off cosmetics. When it's front and center from launch, it feels especially offensive. Black Ops 6 made $2.75 billion last year. Activision’s refusal to reinvest that profit into artists (or better yet, use it to keep the ones you had employed) speaks to the very same culture and cynicism that has created the malaise around Call of Duty this year. If they don’t care to put their all into a franchise they insist on releasing annually, then why should I invest in them when there are so many other shooters bothering to innovate in the space?

Black Ops 7 is the 23rd consecutive Call of Duty game, and it certainly feels like it. While the series is literally too large to fail this early on in its decline, it's very clear that this is not Call of Duty’s year. The pre-launch hype shows it. Online player numbers show it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if sales figures reflect this sentiment a few months from now.

It’s not totally irredeemable. There’s some fun to be had in the campaign. Multiplayer keeps the bar at the exact same level it’s been at for three years now. And the new modes should keep loyal fans, unwilling to try newer, more interesting games with more depth, happy.

But for most people, Black Ops 7 is everything negative the series has been accused of over the years, manifest. It’s a cynically made asset flip, one whose ambition pales in comparison to the game this team made one year ago. Most of what’s good about Black Ops 7 is based on the series' over two-decade-long legacy. Everything else is either fun despite a clear lack of effort, or outclassed by competitors that are innovating in the online shooter space.

Black Ops 7 is a grave sign of what’s ahead for Call of Duty if the billion-dollar powers that be don’t allow the franchise developers to step back, reassess, and properly steer this careening ship back on course.

6/10

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC. Inverse was provided an Xbox Series X copy of the game for this review.

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