Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has the absolute worst campaign in CoD history.

This is my review.

The age of playing CoD for the single-player mode is well and truly over. Everything that comes out of the Call of Duty brand (the FPS Slop Factory) now exists solely to serve CoD Warzone. Any hope for a tantalizing narrative or a pulse-pounding thrill ride in the future has been utterly destroyed.

Black Ops 7 is a ghastly disappointment as a campaign. It feels more like a co-op PvE Warzone tutorial in disguise. Everything that makes a great Call of Duty game is absent here. All those incredible moments from past campaigns that we remember fondly were based on intense, high-stakes action. Remember “All Ghillied Up” and “One Shot, One Kill,” when you shoot Zakhaev’s arm off in CoD 4? “AC-130,” the nuke detonating, or the infamous “No Russian” mission? The snowmobile chase sequence or the moments of shattering betrayal, like when Shepard shoots Ghost? These are the blockbuster moments that made Call of Duty so great.

A Call of Duty campaign is supposed to be a rollercoaster from start to finish—a Michael Bay film, but YOU are the protagonist. Call of Duty is at its best when the game has firm direction and an exhilarating collection of set pieces. The best moments are when the game puts you in a cool situation, takes your hand, and says, “Let me show you something awesome.”

Absolutely none of that is present in Black Ops 7. This game is a veritable sleep aid.

I truly believe that there won’t be another proper Call of Duty game in the traditional sense. In part, this review will clarify the reasoning behind that opinion. Follow the money, and you will see that Warzone is everything.

The yearly multiplayer update is its own animal and functions as a narcotic for an obscene number of gamers. I think it serves as a storefront to advertise skins that are usable in Warzone, but that is another subject entirely, as is the Zombies mode. I want to focus on the co-op campaign.

Let’s start with the story.

This game is a direct sequel to Black Ops 2, which is before 3 but after 6? I don’t know, and it literally doesn’t matter. The entire “Black Ops timeline” is irrelevant to what happens in the story of this game. Treyarch doesn’t care, and neither should we.

After completing the co-op campaign of Black Ops 7, I see that Black Ops 6 was the last true CoD campaign. For all its flaws, Black Ops 6 had an actual sense of direction. BO6 wasn’t afraid to get especially silly in the latter half of the story, but it always kept a sense of identity. Whether you hated the zombie-centric missions or the bizarre Doom-style level design, everything formed a cohesive story and a solid action obstacle course. As I stated above, Black Ops 7 goes completely over the top to a disrespectful degree. The story is a jumbled mess of hallucinations centered around a terrible family drama. It is more like The Avengers and less like Saving Private Ryan, to say the least.

Every cutscene displays terribly written dialogue from characters I could not care less about. Other than Michael Rooker playing Michael Rooker, I don’t have a single standout memory of the acting or character traits of our appropriately diverse four-person squad.

Call of Duty jumps the shark when it claims to continue the Black Ops storyline. Whatever tension and potential interest could have been cultivated is completely shattered on a regular basis. My sincere apologies for being unable to remember what was going on in each scene, but I think it may be a trauma response. The main takeaway is that this is no longer a series about warfighting and globetrotting Special Forces units, but rather a boring drama starring boring characters who occasionally engage in boring firefights.

The problem is that most of the story takes place in Mason’s head. The Black Ops timeline is an alternate reality where technology is more advanced and there are mental-link chips implanted in your squadmates’ heads. I can accept that. I guess this is meant to justify a lot of the supersoldier actions they can perform throughout the game. Again, I can accept that if it is utilized for something. The real problem is that this plot device is just an excuse to put the player through ridiculous scenarios—and call it a premium video game experience.

“It’s all in your head” and “It was all a dream” are equally egregious foundations for a story. Unless we are talking about M. Night Shyamalan, that is just a poor excuse for bottom-of-the-barrel writing.

Bottom-of-the-barrel writing meets bottom-of-the-barrel level design.

This is the weakest Call of Duty ever. Not only is the story a sad and toothless tale of a military man’s daddy issues, but the narrative direction results in terrible level design. The chip in your head or frequent gas-induced hallucinations mean that the environment is often nonsensical. Many times, the mission will take place on a strange, otherworldly series of floating islands. If it isn’t something strange like that, you will find your squad leaping around plain, boring Warzone assets. Hilariously, even in the “grounded” sections of the game, my squad is hook-shotting and wingsuit flying across the battlefield. When I said that BO7 is more Avengers than Saving Private Ryan, I’m specifically referring to my quippy, tacti-cool squad members. The standard army-bro squad that one might expect is instead a racially diverse group of men and women who offer next to zero likability. Aside from Michael Rooker fans, nobody is going to be drawn in by any of the characters or their “witty” dialogue. Perhaps more like The Avengers, my squad is often capable of superhuman feats like leaping into the sky, wingsuiting, or deploying advanced ordnance. With a bit of imagination, it isn’t hard to see the cheap attempt to characterize these squadmates that was lifted.

After completing the co-op campaign, it’s clear that the formula borrowed from comic-book hero tropes fails in this case, as each moment of expression, story beat, or exposition is entirely unlikeable.

This isn’t Call of Duty anymore.

Due to the head-chip plot device, the game often comes up with an excuse to visit old locations from prior games in the series. “Remember Hijacked?” That’s right: the multiplayer map from Black Ops 2 is back again for its third or fourth appearance, but this time as a full-length Call of Duty campaign mission. The yacht from the multiplayer map Hijacked is admittedly a good opportunity for something meaningful, but unfortunately, it was a weak attempt. Other maps are also reused in this manner. I recognized parts of the multiplayer map Red Card from CoD Black Ops Cold War in a later mission. Vorkuta, the Soviet labor camp featured in the original Black Ops (2010) and later in Black Ops 6, is back yet again as the setting for one of Black Ops 7’s most shocking moments. Vorkuta, in particular, was a much stronger use of nostalgia, but even then, this advantage was squandered by zombies. Zombies here are actually very symbolic of the state of Call of Duty. This mission offers a clear sample of zombies, multiplayer nostalgia, and Warzone elements being mashed into one.

The shocking use of zombies could have been a good thing, but it mostly felt cheap. By this point in the game, our squad has instantly teleported from scene-to-scene countless times because of some sci-fi gibberish; the stakes are nonexistent, and nothing matters anymore.

It seems like there wasn’t a single creative or original idea available, so the developers went to the cutting room floor, found the discarded ideas, threw everything into a blender, and packaged the results. Again, I think it is very likely that this game was born from a prototype of a PvE alternative to Warzone.

The only feature I liked in this game is the ability to switch to a third-person perspective. The feature first appeared in the multiplayer of one of the newer CoD Modern Warfare games, and I think it is a great way to handle certain segments of the co-op campaign. I also think it is a way to differentiate this game from the typical controls and playstyles that people associate with Call of Duty. It bears repeating that third person is one of the only correct choices made by the developers because it helps to break preconceived notions and open players’ minds to all of the painfully incorrect choices. All of these choices I am referring to are related to the elimination of the solo campaign and the absolutely ludicrous fantasy influences.

Each of these details of Black Ops 7 devalues the creative direction and sabotages all of the potential enjoyment.

There is no solo mode.

Sure, you can select “No autofill” on the mission select screen to avoid matchmaking with random players, but that doesn’t address the real issue. The real problem is that the missions and the narrative are structured around four players. Each of these four characters is emoting, quipping, and partaking in the general conversation as you play—which is super weird when they are nowhere to be found. When you play with no autofill, you are entirely alone. No NPC squadmates, no backup, nothing. Aside from the aforementioned zombie section, you won’t have any company or assistance despite hearing their voices. I suppose this too can be attributed to the chip in Mason’s head, but I’m getting sick of that excuse popping up in every aspect of the game. For example, my next point:

Everything has a health bar.

I guess the brain-chip can detect enemy vitals too, because you always have a visible indication of the enemies’ remaining health, including armor and status effects when hit with EMP grenades. Seeing enemy health bars is annoying, visually distracting, unnecessary, and contrary to what the player should expect in a Call of Duty game. I don’t care to see that my EMP has hit—I know that. I don’t need to see how intact my enemy is, only if they are still standing, and more importantly, I do not need to see feedback pop on screen such as “Critical Kill” every time I score a headshot. This is one symptom of a much worse creative decision.

There is a weapon rarity system in place and some sort of weapon challenges to unlock camo patterns. Many times, I would see the “Critical Kill” challenge completion rewarding me with camos as if I was sharing that unlock with multiplayer loadouts. Like I said, I am not interested in the multiplayer and uninstalled that portion of the game after a single game of Nuketown. Maybe that will be better appreciated by other players; fair enough. But weapon rarity is a really weak way of imposing a difficulty curve. I’m not certain that it really had much of an impact at all, other than in the fever dream–like boss fights, but weapon crates scattered about would entice me to switch up my loadout to try to keep my combat tactics fresh. My open-minded playstyle meant that I comfortably avoided any sort of difficulty curve and was a contributing member of the team.

Teamwork is necessary for all the wrong reasons.

The option to disable autofill is technically welcome but practically useless. I tried to begin the game solo because I didn’t want random players racing through the missions and forcing me to skip over details. What I discovered, however, is that I was missing a considerable amount of detail due to solo difficulty. It turns out that the game and most of the scenarios are designed with four players in mind, and that is reflected in the number of enemies that spawn in the very frequent “Hold the point” objectives. Seriously, this game feels like a series of points to hold, devices to hack, and astonishingly outrageous boss fights; all of which require four combatants and therefore four weapons blasting nonstop.

As a quick aside: playing third-person mode will help with everything except for the hacking minigame. The hacking minigame will undoubtedly expose one of your random teammates as clueless as they frantically rotate pieces in a variant of the typical pipe-style minigame. This is entirely enraging when the other three players are shouting solutions or fighting back seemingly endless waves of enemies.

Back to the topic at hand—the four-player requirement for boss fights.

The boss fights are by far the worst thing that has ever happened in a Call of Duty game, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or so desperate for vaguely Destiny-ish content to play that their cerebral cortex is fried. In any case, the boss fights are ghastly terrible. From the Resident Evil–style flower monster to the worst Metal Gear mech fight ever put to interactive media, these objective wastes of time are invariably bullet sponges with the occasional weak spot to exploit. Four active players are required for viable revives and to dispense enough ordnance to defeat the abominations. It is such a departure from anything that could have been imagined in the series just five years ago. It plays more like a Destiny raid boss, with my personal favorites such as Giant Michael Rooker’s face and Menendez summoning magic machetes from the sky. The sniper lady was intriguing, but these are dreadful. This is all to say that my memories of Black Ops 7 are a collection of times where I laughed out loud. I laughed at the sheer audacity of the creative direction. There is no way it is taking itself seriously.

Call of Duty campaigns are dead. Black Ops 7 offers nothing of value and all signs point to the future of Warzone.

Every aspect of the co-op campaign is cheap filler designed to barely qualify as a full entry. Not only is it low-quality slop in every sense of the term, it is at best a prototype and precursor to PvE Warzone. The “story” was poorly written and poorly delivered. The plot and action were badly paced and creatively convulsive. The controls, action, and weaponry were all contemporary Call of Duty. Only the mobility abilities were new to me, but even that may be ignorance on my part because I do not care for CoD Warzone. It all feels designed to sunset the typical single-player obligations that really don’t contribute much to the bottom line. That is just my personal speculation, but it really does seem that way.

To conclude this thorough lashing of a veteran FPS juggernaut:

The Black Ops 7 “campaign” is a terrible experience. Even if viewed as a co-op game with buddies, there are far better options more deserving of your time. The only “cooler moments” that this travesty could produce are moments of laughter recounting the shockingly bad moments. This represents the end of any meaningful Call of Duty creativity.