2/5 ★ – WrathofBen's review of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

What a trainwreck of a video game... I guess Activision didn't learn a freaking thing from MWIII and decided to follow up Black Ops 6 immediately with Black Ops 7 one year later. I remember praising BO6 for its innovative campaign, addicting multiplayer, and fresh zombies experience. The developers had a ton of extra dev time, and it showed. That game was the complete package, and is the COD I've spent the most total hours in. I loved that game... So, you can imagine my disappointment when I started this game, and it immediately reeked of reused assets, lazy development, and poor writing. Strap in, this one's a real doozy. Let's start with the campaign, because that's what I mainly come to COD for these days. I hope you don't expect to have a fun, single player, offline game mode to play with this release. Because this game REQUIRES internet connection at all times, is forced co-op, and has some of the worst writing out of any of the COD campaigns. Honestly, I think I'd rather replay MWIII's campaign. At least that one had difficulty choices. There's no difficulty selection here, which explains why I never died in my entire playthrough. Because the campaign is always online, you can also level up your weapons and multiplayer rank in the campaign, as well as unlock exclusive camos and reticles. If I'm being honest, I didn't mind this. It's not a bad idea to loop campaign progression to your overall rank in the game, especially since Zombies does the same thing. What IS a bad idea is finally following up Black Ops II with a lazy asset flip of a game, where half the game is on a Warzone map, and the other half is reused content from previous BO games. The story starts 10 years after David "Section" Mason defeats Menendez, thus stopping Cordis Die. However, we learn early on that Menendez became a martyr to his following, and riots erupted worldwide. Without even knowing it, Mason couldn't stop the war from going into chaos. In a way, Menendez still won. Mason meets up with an older Marshall from BO6 at Frank Woods' grave to give him intel on an organization known at "The Guild". They are experimenting with some sort of biotoxin that, if misused, could bring the world into even more desolation. So, it is up to Mason, Harper, Samuels, and 50/50 (yes, that's her name... she's the worst part of your team). to stop The Guild from releasing this biotoxin (The Cradle from BO6) to the world. Okay, let's start with what I liked. The premise of this game, as well as its opening cutscene, really hooked me. This is a solid idea to finally continue David Mason's story, and it was really smart to loop in the previous game's protagonist as your "eyes in the sky" colonel. I also like that most of your squad is comprised of characters from BOII, like Harper, Samuels, and even Karma. BUT, that brings a canonical issue... Harper and Karma can't exist in the same continuity, because one of them HAS to die in BOII. So, it's really weird that Treyarch just decided "SCREW IT" and didn't make a decision, but rather just let them both live, despite that being impossible in BOII's story. But it seems Treyarch just didn't care about the story at all, since half the game is these open world maps from Warzone/Endgame (more on that later). The trippy hallucination levels are callbacks to other games. Woods is in the past part of BOII's campaign, Alex Mason's is in Verrukt, Menendez is somewhere from BOII, and the rest of the team share a trip to 2025 LA from the end of BOII. These were cool levels, but their main mechanics never seemed fleshed out. Mason's level starts you in a prison with a knife and expects you to stealth your way out of it. The enemies are 2 hit kills with the knife, and do no damage, so why sneak around? Stuff like that shows they SORTA tried to innovate but didn't put much more effort into it. Heck, some levels are literally BO6 multiplayer levels, with most Cradle enemies being reused Zombies enemies, like Manglers, Mimics, Disciples, and the spider things. Seriously, this game has ZERO effort behind it. The game also has ridiculous boss fights, including one with a giant, angry Harper blowing fire breath at you. Heck, Woods turns into a creepy acid flower thing, and you have to kill Menendez with giant machetes falling from the sky. I get Black Ops games are typically out there and trippy, but this game went WAYYYY too far with it, to the point it's comical. This game just felt like a really bad Marvel movie. Which is a shame, because I WANTED to enjoy it. I loved Milo Ventimiglia as David Mason, as well as Michael Rooker as Harper. They SHINED in a game that uses them horribly, especially when it came to their writing. And to top it all off, the villain, Kagan, is the worst villain you could imagine. She literally does nothing, and just threatens you over comms, saying tough things with little meaning. It's just a waste of space. Oh, and how could I forget the character the betrays the squad midway through the game that we played as ONCE, and he showed ZERO signs of betraying you? Not even THAT had motivation. Again, LAZY! Now, remember. This is a co-op campaign. In order to not play with randoms, I turned squad fill off. I could not imagine playing this with random people and having them randomly running through the whole game. But by doing that, I no longer have companions in my squad in game. I was alone, but their dialogue still played like they were with me. Clearly, this was never designed to be a solo experience... But the main reason this is important is because when the game is over, you unlock Endgame mode. This mode lets you and a squad land on Avalon with other squads to take on random objectives in the open world and work your Combat Level high enough to get to the Tier IV zone to take on the final boss. Basically, it's Warzone Zombies. But truth be told, I liked this game mode, and I found myself actually having fun for a moment until I got hit by a car and died, thus losing all the progress I made. You get to keep your weapons and rank if you exfil, but when your die, it all resets. So, yeah... even that got ruined for me by complete crap. That, AND Treyarch decided that after today, Endgame is available for all, no matter where you are on the campaign. So, it's no longer the "Endgame", it's just "the game"... LAME! Okay, enough campaign. Let's move on to something more enjoyable, like ZOMBIES! I won't stay on this too long, because it's basically the same as BO6 Zombies. You're on a big map with objectives, taking out zombies, leveling guns, augments and ammo mods up, and finding the easter eggs. This time, you have the new squad and old squad to choose from, which is nice. I mainly played as Dempsy, because that's who I'm used to when I solo Zombies. The Pack-a-Punch on this map is neat, as it's on the back of this truck you fix up and drive around to other areas, like Tranzit. So, if you do it right, you should always have the Pack-a-Punch with you. Otherwise, it's the same ol' Zombies. Not really a bad thing, since it's fun. But just not much more innovation there. I did try Dead Ops Arcade 4 and didn't think too much of it. Maybe Dead Ops just isn't my thing... Alright, Multiplayer. This is probably one of the worst multiplayer modes I've played in recent memory. It's almost unplayable on controller, and you have to be sweatier than an athlete on a hot summer day to keep up with everyone. Along with last year's omnimovement, which lets you dive, slide, and sprint in any direction, you can now wall jump by jumping on walls and jumping again to launch yourself up and toward a direction. This addition makes it impossible for anyone to casually play this game. That, on top of the guns that melt you in a second, while every other gun is a peashooter that takes 10 bullets to kill anyone. Seriously, I never would have prestiged if it weren't for Campaign and Zombies. I couldn't keep up with anyone on the new maps, and the old maps weren't designed for the new movements, so it all was just a big disaster. Heck, even Nuketown isn't fun here. It's just a montage of death, because the spawns are actually broken beyond repair. The game is too fast for the spawns to know what to do. Even the shotguns feel broken, with many of them doing little to no damage in any game mode I tried. It's just not very fun. Treyarch insists that there is little to no Skill Based Matchmaking in the game, but I don't believe that for a second. I had one good game, and next thing I knew, I was a level 20 in a lobby full of prestiged players on the other team... not cool. BUT, credit where credit is due, you CAN stay in a lobby when a game is over and keep playing with the same people. That hasn't been in COD in YEARS! So, that's neat. Alright, elephant in the room. BO6 got into hot water last year for using AI generated content for calling cards, as well as allegedly some voice acting. Well, this game does all of that too, with a good chunk of the calling cards having a Studio Ghibli art style to them. You know, that AI image generator that got really popular before it got cease and desisted by Studio Ghibli? Guess Activision got their stuff done before that happened. It honestly does feel like parts of this game were AI generated, though. The multiplayer maps that are new make no sense, and have zero fun factor to them, there are glitches galore in Zombies and Campaign, including party chat and kill feeds in the cutscenes of the Campaign, despite me not being in a squad. It all just has that, "no one actually worked on this" feeling to it. Even Jack Wall's soundtrack falls short here, with the only good music being the callbacks to BOII. Heck, the main theme on the title screen is just the 1989 Batman theme! Straight up, compare them both. You'll see what I mean. WAS THERE NOTHING ORIGINAL IN THIS GAME?!? The graphics, as always, look great. But it looks just like MW 2019. They haven't evolved past that, and it shows. All of these games look the exact same. It's a shame, because I was really excited for the future of Black Ops after BO6. But this game killed any momentum COD had. Why on Earth Activision decided to shove this out instead of a new Sledgehammer or Infinity Ward game, I'll never know. If they need time, just GIVE THEM TIME! Don't screw Treyarch because the other two dev teams can't get their crap in gear. It's sad that THIS is the follow-up to BOII people have waited for... 4/10. What a pathetic waste of the Black Ops name. It's so bad, I bought Battlefield 6 the same day I downloaded this from GamePass. So, look forward to that soon. Until then... I'm uninstalling this game, and making room for a real video game.