Activision doesn't care that Black Ops 7's campaign is total garbage

Call of Duty used to be the undisputed king of the shooter genre. Whether in single-player campaigns or online, Call of Duty was at its peak. The vast majority of its annual audience may only come to these games for the multiplayer, but that never stopped Infinity Ward, Treyarch and Sledgehammer from creating action blockbusters with strong characters, incredible backdrops and a variety of missions that felt like an unparalleled roller coaster ride through a specific historical setting.

Two operators of season 1 from call of duty: black ops 6.

Gamers are already turning against Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

What started out as a fan favorite quickly turned into something sad and corporate.

While some were definitely stronger than others, with the annual Call of Duty collection, you always knew Activision was going to deliver a good time. But in recent years, that hasn't been a guarantee. Somewhere along the way, it became clear that more profits could be made by focusing purely on the multiplayer offering and relegating the single player campaigns to the backseat, which often meant ridiculously less effort was put into bringing them to life.

Black Ops 4 shipped with no campaign at all, but the first time I felt that quality slipped far beyond acceptable was with Modern Warfare 3 in 2023. At the time, I described it as a turning point for Call of Duty and how turning this planned expansion into a full game despite the obvious lack of content was lazy and cynical. Turns out I was wrong because things could be a lot worse.

Why is Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's campaign so terrible?

When Black Ops 7 was revealed with a spectacular cinematic trailer earlier this year, it had all the potential in the world, with all the ingredients needed to create a great trip down memory lane. Not only did Alex Mason return as the main character, but it seemed that the myriad of skeletons in his closet would act as antagonists alongside a mega-corporation bent on taking over the world. This is the only foundation you need to adventure the world.

Unfortunately, the finished product is a lazy, unimaginative and borderline pointless trip that would rather drop you into mind-bending dreams than bother telling a story that makes any logical sense. Call of Duty is supposed to be larger than life and ridiculous at the best of times, but that's never stopped each campaign from making us care about what its heroes are fighting for. We have to save the world, stop an evil villain or something – but that's not the case with Black Ops 7. It's so haphazardly interwoven that I don't even want to play it.

Two guild bots are preparing to attack players in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

Let's start with the first mission, in which Mason and a mix of familiar faces and allies who aren't nearly as interesting to care about break into a facility to retrieve some important equipment to keep it out of The Guild's hands. This general objective is to ensure that the world is protected from the return of the deceased terrorist Raul Menendez, who players will probably remember as the main antagonist of Black Ops 2.

It's back, but this time in our deepest, darkest dreams whenever we take too much acid. After picking up a rare cargo, you'll be dropped into a dreamscape where giant machetes fall from the sky as you hop between a bunch of floating islands while shapeless goons and mushroom-ball robots battle Mason.

Three random enemy soldiers in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7

The campaign is also designed to be playable in co-op, meaning that even if you want to play it solo, you still need to load into a lobby. And since the game considers you to be in an online session, you can't even pause the game while playing. Well done, Activision!

First off – why does each enemy have their own health bar? Call of Duty campaigns are known for throwing endless waves of enemies at the player who will fall to the ground with just a few shots, constantly encouraging you to push forward instead of staying trapped behind loose pieces of cover. But here, each encounter is defined by loading your opponents with just enough bullets to kill them, before repeating the process over and over again. Against enemies with more health, there is no additional strategy to adopt, just additional ammo to waste as you progress. It's trying to emulate something like Borderlands 4 with about ten percent of the fun and whimsy.

Activision doesn't care about the quality of Black Ops 7

After escaping your first foray into Raul Menendez's mental prison, you're tasked with making your way to the city of Avalon, where a deadly psychedelic gas has begun to spread. Black Ops 7 tries to make this newly introduced city feel like a living, breathing world in which most of its inhabitants are now close to death, but instead it feels like part of the Warzone map has been tweaked to benefit the campaign. It's as if there was a map first and the developers had to try to come up with some narrative context that would best fit it. As a result, there's nothing alive, reactive, and it doesn't feel like you're supposed to be there.

There's no required path on the map, while enemies appear seemingly at random instead of offering a proper challenge. I found that you can basically run straight to an objective and progress instantly instead of bothering to fight enemies, which isn't fun in the first place. Everything about the campaign – aside from its occasionally CGI-heavy cutscenes – feels rushed and cobbled together. Health gauges, weapon caches, and co-op gameplay are so strangely out of place, and Activision was desperate to turn the campaign into a multiplayer progression, which would directly hurt the gameplay experience.

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 operator in front of a red sky.

Call of Duty campaigns used to be an annual highlight in triple-A video games. An exercise in overly spectacular and larger-than-life storytelling that understood exactly what it needed to be to succeed, while always having enough freedom to experiment. The original Modern Warfare trilogy, the early Black Ops titles, and the excellent Advanced and Infinite Warfare stand the test of time. Black Ops 7 spits in the face of that legacy by delivering something so undercooked that I can't even bring myself to finish it.