‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’ Campaign Review: A Trippy Mess

After what was a fantastic campaign in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Raven Software and Treyarch delivered what is honestly one of the worst campaigns ever in Call of Duty history in Black Ops 7.

Okay, with that eye-opening intro out of the way, let’s dive into this game’s story, and I’m just going to say it’s not good. 

Billed as a canonized direct sequel to the events of Black Ops 2, the game brings us back to the future, unlike Black Ops 6, which transported players to the early ’90s. 

In this game, you reprise the role of Desmond Mason, now portrayed by Milo Ventimiglia, who leads the military team Spec One. Mason believes his longtime archenemy, Raul Menedez, is somehow still alive, and he and his squad wingsuit into the HQ of The Guild, located in Avalon, a fictional location in the game. 

Mason and his team quickly learn that Menedez is just a digital ghost, and the true enemy is Kiernan Shipka’s Emma Kagan.

Kagan and The Guild are planning to release a red gas called The Cradle and spread global chaos, while also claiming to possess the cure, which would allow them to corner the market and make a lot of money.

Kagan uses the threat of Menendez’s survival to lure Mason and his Spec One unit into a trap to test the new biological agent, which made its debut in Black Ops 6.

Here’s Where Call of Duty: Black Ops 7‘s Campaign Completely Goes off The Rails

With the summary of the game’s story out of the way, I regret to inform you that Black Ops 7’s campaign doesn’t take long to fall off the rails.

Allow me to explain.

The Cradle’s effect on the Mason and his squads, C-Link tech, causes them to experience hallucinations that will have you wondering, Is this a Call of Duty game I’m playing right now?

Now, don’t get it twisted, you experienced some weird and at times fear-inducing moments in Black Ops 6 that worked, and they helped the story progress. Still, in Black Ops 7, it’s the driving force of the game’s narrative, and some of the moments made me laugh because I couldn’t believe how terrible they were.

Immediately, you see where Black Ops 7 is going when the team is transported to a world of floating rocks, where you will have to jump your way to one of the formations while giant machetes, I sh*t you not, fall from the sky, as you make your way to a big mansion on a floating island where Raul Menendez will be waiting for you.

A boss fight will ensue with soldiers, some of them looking like demons (I wish I were kidding), who will attack you while you try to take out Menendez. Eventually, you will gain access to a killstreak that will allow you to call in your own giant machetes to kill Menendez.

Other hallucinatory moments will see you and the team transported to a jungle, where you will fight a giant mutant plant and other nightmarish creatures, leaving you to say, “What the hell?”

“Open Combat” Missions Are Unfortunately Back

Modern Warfare III managed to successfully piss off the entire fanbase with its “open combat” missions, and unfortunately, they are back, and I don’t understand why.

The campaign will see you switch between more traditional linear style missions, which aren’t all bad, the missions where the team hallucinates, and the “open combat” ones that all take place in Avalon, which is just a lifeless hub that will see taking on objectives while shooting at painfully dumb soldiers and robots, who serve as just bullet sponges to level up your weapons and rank.

One mission that did manage to capture that old COD feeling involved the Spec Two squad infiltrating a yacht to take out the target. You have the option to go in guns blazing or quietly, taking out the soldiers using silenced weapons.

I chose the latter, which led to a very Call of Duty-esque situation when the team decides to crash the boat into the pier.

Sadly, that’s it, that’s the only moment that had me feeling like I was playing a COD game. In contrast, the rest feels like a bad Michael Bay movie that you can’t turn off because the developers decided to make the entire experience online, so you can’t even pause the game if you’re playing by yourself.

I wished I were making all of that up.

Final Verdict

Being one of the few people who still pick up Call of Duty games to play the campaign mainly, I wanted to absolutely see for myself if Black Ops 7’s campaign was as bad as the entire internet was proclaiming it to be.

I hopped into this game hopeful, especially coming off Black Ops 6, which I thought was an exceptional campaign, only to find myself flabbergasted at how awful this campaign is.

The moment-to-moment action sequences that I have come to love from the COD franchise are nonexistent in this game, and are replaced with some god-awful level design, terrible dialogue, and a forgettable, frustratingly bad mind-bending coop experience.

I thought we had seen the last of the dreadful “open combat” missions that were introduced in Modern Warfare III, after they were so poorly received, but here we are again, and somehow they managed to make them worse.

Black Ops 7 has no business being a standalone title, or even costing $70. It comes across as a cash grab, and I can’t, in good conscience, recommend anyone spend their money on this game in its current state.