I’ve been playing Call of Duty games every single year since the original game launched back in 2003. I’ve seen the series grow from a PC-only World War II shooter into one of the biggest franchises in gaming history, especially after Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare changed everything.

After playing through this year’s Black Ops 7 co-op campaign, I can honestly say without hesitation that this is the worst campaign Call of Duty has ever had.

This Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 review is based primarily on my time with the campaign on PC, played solo at native 4K with maxed-out settings. While the campaign is clearly built around cooperative play, I chose to experience it alone, which I suspect is how most players will approach it. I’ll also touch briefly on multiplayer and Zombies to see whether they help justify the full price.

Black Ops 7 Campaign Setting and Story Overview

Black Ops 7 doesn’t continue from Black Ops 3, 4, Cold War, or even last year’s Black Ops 6. Instead, it acts as a direct follow-up to the 2012 timeline of Black Ops 2.

The game takes place ten years after the later ending of Black Ops 2, where Raul Menendez was canonically killed by David Mason. That decision throws the world into chaos, and out of that instability rises a new private military company called The Guild, led by CEO Emma Kagan.

Things get strange when new video threats begin circulating, featuring Menendez himself somehow alive. Suspecting the Guild’s involvement, David Mason and his JSOC team are sent to the Mediterranean city-state of Avalon to investigate. What they uncover is a plot involving a bioweapon known as The Cradle, a toxic gas that causes extreme hallucinations and is planned for global release to consolidate power.

And that’s basically the entire story.

Storytelling and Writing Problems

I’ll be blunt: nothing about this plot is surprising, creative, or interesting. It recycles themes Call of Duty has already explored multiple times sometimes better, sometimes worse.

The game briefly touches on post-traumatic stress and the psychological toll of past decisions, but it handles those ideas in the shallowest way possible. Instead of meaningful character development, we get oversized monster boss fights that feel like a low-budget attempt at psychological horror.

Emma Kagan is one of the weakest antagonists the series has ever had. Her dialogue is painfully cliché, her motivation barely exists, and despite how much Menendez is teased, he appears for about five seconds. New characters like Leilani and Razer add almost nothing and are weighed down by stale dialogue and awkward cinematic moments that feel completely out of place.

Level Design and Mission Structure

One of the biggest issues with Black Ops 7’s campaign is how little it actually takes you anywhere interesting.

Most of the game is set in Avalon, which functions like a battle royale map repurposed for campaign missions. Asset placement feels unnatural, with random Roman ruins, buildings, and enemy patrols scattered around loosely defined mission boundaries. You can cheese almost every mission by hugging the map edges, avoiding enemies entirely, and sprinting straight to the objective.

If you follow the intended route, combat doesn’t feel much better. There’s little structure to encounters, minimal stealth design, and reinforcements that exist mostly to pad mission length. When the game does move into traditional linear levels, they’re usually generic sci-fi interiors labs, factories, underwater bases mixed with tired hallucination sequences that constantly remind you how much better older Call of Duty campaigns as compared to Battlefield 6.

There’s even a mission that reuses a multiplayer map from Black Ops 6 and the Hijack map from Black Ops 2, and it feels completely phoned in. A short visit to futuristic Tokyo looks cool for about a minute, then immediately drops you back into bland corridors filled with zombies, spiders, and floating hallucination islands.

Presentation, Animation, and Immersion

Voice acting is another weak point. There are way too many corny one-liners, and some dialogue repeats during longer gameplay sections.

Even worse, character animation has taken a massive step back. Instead of in-game scripted moments and detailed character interactions, most exposition is delivered through static character portraits, similar to something you’d expect from a strategy game. Characters only appear properly during pre-rendered cutscenes that bookend each chapter.

This highlights a bigger issue: everything feels cut back to hit a release deadline. Interactions that used to be animated like forcing open doors are now reduced to holding a button or fading to black. Nothing feels handcrafted, and it’s well below the standard this series set for itself over two decades.

Solo vs Co-op Design Issues

There are no bot mates on the battlefield anymore. One of Call of Duty’s original strengths was making you feel like part of a larger conflict, surrounded by allies. Black Ops 7 turns everything into a lonely, one-man corridor shooter.

The campaign clearly expects you to play with friends. There are moments where you’re exposed while hacking or interacting with objectives, and the game doesn’t pause combat like a traditional single-player experience would. Enemies do scale slightly, but it still feels awkward and poorly balanced when playing solo.

Combat, Enemies, and Boss Fights

Gameplay design is just as uninspired as the story. Enemy AI is extremely basic, with little pathing, no meaningful cover usage, and minimal scripting. Soldiers often patrol back and forth until alerted, then walk straight at you while shooting.

Half the campaign replaces soldiers entirely with zombies, which are clearly easier to manage from a design standpoint. To compensate, the game introduces tiered enemies and weapons, meaning many enemies are heavily armored and require absurd amounts of ammo to take down.

You’ll spend a lot of time mag-dumping into enemies while staring at hit markers. Weapon upgrades help slightly, but enemies scale alongside you, so it barely matters. Crowd control tools like grenade launchers and turrets end up being the only practical options.

Boss fights appear at the end of most missions. They’re not terrible, but they’re repetitive, predictable, and lack meaningful phases. Some bosses even repeat, reinforcing how arcade-like the whole campaign feels.

Technical Problems and Always-Online Issues

The campaign cannot be played offline. It doesn’t save checkpoints reliably, and you can be kicked for inactivity forcing you to restart entire missions. Combined with crashes, DLSS issues, and performance problems even on high-end hardware, the experience becomes incredibly frustrating.

Because of this, I can confidently say this is the most unacceptable campaign in Call of Duty’s 22-year history.

Multiplayer and Zombies Overview

If you’re wondering whether multiplayer makes up for the campaign, the answer is no but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Multiplayer plays exactly how you’d expect. Gunplay is tight, fast, and satisfying. Maps are small, symmetrical, and competitive, but lack creativity. Weapons stick to familiar categories, with a light futuristic twist.

A new wall-jump mechanic adds some flair, but maps rarely take advantage of it. Gadgets like drones, holograms, and active camo return, along with classic Black Ops 2 maps like Hijack and Raid.

Zombies brings back round-based gameplay along with modes like Dead Ops Arcade. It’s solid, but not groundbreaking. It feels complete, just not exciting.

Endgame Mode and Final Thoughts

There is one more mode worth mentioning: Endgame. It drops you back into Avalon to complete objectives, upgrade gear, and score points. It’s a decent use of the map and helps pad out the lack of content but it still isn’t enough.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Review – Final Thoughts

Overall, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is one of the weakest mainline entries in years, sitting alongside Vanguard, Black Ops 4, and Modern Warfare 3.

The campaign is an embarrassment. Multiplayer and Zombies are safe but uninspired. Technical issues make everything worse. And the increased price only highlights how much quality has been lost.

So the real question is simple:
Are you willing to buy Black Ops 7 despite its campaign, or is that a dealbreaker?

Let me know what you think. Also read –
Does Battlefield 2042 Have a Campaign? Complete Explanation
Is Battlefield 6 on Game Pass? EA Play & Xbox Subscription Explained (2026)
Battlefield 6 Buyer’s Guide (2026): Is It Worth Buying?