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Playing the co-op marketing campaign of first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 seems like diving into season 13, episode 21 of a low-budget community TV present with no prior context.
Review information
Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, PC
Release date: November 14, 2025
Set ten years after the occasions of 2012’s Black Ops 2, it opens with returning hero David Mason heading to the coastal city-state of Avalon together with his squad to trace down the supply of a sinister broadcast purportedly from deceased terrorist Raul Menendez.
Your first mission involves infiltrating the high-tech headquarters of The Guild, a futuristic tech company that’s the apparent source of the video, and right from the get-go, it’s obvious that corners have been cut.
Cutscenes seem a little cheaper than usual, with awkward animations and juvenile, stilted dialogue that’s nowhere near the cinematic espionage excellence of last year’s Black Ops 6.
Back to the future
The pacing is also far too abrupt, front-loaded with big exposition dumps that propel the plot forward at a frankly overwhelming clip.
Early on, the team is exposed to a hallucinogenic red gas, with most sequences taking place inside a dream-like haze. There are some striking visuals, like a fractured memory of Menendez’s Nicaraguan compound or an impossibly twisted L.A. Highway, though they mostly boil down to mowing down waves of reskinned enemies from the Zombies mode and then taking on overly tanky boss fights.
Each mission is structured like a raid from an MMO (massively multiplayer online game), a la Destiny 2; the antithesis of the extremely scripted, set-piece pushed motion that has made earlier campaigns so nice. In the true world, a handful of missions happen in Avalon with a semi-open-world construction harking back to the extensively disliked open fight missions of 2023’s Modern Warfare 3.
The map, initially designed for Warzone, is much too giant, so you find yourself having to trudge your approach between totally different targets.
A couple of particular skills, like an excellent leap or a grapple hook that mean you can shortly acquire momentum and deploy a wingsuit, present a welcome, quicker technique of traversal, however are finally an answer to an issue {that a} Call of Duty marketing campaign ought to have by no means suffered from within the first place.
It’s additionally onerous to shake the truth that most of Avalon would not actually slot in with the remainder of the 2035 setting. This is most obvious while you attain an space that first appeared in Black Ops 6 because the Skyline multiplayer map. The rooftop house is fully unchanged from its depiction in that recreation, which was set greater than 4 a long time prior in 1991.
The solely actual setting that appears suitably futuristic is a section within the neon-lit streets of Tokyo, during which you play as a completely totally different staff of characters for no obvious cause, leaping between rooftops utilizing your wall-jump – a brand new transfer for Black Ops 7. It’s a transparent spotlight regardless of the jarring new faces, and it’s unhappy that there aren’t extra moments with tightly designed parkour like this all through.
Warzone woes
As with the setting of Avalon, a significant number of mechanics in the co-op campaign feel ripped right out of Warzone.
There are weapon boxes littered around the world so that you can gear up, replenishable armour plates protect you from hits, and weapons have different rarity levels that you can upgrade as you go at designated stations. The user interface is indistinguishable too; there are no checkpoints to save your progress within missions, and you can’t even pause the game if you want to take a break.
Despite all of this, I certainly didn’t hate playing through the campaign. It’s nowhere near as boring as the sloppy story in the aforementioned Modern Warfare 3, namely as a result of its co-op. With a friend or three in tow, it all becomes absolutely hilarious.
The writing is rough across the board, so ripe for moments of inadvertent comedy like a ludicrous dream sequence in which you fight a giant version of Harper – one of the playable characters and returning face from Black Ops 2 – or when the main baddie is defeated by an anti-tank missile to the face, only to reappear completely fine mere seconds later.
After you finish the campaign, you’re unleashed into the extraction-shooter-like Endgame, and it’s surprisingly quite a lot of fun.
Dropping into a gas-filled Avalon with countless other players, it has you completing mini-challenges to level up your ‘Combat Rating’ and unlock special perks that do everything from massively boost your firing speed to causing a burst of electricity that stuns enemies every time you reload. You’re working on a strict time limit, and if you’re killed before you can reach an extraction point, you lose all of your progress, so it’s inherently very high stakes and reminiscent of a roguelike in the best of ways.
The map is split into multiple difficulty areas, and progressing through each one is very satisfying. It all culminates in a very challenging boss fight that requires you to team up with other players on the server, an enjoyable moment of collaboration that’s a great little send-off.
In addition to quickly levelling up your weapons and gear for use in other modes, beating the boss with multiple characters rewards you with some great-looking skins, giving you a genuine reason to come back and replay it.
The format is also clearly ripe for expansion, and I’m intrigued to see what kind of additions will come to the Endgame throughout the year.
Place, Japan
On the multiplayer front, Black Ops 7 fares much better. Building on the incredibly strong foundations laid with Black Ops 6, this is comfortably one of the most engaging multiplayer offerings yet. The maps, a bit of a weak point last year, are all absolutely fantastic, and there are loads of them to master. The ones set in Japan in particular look simply stunning, with gorgeous details and impressive lighting that conveys a brilliant atmosphere.
Best bit
Black Ops 7 offers a new multiplayer Skirmish mode that features 40 players on massive maps. It’s a pleasant change of pace compared to the usual small-scale environments in the Black Ops series and channels some of what makes Battlefield 6 great.
Small maps like Blackheart, Homestead, and Cortex flow wonderfully and don’t suffer from awkward spawn locations. The work especially well with the hectic new Overload game mode, which has two teams clashing for possession of a bomb-like device that needs to be placed in specific locations to score.
The map themes themselves are brilliantly varied, too, with some evocative concepts that I wish had been explored in the campaign. Scar, for example, is set in a distant Alaskan village that’s being torn apart by attacking robots, while Colossus has you exploring the rusted wreckage of the once beautiful resort that was memorably destroyed in Black Ops 2.
The wall jump adds another dimension to traversal, augmenting the existing Omnimovement system (which allows you to sprint in any direction) by giving more skilled players the opportunity to hop above the heads of enemies on vertical routes that require multiple tricky jumps to cross.
Gear Overclocking from Advanced Warfare is back, too, meaning that your most used equipment can be upgraded with new abilities to increase its effectiveness. This pairs nicely with Weapon Prestige, where you can reset your weapon level in exchange for special attachments and exclusive camos, and ensures that, unlike past releases, you’re not going to run out of levels to grind any time soon.
The guns themselves are all very satisfying to use and well-balanced. Assault rifles and SMGs are definitely the most versatile and popular options, though sniper rifles and marksman rifles are still very viable given their incredible damage output, and shotguns such as the fully automatic Akita absolutely dominate at close range.
With a deluge of new maps set to arrive in Season One and the imminent addition of the classic Nuketown, this is shaping up to be one of the greatest years of multiplayer Call of Duty yet.
Arcade action
Like multiplayer, Zombies builds on everything that worked in its Black Ops 6 iteration.
There’s one Round-Based map at launch, and it’s absolutely massive, featuring an upgradeable truck to help you get around. There are heavy references to the legendary TranZit map from Black Ops 2, including some returning areas that have been lovingly recreated and incorporated seamlessly.
It continues the long-running and nigh-impenetrable storyline that’s been going all the way since World at War, with a brand new main quest that requires multiple hidden steps to complete. Long-time Zombies fans will absolutely love it, but if chasing esoteric easter eggs isn’t your speed, there’s a more basic Survival mode that’s perfect for unwinding with friends as you mow down waves of the undead.
This is in addition to Dead Ops Arcade 4, a light-hearted top-down challenge mode that has you running through small combat arenas with retro twin-stick controls, trying to last for as long as possible. This isn’t the deepest mode by any means, but it’s an enjoyable diversion and well worth trying for a handful of runs.
With all of this said, it should be obvious whether Black Ops 7 is for you.
If you’re primarily invested in the multiplayer or Zombies, then you’re going to have a fantastic time – the maps are great and it’s hard to overstate just how refined and polished the minute-to-minute action here feels. The co-op campaign is a very different story, though, and a big miss despite the strong Endgame.
Should I play Call of Duty: Black Ops 7?
Play it if…
Don’t play it if…
Accessibility features
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has a good number of accessibility features.
The UI features a number of reliability options, including the ability to increase subtitle size, adjust background color, adjust the size of text in menus, and fully customize the colors of important information. The multiplayer HUD can also be edited to your liking and made significantly larger if required.
There are multiple control layouts to choose from, with presets for simplified controls on controller and settings to reduce the need for lots of motion. On both console and PC, you can choose to play the game with either a controller or keyboard and mouse.
How I reviewed Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
I played more than 30 hours of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 for this review, including roughly 12 hours in both the campaign and Endgame in solo and co-op and the rest of that time in the other modes.
I played on PC using a 5070 Ti-powered model from retailer Scan. It includes a compact Corsair 2000d RGB Airflow case, Asus ROG Strix B860-I Gaming Wifi motherboard, Intel Core Ultra 7 265Okay CPU, a 2TB WD Black SN770 SSD, 32GB of DDR5 Corsair Vengeance RAM, and an Nvidia 5070 Ti manufactured by Asus.
This setup allowed me to play the sport easily on customized graphics settings at 1080p with all the things set to both Ultra or High. For peripherals, I relied on a Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro mouse and Cherry XTRFY K5V2 keyboard along with an Astro A20 X PC gaming headset for audio.
In addition to enjoying loads after its public launch, my time with the sport included roughly a day of early entry. I evaluated the sport towards earlier Call of Duty releases, particularly Black Ops 6 and different current entries like Modern Warfare 3, Modern Warfare 2, and Black Ops Cold War.
First reviewed October-November 2024