Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 PS5 Review
Summary: Black Ops 7 is a massive misstep for Call of Duty, that is unfortunately very difficult to recommend to anyone.
2.6
Poor
Call of Duty has had a bit of an identity crisis these past few years, unsure about whether it wanted to be a live service or an annual release. This year’s entry into the never-ending series, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, has finally picked a lane, however, and is far, far worse because of it.
Unusually, I’m going to lay all my cards out on the table from the get-go and work back from there this time. I did not like Black Ops 7. In fact, I might go as far as to say I hate Black Ops 7.
It’s been apparent for a while now that the vast majority of what Call of Duty has become is essentially a vehicle for selling not-so-micro transactions. Gaudy cosmetics that chip away at any pretensions that were left about it being a game grounded in realism (it was always a stretch even in the good old days), or even that it had some kind of cohesive art style at this point. It makes what Evolve tried to do in 2015 kind of quaint by comparison.
But what has filled my lungs with so much ire this time around? Well, the list is long, but let’s start with the campaign, if it can be called that.
Let’s start with the most obvious of the several elephants in the room. It’s online only. To elaborate, while Call of Duty has been a title that has required an online connection for a few years now, thanks to the Call of Duty hub, app thing that they’ve been pushing, this is the first time that the campaign has been a multiplayer affair. To be clear, it can be played solo, but it all occurs in a multiplayer instance regardless, and brings all the negatives of that with it.
For example, the game can’t be paused. A minor issue, you might think, but it ties in with my next complaint that going idle disconnects you from the game. This is fair to a degree when playing in multiplayer, but this still occurs even when playing solo. You can see how these two issues tie together and are a problem. A problem that is exacerbated by the lack of checkpoints in single-player missions, in the sense that if you disconnect or turn the game off, you can’t start where you left off; it’s back to the beginning of the mission.
This puts us in the situation where getting a phone call, answering the door, or any number of otherwise trivial, everyday things can effectively end a session, with no way to get that progress back other than to slog through it all again.
Slog feels like the most appropriate word, because the campaign is absolutely that. It’s mercifully brief, missions not lasting longer than 20 minutes or so, usually, but they’re so uninspired, uninteresting, and tedious that they felt like they were three times that.
The story is nonsense, even by Call of Duty’s usual standards. Once again, treading down the now well-worn road of conspiracy theories and espionage that Black Ops is known for. It concerns the release of a hallucinogenic toxin into the wild, constantly inducing wild visions of monstrous creatures and strange, alien-esque landscapes. It’s not a terrible idea to use something like this as a framing device to enable a little creative freedom in terms of locales and enemies, but the problem lies in how it’s executed. It all feels very random and slapdash. Haphazardly put together without much cohesion in relation to environments or even enemies.
One interesting addition to the campaign is the introduction of bosses, which hasn’t been done before by the series, as far as I remember. Missions end with some kind of encounter, sometimes a human with the ability to withstand multiple sniper rounds to the head, sometimes a hallucinated monstrosity, always dull, repetitive, and a waste of potential.
They mostly follow the formula of doing the same thing repeatedly until it falls, and this is seldom as straightforward as just shooting it. Now, giving a boss mechanics and interesting things to do is a good thing. These just don’t, often devolving into fending off a few waves of fodder while waiting for a weak spot to become available.
None of this is helped by voice acting that’s flat, often poorly mixed, and seemingly lacking direction. David Mason, the player character, consistently sounds like he’s on dental anaesthetic and consequently is the least interesting thing in any scene that he’s in. Several actors from the previous Black Ops games reprise their roles, most notably Michael Rooker of Guardians of the Galaxy fame, but even he manages to sound bored and uninterested in the role.
The visuals, something that Call of Duty hasn’t always excelled at, but has always been at the very least reasonable, seem to have taken a bit of a hit here, too. It’s nowhere near as sharp an image as previous games. I’ve felt that the series has been on somewhat of a downward trend in this regard since Warzone’s release in 2020, but this is the first time I’ve consciously noticed it not looking very good compared to previous titles.
Environments are occasionally impressive from an artistic standpoint; a mission early on consisting of a mass of floating islands springs to mind, but beyond that, it mostly just looks like everything is taking place in another Warzone map.
Multiplayer, the second major component to the game, is more or less the same as it has been for the past few years; the balance does feel significantly more off than usual this time around, however. Time to kill is exceedingly low. This could be down to specific weapon builds or the magic numbers behind the scenes that influence everything, and will no doubt be balanced over the year between now and the next game. It was a little jarring at first, though.
I wasn’t a big fan of the maps this time around, either. They felt significantly less readable and intuitive than normal. This is entirely subjective, mind, and your mileage may vary.
Steam Deck
As with the previous few games, Black Ops 7 doesn’t work on Steam Deck at all unless you’re running Windows.
Final Thoughts
So, does Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 have any redeeming features whatsoever? It can’t be that bad, surely?
No, it is.
I suppose that if one wanted to be charitable, one could say that they tried some new things that ultimately didn’t work out, but at least they tried, and it may give the thousands of people involved in making this mess something to build on for the future. It might be time for Call of Duty to have a year or two off to reset and figure out what it’s trying to be, because if it keeps going down this path, there’s not going to be much to revive before long.
Honestly, though, you’d be better off playing literally any other Call of Duty game over Black Ops 7.
