TL;DR Pros : Responsive and satisfying gunplay Visually striking, detailed environments and character models Fun Zombies mode Cons : Consistent internet connection required Worst campaign in the entire franchise Multiplayer too similar to last year’s game No ability to pause the game Feels soulless Price : Rs18,000 (physical copy); $70 (digital) Score : 2/7 - I cannot recommend this to anyone Reviewed on PlayStation 5; available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC If someone were to mention the words “call of duty”, chances are you wouldn’t think about a metaphorical summons to be part of something bigger, but the iconic shooter franchise that has gripped players for almost two decades with an addictive, fast-paced and accessible gameplay loop. However, corporate greed has alienated longtime players due to poor map design, predatory monetisation and an annual release schedule, among other problems. Franchise fatigue and a lack of innovation and creativity are what the series is mostly known for now. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (BO7) is another example of this: creatively bankrupt and made to be a money-printing machine, not a fun experience to engage with. A screenshot of protagonist David Mason from Call of Duty Black Ops 7. — Screengrab by author Multiplayer I’m going to try to be positive for a bit. BO7 has a serviceable multiplayer component. It’s accessible enough that you can casually rack up high kills and the gunplay, refined over the years, feels solid and responsive as ever. It’s fun, if in small doses. Character and weapon models are highly detailed, while the maps are visually striking. Fate and Utopia stood out to me, with an otherworldly and unique look that I appreciated. A screenshot from the mission ‘Distortion’ in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. — Screengrab by author There’s only one problem: last year’s game, Black Ops 6 (BO6) also had solid gunplay, detailed characters and environments and a gameplay loop which you can pick up and enjoy. So why fork over Rs18,000? Repetition is apparent throughout the game’s design. Immediately upon starting multiplayer, I was met with the same user interface as last year. Depending on your perspective, this is both a good and a bad thing: you’ll see either laziness or a familiar, easily navigable menu system. A screenshot of the main menu in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. — Screengrab by author To its credit, BO7 allows you to import your settings from BO6, so I didn’t spend ages tweaking my controller settings so they’re just right. Omnimovement — being able to sprint and slide in any direction — makes a return here, but in-game, I couldn’t sense any appreciable change in movement speed. It feels like last year’s game with a slightly different coat of paint. There’s a “new” feature where pressing the jump button when approaching a wall allows you to bounce off it. Performing a wall-bounce and killing an enemy player in midair is admittedly very satisfying, but again, there are problems. The system is clunky to use and, depending on the angle you hit the wall, it can take several attempts to chain jumps together, leaving you exposed. It’s also a neutered version of a better-executed system from 2015’s Black Ops 3 . The boring and repetitive map design also rears its ugly head. Maps are extremely limited in scope, featuring a (mostly) rectangular level with three lanes and one or two little passageways connecting them. Access to buildings remains limited to only one storey. Your movement is limited and that, in turn, restricts gameplay. Being constrained in how you can move limits the frequency and nature of encounters by forcing players down only three paths. There’s less room for flanking and other complex tactics since everyone is forced down a set route, making gunplay monotonous over time. A combination photo showing the map layouts of the multiplayer maps Colossus, the Forge and Flagship from Call of Duty Black Ops 7. — Screengrabs by author BO7 ’s multiplayer is not bad, it’s just last year’s game with a futuristic paint job. I see no reason to buy this year’s new release, because I could just boot up an older title in the series for the same gameplay loop. Same schtick, different disc. Campaign I can confidently say that BO7 has the worst campaign in the entire Call of Duty franchise: a poorly-designed hodgepodge of bad ideas so awful I could write an entire separate review about the campaign alone. To start, you need a constant internet connection, even to play solo, since it’s a cooperative mode you can play with friends. Why you’d subject them to it is another discussion entirely. There is also lag — the delay between inputting a command and seeing it executed on your screen. Bullets will miss their targets, while movement and animations get choppy. I’ve played Call of Duty campaigns for at least 15 years and never encountered anything like this. Lag, coupled with enemies that take entire magazines of bullets to kill, makes the campaign an absolute chore to play through. Bullets seldom connect and when they do, they do as much damage as a BB gun. It gets worse. Since the campaign is cooperative, gunfights are populated with enough enemies for four players. But this is not balanced for solo play, so I faced groups of between 10 and 15 enemies at any given time. Oh, I nearly forgot: because of the constant internet connection, you cannot pause the game. This is pure incompetence and carelessness on the part of the developers. I doubt anybody tested this before it came out, because every single aspect of the campaign’s core design is flawed and neither fun nor worth playing at all. The story follows Black Ops 2 (2012) protagonist David Mason and his team, Spectre One, investigating a tech corporation called The Guild. Upon raiding the company’s lab in the fictional location Avalon, Spectre is accidentally exposed to a bioweapon that makes people see their worst fears and past trauma come to life. They whiffed the Scarecrow’s fear toxin from ‘Batman’, essentially. Since Spectre is connected by a neural network, they all have shared hallucinations, which make up some of the strangest missions in the series. There’s a problem, though: BO2 is a 13-year-old game, so chances are that nobody knows who Mason even is, making the story even more confusing. If I had to say something positive, the sequences themselves are visually unique for the series, with giant machetes falling from the sky, floating rocks and other otherworldly imagery. It looks cool, but veers too much from Black Ops’ traditionally gritty realism into the realm of utter stupidity, especially in the boss fights. Does anyone remember when Call of Duty used to be a somewhat grounded war game? The developers attempted to explore the process of overcoming trauma and fear in these sequences, which is respectable, but anything good here is compromised by the terrible foundation I outlined earlier. Every time I booted up the campaign, I was reminded of better campaigns from older titles and how far this franchise has plummeted. Were I scoring BO7 on its campaign alone, it’d score a dead zero. The best way to put it is with Marlon Brando’s iconic quote from The Godfather , when Don Corleone looks at his son’s body in the morgue: “Look how they massacred my boy.” Zombies Zombies mode is easily the strongest part of BO7 . There are several game types you can play, including Standard Zombies with its convoluted main quest and a Survival mode on a small map. The base map, ‘Ashes of the Damned’, has an interesting premise: you play in several small areas connected by roads you traverse with a new vehicle called Ol’ Tessie. Tessie allows you to upgrade weapons with the onboard Pack-A-Punch machine and is essential to complete the main quest. As an idea, it’s solid, especially upgrading the vehicle to keep up with the escalating difficulty. However, I could not pause while playing and encountered lag, which impacted the experience. This mode is not balanced for solo play either, so you’ll struggle to complete objectives while being swarmed by zombies. This can be solved by playing with friends, but if you make them play BO7 , they may not be your friends anymore. Regardless, herding a large group of zombies and dodging them never fails to satisfy, nor does emptying a magazine into said group and racking up points. Sadly, there aren’t enough maps at this time. It’s a familiar mode to anyone who’s played Black Ops before and it’s quite good, having been refined over the years. But it isn’t enough to justify a buy, at least not for me. A black eye for Black Ops How Treyarch and Activision saw this as a product worth $70 is incomprehensible. Zombies alone cannot carry the weight of a lacklustre multiplayer and a truly abysmal campaign. Trudging along while playing BO7 , I wanted to play an older title in the series or something else entirely. If you’re a game developer, this is the worst possible outcome. I absolutely cannot and will not recommend that anybody buy this. You’re better off spending your time and money on literally anything else.