Simon Cardy
Guest
Remember those messed-up missions from the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign where you’d take on a shapeshifting molecular monster or break into someone's memory prison to hunt for the truth? Well, things are only set to get weirder in Black Ops 7. Set 10 years from now, it’s looking as mind-bending as it is mold-breaking, as Treyarch and Raven Software’s latest shooter steps even further out of the series' traditional military boots and back into a near future full of snazzy tech and otherworldly horrors. It’s not just in the campaign that things are changing up either, with both multiplayer and zombies receiving numerous new additions and impactful changes. The jury is still out on how many of these will make the desired impact, with major overhauls to how online play works and an extensive new set of story missions promised, but from initial impressions, the last thing I’d dream of calling this year’s effort is lazy.
“Did a giant machete just drop out of the sky?” yells Michael Rooker as a 30-foot spinning blade stabs the ground before him. Yes. Yes, it did, Michael. The veteran character actor plays Mike Harper, one of four members of Black Ops 7’s SEAL Team Six squad who was first seen in Black Ops 2, but is even grizzlier in his new 2035 form. Also on the team are the returning Eric Samuels and David Mason, with the latter sporting a new face and voice courtesy of Heroes’ Milo Ventimiglia. They’re joined by New-Zealander “50/50”, a decorated soldier with a bionic limb augmentation. She completes the squad on a mission which is being kept largely under wraps for now, but takes them across the world in a story that also includes Kiernan Shipka of Netflix’s Sabrina as CEO of The Guild, a self-declared last line of defense against an imminent threat.
But what about those giant falling machetes? Well, Black Ops 7 doesn’t just take place in our world, but in realms conjured by a fear toxin seemingly unleashed by returning series antagonist Raul Menendez – a giant version of whom can even be seen looming over some levels. Yes, Associate Creative Director Miles Leslie did indeed confirm that Batman Arkham’s Scarecrow was an inspiration for such encounters. This particular brand of biological warfare grants the development team the ability to warp missions to their creative will and break free of the real-world constraints that Call of Duty made its name with. I’ve seen glimpses of wildly overgrown corridors that look almost post-apocalyptic in design, and looping Tokyo freeways that bend-over-backwards, Inception-style, stretching into the sky. I’ve seen next to nothing of the actual mission design yet, but at least in terms of visual style, it’s certainly equal to last year’s lauded effort, arguably displaying a wider spectrum of ideas. Mission variety is promised to back up those visuals, and if the team is looking to emulate last year's mix of free-form sandbox design with espionage-infused encounters, then that can only be a good thing.
These unorthodox surroundings beg for new sci-fi tech-infused gameplay mechanics too, and, while appearing not to veer as futuristic as Call of Duty did in its Advanced and Infinite Warfare days, Black Ops 7 does have some new toys to play with. The ones that caught my eye were mostly movement-based, whether it be the Mega Jump, which lets you rise high into the air before landing with an impactful thud, or the ability to both grapple to ledges and wall jump to distant platforms. It’s not quite the parkour splendour of Titanfall 2, but anything that reminds me of that particular masterpiece of a shooter campaign gets a thumbs up from me.
Each of the 11 missions from start to finish can be played with friends, including the brand-new endgame.
So these levels that throw our protagonists into paranoid twists of memories serve as the mind-bending portion of Black Ops 7, but what about the mold-breaking? Well, that comes in the shape of two big changes coming to this year’s campaign. The first is the fact that this year’s single-player mode isn’t entirely that. In an echo of Black Ops 3, it is fully playable solo, but also in teams of up to four players in co-op, with each controlling a different member of the squad. As a big fan of co-op games, as well as someone who yearns for the heady days of Modern Warfare 2’s Special Ops mode, this excites me greatly. Each of the 11 missions from start to finish can be played with friends, including the brand-new endgame.
The second of Black Ops 7’s major shake-ups, this final “mission” is designed with replayability in mind. Taking place in an open world called Avalon, you and your friends make your way through steadily unlocked areas that increase in difficulty and put your skills and chosen loadouts to the test. The aim is to survive for as long as possible before getting out – and while that may sound like an extraction mode, Treyarch explained to me that this is actually more of a proving ground. “There's no loop, there's no taking stuff out. It's really about surviving,” explains Leslie. “That's what the endgame is; survive, take your stuff in, and really, you're going to get launched back into Avalon all opened up now, and you're going to try to work through these sort of mysteries that unravel.”
From there, you’ll begin a whole new power curve journey as you look to build your chosen character up to a power level worthy of taking on its final challenge. You’ll be able to equip new perks and abilities not found in the standard story missions and create an operator tailored to your specific playstyle. The snag? If your squad is completely wiped out while on an excursion, you lose all progress for that character. It’s designed to create a sense of jeopardy not found anywhere else in Call of Duty, creating the sense of a genuine endgame activity on par with something like a Destiny raid.
How successfully this will play out is, of course, yet to be seen, but it all feels in service of Black Ops 7’s desire to keep all of its modes connected and, crucially, to keep you coming back to play them as much as possible. This is further supported by the fact that you’ll now earn battle pass XP from playing the campaign, as well as specific weapon camos that can only be unlocked through progressing deep into the endgame. All of BLOPS 7’s modes are connected, and it's something the studios have gone to great lengths to emphasise, having begun work on this year’s Call of Duty at the same time as Black Ops 6. This parallel development is what gives me hope, having been previously concerned at the potentially less-than-12-month production time the studios may have had. To hear this has been a long-term project and not a hastily stuck together one fills me with confidence, especially considering how much I enjoyed last year’s campaign.
Why are People Calling Call of Duty Lazy?
Video game series that operate on an annual release basis are always an easy mark for accusations of “laziness”. It’s become a bit of a hot button topic recently due to a (somewhat cringeworthy) Splitgate 2 presentation at this year’s Summer Game Fest, where game director Ian Proulx stated that he was “tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year”. That sentiment is seemingly shared by former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra:
Battlefield will boot stomp CoD this year. But the real win here is CoD won’t be lazy anymore, and we’ll all get better FPS games for it.
— Mike Ybarra(@Qwik) August 8, 2025
But of all of the angles you could choose to hold against Activision and the studios making Call of Duty, I think it’s unfair to label their efforts over recent years as lazy – even when it comes to Modern Warfare 3’s critically-panned campaign. Such a criticism especially struggles to hold up when taking into account just how much new stuff is coming to Black Ops 7. Of course, there are topics surrounding COD that deserve further interrogation — namely the game’s use of generative AI and the extensive monetization of its players — but to say the effort isn’t being put into delivering a fresh experience yearly is, at least in my book, unfair.
But, of course, the campaign is only one part of the feast being put on by Raven and Treyarch, with both multiplayer and zombies making up the rest of the menu. We’ll be able to delve deeper into both of these modes in greater detail at a later date once we get to go hands-on, but for now, we know that there are numerous top-level changes. Of course, for MP, there are a whole host of new weapons, scorestreaks, and maps to play with. These include the Echo 12, a new dual-burst shotgun with a rotating underbarrel magazine; the Rhino scorestreak, which is essentially a controllable mech juggernaut; and 16 maps at launch, of which 13 are brand-new. This pool will naturally be added to post-launch – I was teased that one known as the “Stakeout Killer” is currently being tested inside of Treyarch’s walls. Black Ops 6’s popular tiny apartment has the potential to be usurped, it seems, by one that is equally “fast and frenetic”.
Then there’s a whole new type of multiplayer mode called “Skirmish”. This 20 vs 20 showdown takes place in one of two specially designed arenas that are larger than the average. Almost like mini slices of Warzone locations, teams will compete against each other to secure objectives and complete missions in a way that resembles Cold War’s Fireteam mode and the more recent DMZ endeavours to varying degrees. I have my doubts about how popular this mode will become, however. Call of Duty doesn’t necessarily have the greatest track record when building multiplayer modes on a grander scale, with their mastery coming at close quarters as opposed to city-wide sniper battles. This sort of action is better suited to their competitors, and in the same year as Battlefield 6 seems to be returning that series to a former glory, I fear Skirmish may just become another failed experiment by comparison.
Outside of big new additions, there is also a long, long list of tweaks and changes being made to the multiplayer formula. These include, but aren’t limited to:
- The return of looping scorestreaks, but as a perk.
- The demotion of tactical sprint to a perk rather than a core skill.
- Not being able to aim down sights when sliding, diving, and wall jumping.
- Being able to strafe when mounting a gun.
- Being able to prestige individual weapons to unlock new camos and exclusive attachments.
- Scorestreaks can be “overclocked”, meaning the more you use them, you’ll be able to unlock alternative versions with small boosts to how effective they are.
- Three new hybrid playstyles are being added so you can mix and match different categories of perks, but not be punished for doing so, and still get bonuses.
- A new specialist wildcard replaces your scorestreaks with three perks of your choosing that unlock at specific score totals during a match.
- Weapon build codes can now be shared with others and easily copied into your game.
That’s just a taste of what multiplayer has in store, with a range of small-to-big sweeping changes making their way to Black Ops 7. And then there’s Zombies. Taking place entirely in the lore-centric Dark Aether for the first time, this year’s undead mode pits the original Zombies cast of characters against yet more hordes of gruesome threats. Very little was shown to me at this stage, but if you’re a fan of the mode, the promise is that you’re going to have plenty to get stuck into. There’s even the return of the fan-favourite, top-down, twin-stick Dead Ops Arcade mode, which promises to offer yet another layer to this game-within-a-game-within-a-game behemoth that is this year’s Call of Duty.
Believe it or not, I’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s coming with Black Ops 7. Its combination of the wild new approach to its campaign, its revamped and retooled multiplayer, and the fan-service flourishes of Zombies makes for a very exciting prospect. Whether it all comes together and ends up firing on all cylinders remains to be seen. But with this much to be excited about, it’s looking highly unfair to label this year’s Call of Duty as lazy.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.