Black Ops 7 is Call of Duty at its most obnoxious and least enjoyable.
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What is it? Near-future aim down sights shooting.
Release date: November 14, 2025
Reviewed on: Ryzen 7 7700, RX 7800 XT, 64gb DDR5
It only takes a single mission in Black Ops 7's atrocious co-op campaign to figure out what the scheme with this year's entry is: welding together the campaign, multiplayer, Warzone, and Zombies modes, so as to streamline the asset generation pipeline and drastically cut down on the requirement for one-off assets and complex scripting.
This drive for efficiency is felt across the whole of Black Ops 7, but nowhere more so than the campaign, a grinding slog through the forthcoming Warzone map update and the occasional multiplayer map retooled for wave defense against mindless AI hordes.
The premise of the campaign itself is complete nonsense: after being dosed with the Cradle bio-weapon from Black Ops 6, Alex Mason's son has to retread the memories of his father (and, confusingly, his father's squadmates) through shared hallucinations.
When Black Ops 7 does wander back onto a somewhat familiar path, it does so to retread the lives of series arch-protagonists Woods and Mason, remixing iconic locales and series highlights in the way that Disturbed covered "Sound of Silence".
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Everything in Black Ops 7 Season 2