Call of Duty appeared to be on thin ice until Black Ops 6 revitalized the series, but Black Ops 7 seems to have already lost all of the goodwill the franchise had garnered. If the sixth installment was a return to form, then the seventh appears to be negative regression to what is sadly the mean. A run of bad games was interrupted by Black Ops 6, which now appears to be a bit of an anomaly.
Black Ops 7 Isn’t What Call of Duty Wanted
Call of Duty may be too big to fail, but that theory is being tested with Black Ops 7. It was always a big risk to go right back to the Black Ops well immediately after having success with it. There had never been two Black Ops titles in a row or this close together, and it seems to have backfired. All signs point to this being an absolute dud.
On GG, which is a sort of Letterboxd-type app for video games, Black Ops 6 earned a 3.5 average rating. Its immediate successor launched over the weekend to a disastrous 1.9 rating. 3.5 is solid if unspectacular, and Black Ops 7 is at roughly half that.
That’s not all, sadly. 7 has a 71 on Metacritic, which isn’t awful, but the user score paints an even uglier picture. Users rated it 1.7, which is even worse than on GG because it’s out of 10, not five. For comparison, Black Ops 6 was rated 82 and had a 6.2 user score. Neither is mindblowing, but the difference is jarring.
Critic scores or even ratings aren’t the only thing to judge a game by, but the player testimonials aren’t good, either. They seem to generally align with what the scores suggest, implying that this was a huge misfire on the part of Activision and Treyarch.
Much of the outrage stems from the campaign. Call of Duty had a string of rough campaigns, even one that got publicly mocked at The Game Awards by Christopher Judge, before finally getting it right with Black Ops 6. In my eyes, it’s one of the best campaigns they’ve had yet.
It perfectly toed the line between the weird, unique new direction they clearly wanted to go while also remaining true to the franchise’s roots. It was pretty incredible. Unfortunately, in Black Ops 7, it appears that they’ve learned the wrong lessons. They’re not toeing the line anymore, and in most cases, they’ve leapt right over it.
Maybe Call of Duty deserves some credit for taking big swings creatively, but they missed the mark pretty badly on this one from a narrative perspective. That doesn’t even account for the gameplay changes that don’t help. Making the campaign multiplayer centric is certainly a choice, especially since there are tons of solo gamers. The inability to pause and some other things make it glorified multiplayer mode, which is so far from ideal.
Of course, the issue of AI cannot be ignored, either. The developers were caught and admitted to using AI in the last iteration, and they’ve said as much again for Black Ops 7. Many have pointed out the AI use in calling cards, but there could be other areas where the developers cut corners. Some have accused the campaign of being written by ChatGPT. That’s unsubstantiated, but it speaks to the lack of quality many are finding with it.
Conclusion
Call of Duty is so massive that a dud like this probably won’t hurt them. But it’s a shame they couldn’t continue building upward. They’d gotten lazy and content before coming up with a really strong entry just last year, but the rushed product that is Black Ops 7 suggests they lost all momentum, and it will be tough for them to dig out of this hole yet again.
