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Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has been met with overwhelming criticism from players. This analysis explores the rushed, 'open combat' campaign built from recycled multiplayer assets, Activision's questionable development practices, and why the community has overwhelmingly rejected the game.
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00:00So we need to talk about what is easily the worst Call of Duty campaign in Call of Duty history,
00:05but I want to really get onto the overall point here, which is that none of this should have
00:09happened. If you look into the way that Activision has been running Call of Duty, running their
00:13different studios, running them into the ground, to be honest, specifically in regards to the
00:17developers Treyarch and Raven, my beloved Raven software. Shout out to Singularity, one of the
00:21finest games ever made before Raven were hoovered up by Activision. You will see that, you know,
00:26you have a handful of studios that are completely overworked and being asked to turn around these
00:29campaigns in a ridiculous amount of time. Treyarch and Raven just did Black Ops 6 last year,
00:34which was a demonstrably better put together campaign, series of set pieces, you know,
00:39everything else in regards to the way the entire game was put together was so much more proficient
00:43last year as in comparison to how it is this year. So let's run down a few things in regards
00:47to,
00:47you know, if you don't know what the hell the big deal is with Black Ops 7, why it's being
00:50review
00:51bombed, why the user score is 1.7 over on Metacritic, I will run those things down and then I
00:56want to get
00:56into the real factors behind why this is happening and hopefully things can get turned around next
01:01year. You would think that Activision and the big wigs, the corporate structure over there has to
01:06listen to the way this is going down. However, as we found out with Modern Warfare 3 a couple of
01:10years
01:11ago, sales do speak louder than actual quality. So if the game still sells, if Black Ops 7 still sells,
01:17then they'll probably just charge ahead anyway. And however, it is worth mentioning at this point in the
01:21video that Black Ops 7's current player count over on Steam is like 70,000 or whatever. It is an
01:27absolute fraction and it's hilarious. You can compare it directly to Battlefield 6, which has
01:32had over a half a million players checking in every single day since launch. And that's an incredible
01:37comparison in regards to something that, you know, their direct competition. But you can also look
01:41at Black Ops 6's numbers and how well received that was in regards to just people checking it out
01:45anyway. Obviously, Black Ops 6 has some of its, you know, detractors. There are certain, you know,
01:49changes that were made to that game's gameplay feel overall, the increased speed, the way the
01:53campaign goes, whatever. But it's still a full product. Black Ops 7 doesn't feel like a full
01:59product. If we start delving into these specifics, it feels like we have the most pressure-cooked
02:02Call of Duty in recent memory. You know, Modern Warfare 3, back in the day a couple of years ago,
02:07was meant to be DLC for Modern Warfare 2. That was what all the rumors said across most of that
02:12year,
02:12only for Activision to slap a full price tag on it and release it as a full game. Like I
02:16said,
02:16it's still sold. So they kind of learned all the wrong lessons for that, which feels like that's
02:20what led into Black Ops 7. The idea that you can just put whatever the hell you want out and
02:25people
02:25will hoover it up regardless. I feel like Black Ops 7 takes all those lessons, takes that core ethos
02:30from Modern Warfare 3, especially in regards to its campaign structure. And the overall idea that you
02:36can do a campaign that is just reuse, reheated assets from the multiplayer. The idea that that is
02:40acceptable in any way is one of the main reasons that people are completely peed off with this thing.
02:45Because Black Ops 7's campaign is very much more of the same idea that Modern Warfare 3 had,
02:50where it's this open campaign, open combat idea of just giving you different maps to piss about in,
02:56with different, you know, objectives just being survive waves of enemies, reach a different point
03:01on the map, and then progress. And maybe you'll get a cutscene in between if you're not just booting
03:05into the next arena to do the same thing all over again. Clearly in Black Ops 7, this campaign was
03:10designed for four players. There are always four different soldiers in the cutscenes themselves.
03:14You'll go through these maps looking for these different ways to progress to the next place,
03:18and you're supposed to be interacting with four different things all at once. So if you're
03:22playing solo, you just have to ping pong between the different interactable objects
03:25to go to the next area. Again, clearly it was made for four players, and that brings me nicely
03:30onto the most over-the-top and memed parts of the campaign, which you've probably seen online.
03:35The ridiculously over-the-top boss fights, where you have a giant health bar in the middle of the
03:39screen. And one of them, you're fighting this giant kaiju version of Harper, Michael Rooker's
03:44Harper character. It's worth saying that the third mission in the campaign takes place inside David
03:49Mason's head. That's how they're able to do all of this ridiculous stuff. We got teasers of this,
03:54you know, back in Black Ops 3, where you have, you know, like, mindscape, shared consciousness
04:00stuff going on, which means the developers just kind of get to run with it and do the most crazy
04:03over-the-top stuff possible. However, even Black Ops 3 didn't go so far as a giant over-the-top
04:08flower-based Resident Evil-style boss fight. Well, honestly, it feels like, you know, you're
04:14fighting this over-the-top version of, um, Frank Woods, um, becoming, you know, something like you
04:19would find in a woodland. Uh, this over-the-top creature that is, has a flower petal design that
04:24honestly, I think they're cribbing from Stranger Things. Like, I feel like that was a studio note handed
04:29down behind the scenes where it's like, can you make the petals just look a little bit
04:32like, uh, the Demogorgon? Because Stranger Things is going to be a bit of a thing in a few months
04:36and
04:36we just want to, we want to get in on that. Um, it just, it all feels so nakedly, soullessly
04:40corporate. And I love Raven in particular, but I value Treyarch as well as a dev. They have given us
04:45some phenomenal games over the years and I cannot imagine that as anything other than being given,
04:51you know, various different corporate mandates from on high, being told, hey, that DLC that you're
04:54making, that's now going to be a full campaign a couple of years ago. And hey, whatever you guys were
04:58working on for Black Ops 6, we're going to do that as a full campaign in Black Ops 7. We're
05:02going to do
05:02the same thing again. I'm sure it'll all come out from Bloomberg as they were the ones that revealed
05:06the truth a couple of years ago. But still, the set pieces here in the Black Ops 7 campaign,
05:10what set pieces? You know, they are in the, the lowest frequency that we've ever had in a Call
05:14of Duty campaign. And like I said, you're just fighting waves of enemies. You're just getting
05:17to a point on the map. There's even a bit where it feels like they just reused the zombie AI
05:22from
05:22the zombies mode, threw that in there. Um, and you have like vague control over the zombies. It's like,
05:27okay, sure. Um, the biggest red flag in regards to this, just being an online mode that you're,
05:33you know, that's stitched together with cut scenes though, is the fact that you can't pause for one,
05:37you can't pause a single player campaign. And also you will be kicked from the campaign for
05:42inactivity. So how is this the world we're in? If you decide to go to the toilet while you're playing
05:50your single player Call of Duty game, you'll just get kicked for inactivity because, you know,
05:53it's not like you've got anyone to respond to. Um, also I saw over the weekend, people realizing
05:58that, um, they could match make into other people's campaigns that they were still showing
06:02up in the multiplayer lobbies in the matchmaking. Um, so there was a clip of a guy just in the
06:06middle of a cut scene getting joined by a whole squad. And the guy was like, what are you guys
06:12doing in my game? Um, it's ludicrous, man. And there's no AI squad mates to make up for the whole
06:17idea of it being a four person squad, making their way through the maps. Um, it is absolutely
06:21ridiculous. You know, for some reason, Activision wanted Treyarch and Raven to not only, you know,
06:26give up some of their pride and, uh, put the multiplayer modes and the multiplayer map pack
06:30stuff into the campaign, but also chase this idea of a four player squad hero shooter type
06:35creation, like doing raid battles against these over the top bosses that take forever to kill
06:40where you're jumping over shockwave attacks in a Call of Duty game, like something that would be
06:45straight out of Destiny. Um, you know, maybe they thought that, you know, Marathon would be out by
06:49now, or people would still care about overwatch or something, something that would lead to some
06:55sort of train of Thorco and like, yeah, people are going to want to do four person, you know,
06:59looter shooter raid bosses where we have to do all these different methodologies to take down the
07:03creatures like we were doing literally 10 years ago in Destiny 1 and Destiny's expansions.
07:07So for some reason, that's what we've got, even though this year has completely proven them wrong.
07:12Like I mentioned, Battlefield 6 is doing extremely well. Um, and ready or not is flying the swap
07:17based tactical shooter, very much a rain, old school Rainbow Six game. Um, I would recommend
07:22ready or not in a heartbeat. That thing is fantastic. If you, if you miss boots on the
07:26ground, tactical angles based infiltration, hostage stopping gameplay, and there's various
07:31other modes in there too. Um, but that game has a killer campaign that favors gameplay, minimal
07:36cut scenes, but enough to stitch it together. Um, but still that's a gameplay framework that you
07:40want if you kind of yearn for what COD to a degree used to feel like, but especially that more
07:44militaristic feel that a Rainbow Six used to give us. It's worth touching on that Activision have
07:48this weird obsession with the Black Ops series of games. Like they just want to do Black Ops
07:52stuff. No other chunk of characters in all of Call of Duty has been given as much attention
07:56as the Black Ops games, but I do want to read out, you know, it's kind of crazy. The series
08:01timeline,
08:02like say you want to take this stuff seriously. Say you really care about David Mason's
08:06realizations about his father and you want to get stuck into the overall timeline. Initially,
08:10you'd have to go all the way back to World at War and to get the very first taste of
08:14it. But the rest of the main timeline, the named games, um, goes in timeline order. It's
08:19Black Ops 1, then it's Black Ops Cold War, and then you jumped, you do Black Ops 2, and
08:24then you jump to Black Ops 6, then back to 4, even though 4's campaign was scrapped, it
08:28was still set, um, after Black Ops 2 and 6. So you go 1, Cold War, then, I had to
08:36write
08:36this down, but 1, Cold War 2, then 6, then back to 4, then through to 7 where we are
08:41now, and then go to 3. 3 is still the one that is set the furthest point in the timeline
08:46where everything is overrun with mechs and androids and everything else and, and mindscape
08:51future consciousness stuff. But it's a complete mess. Um, and they keep playing the Black Ops
08:572 card. You know, they did it with Black Ops 7 where it's like, well, you guys love Black
09:00Ops 2, we're carrying on from Black Ops 2. Trying to fill in this, this chunk of time in
09:05between Black Ops 2 and 3, um, where they keep trying to squeeze things in, because
09:10it's like Star Wars, where it's like, oh, you know, if we do stuff in between episodes
09:133 and 4, that's the golden period, or whatever. Um, but their assumption that people like this
09:18futurescape stuff. I like to think that we were all loud enough with Black Ops 3 that
09:21they should never go near this stuff again. Or Black Ops 4, where they canned the campaign.
09:26They reduced it down to just a few cutscenes that you could access in the side, spec ops side
09:30mode, so you could still see what they were planning for the main campaign, but it didn't
09:33come through. Black Ops 4 was, was ostensibly a multiplayer suite. Um, and like I said, people
09:38hate this futurescape stuff, and it's led to the likes of the, the Harper-Kaiju fight, or
09:42the, the Frank Woods flower fight, and all that kind of stuff. Okay, let's talk about the
09:48fact that none of this should have even existed in the first place. If you go back to 2022,
09:53and the Activision acquisition by Microsoft, all of the court documents that were heard during
09:58those conversations between Phil Spencer, um, trying to get the deal over the finish line,
10:03as they were trying to get Call of Duty on Game Pass, what would that mean for the future? What
10:06would that mean for Activision? And what would that mean for annual releases in regards to Call of
10:10Duty? The only reason that Call of Duty has had so many sequential quick releases is because of
10:15Bobby Kotak, and the idea of pleasing the shareholders above everybody else. Make sure there's a new Call of
10:19Duty every single year, even if it breaks your studios, even if that, you know, leads to various
10:24different layoffs, and different team members, and the humanity behind it. Just saying, look,
10:28we can't turn these sizes of games around in quick succession across multiple generations. It is
10:33nigh on impossible. It doesn't matter because that's what Bobby Kotak wanted. Um, the whole part
10:38of the Activision acquisition going through was that Bobby Kotak would step down, Phil Spencer would
10:41step in, the rest of the Xbox Microsoft contingent would also step in. And one of the things that
10:45Bloomberg revealed back in the day was that they were looking forward, Activision were looking forward,
10:50talking to different Activision insiders. They were looking forward to relaxing the
10:54annual release model. They would prefer to have a Call of Duty, and I quote, every two to three
10:58years. Um, that was, that would be the sweet spot. You know, we're talking about something where you
11:02look at the average game development time in the modern day as being about five years. And you can
11:07also look to longer projects that are cooking for a lot longer, like The Last of Us 2, Red Dead
11:11Redemption 2. GTA 6 has been in the hopper for about 11 years, if not even more than that, in
11:17regards
11:17to when the idea took shape, looking at the likes of Dan Houser's interviews, in regards to different
11:21ideas he had for the follow-up to GTA 5. It takes a lot longer than one year, is what
11:26I'm saying.
11:26And Activision, you know, behind the scenes seemed, the various different studios, um, you know,
11:31underneath the Activision corporate, like the likes of Raven and Treyarch, etc., would just prefer to do
11:36something every two to three years. Even that is an insane Herculean task in regards to the modern
11:40gaming industry and turning out a AAA title. But the idea of doing Black Ops 6 in 2024, and then
11:46Black
11:46Ops 7 in 2025, with the same dev team, is ludicrous. Um, it really is truly a painful idea, and
11:54we're
11:54seeing that on screen. So that should never have happened, uh, that's one thing. Um, and all of
11:59that came from Call of Duty Vanguard back in the day. Vanguard was received so negatively, that
12:04apparently internal conversations led to the idea that a two to three, yeah, turnaround cycle would be
12:08a lot better. And at the time, they were looking forward to Modern Warfare 2 being the game that would
12:12restore the franchise and make people care about COD again. And then they would go forward with
12:16more considered approaches to the sequels after that. Clearly that didn't happen, and this pressure
12:20kooker turnaround has maintained, even though it was said that it would change. Now, it's only been
12:24just over two years since the Activision deal went through, but still, it is just worth saying how much
12:28things have not been relaxed or talked about or followed up on in those initial conversations of,
12:33oh, get the deal over the finish line, it'll be better for everybody, the consumer will get a more
12:36quality product, and the developers will have more time to work on it. That has not happened
12:40whatsoever. It hasn't even been talked about. And speaking about something else that hasn't been
12:43talked about, it's Call of Duty coming to Nintendo platforms. That was another thing that was put on
12:47the table, is get this over the finish line, and we'll bring COD to Switch. Again, only been a couple
12:52of years since the deal went through, but it hasn't been talked about whatsoever. Phil Spencer mentioned
12:56to the Washington Post back in 2022 that once we get into the rhythm of development, he said in the
13:00rhythm of this, our plan would be that when a Call of Duty game launches on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC,
13:04it would also be available on Nintendo at the same time. Now, I would say that a two-year turnaround
13:09from that
13:10deal going through is too tight, but we have a company that is dealing with one-year turnaround,
13:14so can you not at least put a teaser trailer out, or a delayed Switch release, or whatever the hell
13:18you need to do, like Sonic Racing Crossworlds style, and bring the Switch version out a few months later?
13:23Crossworlds went down a storm and runs incredibly well on Switch 2. I don't believe that you can't
13:28address this as one of the major reasons that the deal was put over the finish line in the first
13:32place.
13:32Like I said, all of this stuff has only been talked about for the last two years,
13:36but the brass tacks reality is that the absolute travesty that is Black Ops 7 right now should
13:42never have happened.
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