[Pain] [Laughter]: Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Solo Campaign Review
All images are from Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, all images are by me
Exactly a year ago, I opened my Black Ops 6 review by explaining, fairly or unfairly, the quality of that title would be used to justify whatever financial decisions Microsoft made in regards to Game Pass moving forward. Last November we found ourselves in the exact same situation. A new Call of Duty was ready to fill our hard drives and Game Pass was the most expensive it had ever been. What lesson did I personally learn from history predictably repeating itself?
I should have given 6 a higher score. We didn’t know how good we had it.
A decade after the death of the terrorist leader Raul Menendez, fresh footage surfaces of him making fresh threats. Immediately, a megacorporation known as “the Guild” steps in to combat this looming danger. However, their motives seem suspicious and Specter One (that’s us) is sent in to investigate. Complicating this narrative that’s already doing everything in its power to complicate itself is a mysterious chemical weapon. At the tail end of the first level, your team catches a faceful of this gas, and from that point forward, they fight to complete their objectives while periodically battling through shared hallucinations (and confronting their past demons). Don’t get too excited. I’ve made it sound more interesting than it is.
If you’re anything like me and only engage with this franchise for a brief window every 12 months, I’d recommend watching the “Story So Far” trailer. It’s no substitute for having played all of these recently, but it will at least get you reacquainted with the major players.
A decent attempt was made at giving each member of your squad their own personality. Even if the range of their dialogue never transcends generic soldier jargon you’ll be able to tell them apart beyond their famous faces. I also like the villain even if her screentime is limited and she isn’t given very much to do.
Some levels are short, some are very long, and the pacing never develops any kind of flow. It also doesn’t help that you’re regularly kicked out to a battle royale style hub. In theory, the semi open world should present opportunities for tackling objectives in multiple ways but doing so is rarely satisfying. Sneaking around means not shooting and shooting is one of the only things this game does well.
All of these aspects contribute to a story that, ultimately, doesn’t have a shape and barely has stakes. There isn’t a beginning, middle, and end. Some things happen, a couple more things happen, and then it’s over. I only felt like I’d saved the world because the game told me. There’s a reason why, at the time of this writing, completing the first level is a rare achievement.
Black Ops 7’s campaign is meant to be experienced cooperatively with three other players. Your team will pop in during cutscenes and they’ll pop back out when it’s time to pick up the controller again (it’s basically the same formula Dead Space 3 employed in 2013). Even if you’re tackling it solo, the story is treated as an extension of the multiplayer. You’ll level up. You’ll complete challenges. You’ll be drip-fed camo unlocks. And because these “levels” are now “sessions” there are no mid-mission saves (more on why that’s a problem in a second). There’s also no pausing which isn’t conducive to taking notes. I didn’t find the repetition of having to do everything myself too painful (the number of objectives doesn’t scale to the number of players as far as I can tell), but at the very least, with a full squad, you’ll be able to divvy up C-4 planting responsibilities.
The world acts as a loadout lobby and the extensive arsenal is propped against every tree, waist high wall, and ammo crate. It’s an open invitation to experiment and find your favorite. Plus, this being a near futuristic setting, discovering how exactly a magazine snaps into a new weapon during your first reload always makes for a fun little surprise.
It’s still Call of Duty at the end of the day–it still looks, sounds, and feels like a game that’s been worked on by thousands of people. Regardless of its shortcomings, that gives the experience a high floor. As I hinted at above, not many things in video games come close to the sensation of landing your shots in Call of Duty. Many of the enemies in this outing sport life bars and watching them melt only adds to the dopamine. One of my siblings did a literal double take during a cutscene because we’ve reached photorealism. Yes, that is in fact Jess from Gilmore Girls.
Unfortunately, these impressive flashes are dulled to a blued gun metal by the state the game launched in. During one of the campaign’s lengthier missions, if I died, my console would hard crash to the Xbox home screen. Remember, the levels are multiplayer sessions even when they aren’t–so each crash translated to losing around 20 minutes of progress. This is just one of the myriad reasons why it’s taken me so long to get this article out–after multiple attempts ending in multiple crashes, I refused to continue until it was fixed. If I hadn’t been committed to writing this review, I wouldn’t have come back at all. That probably tells you everything you need to know about Black Ops 7.
If you were to dissect every map and every mode from the overall package there might technically be more content here than past entries–it’s just that content is significantly less interesting. It’s a shame because this could have been a Call of Duty where anything was possible. Imagine if these teams were allowed to take a year between releases? Imagine if every entry didn’t NEED to sell tens of millions of copies? It’s embarrassing to somehow both play it safe and fail to stick the landing.
Will Microsoft learn any lessons from Black Ops 7? I guess we’ll find out in less than 12 months.
55/100
Note: Just in case I didn’t provide enough context, this review is based on the November-December 2025 version of Black Ops 7. I assume most of the technical issues have been fixed at this point. Also, Call of Duty is a living ecosystem with regular updates. My score reflects only the launch content of the campaign.