Over the years, I've seen the Call of Duty franchise stumble, experiment, and frustrate, but I've rarely seen it faceplant. Sadly, Black Ops 7 is shaping up to be the exception. It's got a rather confused campaign, an extraction-shooter endgame, and a middling Zombies offering. The multiplayer is pretty much the only saving grace here, and a $70 AAA Activision title offering nothing more than "decent multiplayer" is just... not done.
Now, there are a lot of things wrong with Black Ops 7, but one thing Activision did themselves to potentially hurt its sales happened last month. They made Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 free. Making BO6 free for an entire week to counter Battlefield 6's explosive launch was clever in theory, but right now, it can also be seen as a terrible decision.
Black Ops 7 is the weakest COD launch in years
Oh, and Battlefield 6 is watching
Let's be brutally honest here: Black Ops 7 feels like a product made out of obligation. It's the first time in franchise history that we've seen two Black Ops games come out consecutively, and the rushed timeline shows. Nothing about the game feels fresh, new, or necessary. The co-op online systems in the already-disjointed campaign suffocate whatever intimacy a Black Ops story is supposed to offer. Black Ops used to mean something, man. It used to be COD's cerebral side with its conspiracies, paranoia, identity, and mind-games. BO7 strips all of that away and replaces it with a grindy, live-service endgame that feels more like DMZ, and we all know how that went.
Meanwhile, Battlefield 6 is sitting pretty, riding a 500k+ concurrent player high on Steam, staying in the top 5, and delivering one of the strongest multiplayer comebacks in FPS history. This is the most vulnerable Call of Duty has been in over a decade. Instead of responding with innovation, BO7 seems to be happy serving leftovers, hoping we don't notice.
Making Black Ops 6 free for a week was a mistake
It exposed the truth, and made me want the better game
When Battlefield 6 launched, Activision did something rather bold. They made Black Ops 6 free for an entire week. It was a strategic counter-punch meant to steal attention, keep players inside the COD ecosystem, and remind everyone who the "top dog" is. It worked, but not the way they wanted it to.
Rather than proving Call of Duty's dominance, all it did was highlight just how solid an offering Black Ops 6 was. By that time, we knew that the Black Ops 7 campaign was going to be strictly co-op with no difficulty settings either, which meant that they offered a free test-drive in a well-maintained sports car, while you could see the next dealership down the road on fire.
Even a year later, Black Ops 6 is polished, complete, and confident in what it wants to be. Black Ops 7, on the other hand, feels rushed, compromised, and absolutely unsure of its identity. Letting millions experience BO6 for free right before BO7's launch was like putting the older sibling and the newborn side-by-side, asking players which one can walk.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
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FPS
Systems
OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 83/100 Critics Rec: 91%
Released October 25, 2024
ESRB Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Suggestive Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
Developer(s) Treyarch, Raven Software
Publisher(s) Activision
Engine IW 9.0
Multiplayer Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op
Cross-Platform Play Yes - PlayStation, Xbox, PC
Where to play
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WHERE TO PLAY
SUBSCRIPTION
DIGITAL
PHYSICAL
Genre(s) FPS
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Black Ops 6 has a better campaign, and it's not close
Letting us experience a full free campaign before BO7? Bad call
One of the biggest reasons this comparison hurts so much is because Black Ops 6 delivered a genuinely strong campaign. It was arguably better than Cold War, and BO4 before it didn't even have one. It was tight, well-paced, character-driven, and had a surprising amount of depth to it. You could tell that the one-two punch of Treyarch and Raven on BO6 was firing on all cylinders.
Black Ops 7's campaign is not something I'm sure I could even call a campaign. It's a co-op-forward live-service experience dressed like a story mode. I don't see any Black Ops identity here. I don't see any espionage tension. The premise is barely there, and we know Menendez isn't really back. So... what?
After playing Black Ops 6 for free for seven days, a huge chunk of the potential Black Ops 7 customers experienced first-hand what COD storytelling could be, and then, they were asked to buy BO7's stitched-together campaign for $70. That sort of contrast is just devastating.
Black Ops 6's Zombies is one of the best ever
Black Ops 7's Zombies is middling at best
Zombies has become a sacred pillar of the Black Ops legacy, and it's actually one of the biggest reasons many people buy these games. It's the heart and soul of Treyarch's legacy, after all. Black Ops 7 just launched with an all-new Zombies type of map with different POIs, and while that might be for some players, it certainly is polarizing. The other map is just a POI out of the larger Ashes of the Damned map. Compare that to other Black Ops titles which have released with a lot more maps, and have also not made the cardinal mistake of putting the Pack-a-Punch machine on the back of a damn car.
Meanwhile, BO6 already has one of the best Zombies libraries ever built. Multiple maps. Deep progression. Strong variety. A tone and identity that feels right at home with the legacy of Zombies. As much as I like Vandorn Farm in Black Ops 7, it's still just a glorified POI from a larger map, turned into a standalone level.
That being said, with Black Ops 6's free week, I just played some of the best and most varied Zombies maps in COD history, which means that if I did have to spend $70 on a game, it's not going to be tough to pick 2024's Black Ops over this year's, at all.
Even the multiplayer is more of the same
Black Ops 7's multiplayer is incredibly polished, but so is Black Ops 6's
Let me be fair for a moment: BO7's multiplayer is not terrible at all. The servers are rock solid, hit-registration is smooth, the maps are impressive, and the movement changes are gimmicky but still pretty smooth. The multiplayer machine in Call of Duty games is gargantuan and absolutely brilliant, only needing refinement every year. This is classic Treyarch. However, the problem is that Black Ops 6's multiplayer is just as good.
Heck, you'd even find plenty of other players who might even consider Black Ops 6 as the better multiplayer game, and they'll commend the gunplay for having more weight, and the map pool for being more memorable. The movement additions in multiplayer in Black Ops 7 are pretty fun for a weekend, but they don't redefine anything at all. I never felt the experience being elevated, and it absolutely does not justify a full-price purchase when Black Ops 6 feels equally strong and occasionally better.
So, why wouldn't anyone want to simply go for the $70 game that offers equally-good multiplayer, far better Zombies modes and gameplay, and an infinitely better, more replayable campaign?
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
Like
Action
FPS
Sci-Fi
Systems
OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 67/100 Critics Rec: 41%
Released November 14, 2025
ESRB Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs
Developer(s) Treyarch, Raven Software
Publisher(s) Activision
5 Images
Where to play
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WHERE TO PLAY
SUBSCRIPTION
DIGITAL
Engine IW Engine
Genre(s) Action, FPS, Sci-Fi
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Black Ops 7 has launched weakly, but Activision didn't help things either
If I were to spend any money on a Call of Duty this year, it would be on Black Ops 6.
Black Ops is one of the most uneven launches in franchise history, but the real kicker here is that Activision's own free-week promotion made the problem worse. By putting BO6 in front of millions before BO7's release, they reminded us all how polished, complete, and confident last year's game was.
So, if I were to spend any money on a Call of Duty this year, it would still be on Black Ops 6. And if not, then there's also Battlefield 6, which has made significant efforts to bring in the COD crowd, which is more migration-friendly than ever this year.