It would be fair to say that something is a little awry with Black Ops 7. The game, which launched on Friday, has been review-bombed just about everywhere, with talk of refunds based on its use of AI, while the social media landscape is littered with clips of its campaign’s more surreal moments.

It’s a game that enters a world well-sated for shooters in recent weeks, between Battlefield 6 and ARC Raiders, seeing impressive player numbers. It’s a campaign that, on the surface, feels wholly too bizarre for such a bankable franchise, shoehorned somewhere between giving multiplayer gamers a reason to check it out and needing to balance the series’ rich history.

The Escapist recaps

• Call of Duty Black Ops 7’s campaign features more off-the-wall scenes due to its more psychological and futuristic nature
• There’s even some crossover from Zombie adversaries, while the campaign’s co-op nature makes it feel less curated than other CoD campaigns
• Endgame, the game’s post-game addition, feels like a way to keep players invested in something other than multiplayer.

Not quite the same old, same old

Here’s the thing: when it comes to the Black Ops 7 campaign, I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. In fact, I’m of the mindset that Treyarch and Raven have more than earned the right to try something new

When I think back to the most memorable Call of Duty campaigns, I’m still a stickler for the original Modern Warfare trilogy – but there’s no denying that Black Ops is where the franchise is able to cut a little looser.

From the inclusion of the original Zombies mode in World at War, which has since become a juggernaut in its own right, to the mind-bending narrative that kicked off in the first Black Ops and only gets more surreal in 2025’s edition, Black Ops 3’s nonlinear campaign, Black Ops 4’s health system and Black Ops Cold War’s mission board, each game at least tries something fresh.

Black Ops 6, in many ways, ended up with a fresher single-player because it was happy to mix moments like infiltrating a Clinton campaign rally and a new focus on open-ended areas where players could pick their own objectives.

Black Ops 7, to its credit, tries to do something similar: It meshes more open, co-operative missions with the more funnelled, shooting gallery rollercoaster rides we’ve seen since the franchise’s debut.

Its execution, sadly, is flawed. By making missions open enough to fit a whole squad in, there’s just not enough of that cinematic set dressing to make much of it feel memorable, outside of some sections that harken back to the scenes that pulled you by the nose through set pieces of yore.

If you’re expecting an All Ghillied Up-style mission that you can play with friends, you’re bound to be disappointed – but I’d argue you probably wouldn’t expect that going in.

We’re in the Endgame now

Once you finish the campaign, Black Ops 7’s endgame opens up, and it’s got the pretty self-explanatory title of, well, Endgame.

If the co-op campaign doesn’t tickle your playgroup’s collective fancy, though, there’s something about Endgame that makes it feel much more like the main course (and since progression is shared across Campaign, Endgame, Multiplayer, and Zombies, there’s no real harm in checking it out).

Dropping you into the city of Avalon in a vaguely Warzone-like way, you’ll play cooperatively with up to 31 other players and hunt down objectives. They’re all pretty standard “go here, kill this” fare, but it’s a genuinely enjoyable way to spend some time with Black Ops 7’s superlative shooting and movement in a way the Campaign never feels like it truly leans into.

There’s a little extraction shooter DNA in there with the option to snag weapons to take them into subsequent runs, and there’s some class-based decision-making to be done with Operators having their own progression, and there’s even a hint of roguelike in there with upgrades you can grab throughout that’ll change how you play.

Will it distract you from multiplayer? Probably not, but if Endgame does continue to grow in its objectives and options throughout the next year of Black Ops 7, it’s definitely something I can see popping up in subsequent games.

And, really, isn’t that the point? I’ll always look to play a Call of Duty campaign single-player, but if we hadn’t got something unique this time around, we’d have been left with a shooting gallery as seen in Battlefield 6’s campaign that didn’t live long in the memory.

At least with shared progression and the longer tail of Endgame, we can get something that players potentially return to over time.

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