The Call of Duty: Black Ops games lean into fantasy and often surprise with a mind-bending narrative, and the Black Ops 7 campaign is no exception. It’s themed around the enemy using fear as a weapon, and you’re dropped into a storyline filled with hallucinations of monsters, trippy locations, and bizarre scenarios. This is a specific flavor of Call of Duty story that only developer Treyarch has shown the capacity to tell, and despite a few stumbles, the Black Ops 7 campaign does enough to leverage the potential of its more psychological narratives, while also moving the satisfying shooter gameplay into a new framework.
Confusingly enough, Black Ops 7 takes place over 40 years after the events of last year’s Black Ops 6 and 10 years following the events of Black Ops 2. The story is set in 2035 as a direct sequel to Black Ops 2, and it brings back David Mason from that game as the main protagonist. In Black Ops 7, you see the effects of Black Ops 2’s canonical ending, where Mason kills villain Raul Menendez and an uprising occurs. The world is now ravaged by violent conflict and psychological warfare, and The Guild, a global tech corporation, has stepped in to “protect” humanity from the chaos created by Menendez’s followers. But uh-oh: Menendez seemingly returns despite his apparent death.
David Mason looks slightly different in Black Ops 7, as he is now played by Milo Ventimiglia (Gilmore Girls, Heroes) instead of the original actor Sam Worthington. Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy) is back as Mike Harper, a role he played in Black Ops 2. Eric Samuels also returns from Black Ops 2, and the fourth member of the squad is Leilani “50/50” Tupuola, who is a new badass soldier with advanced bionics. This squad of four is known as Specter One, and they’re guided by a much older version of Troy Marshall, played by Y’lan Noel (The First Purge), from Black Ops 6.
The Guild promises peace and pushes back against Menendez and his followers, but, lacking trust in big tech with armed mercenaries, David leads Specter One into Avalon, the fictional city and home turf for The Guild, to gain intel on the company and its CEO Emma Kagan. Kagan is a boring and underdeveloped villain who lacks emotion and whose true motivations are unclear, but at the same time, that suits a character inspired by real-world tech CEOs with far too much money and power. Kagan is played by Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), but unlike the rest of the star-studded cast, the talent of the actress seems wasted on such a lifeless character.
Kagan and the Guild have weaponized the fear-inducing biochemical substance known as Cradle, which Woods and Alder’s team were trying to stop in Black Ops 6. In the hands of Kagan, Cradle is being used against David and his team to stop their investigation into The Guild. This substance creates hallucinations that drive much of Black Ops 7’s campaign. Some of the best parts of the story are these trippy, down-the-rabbit-hole moments, where you’re fighting ghoulish creatures and Zombies-style bosses. There are also powerful hallucination segments where characters are forced to re-live parts of their pasts, including some heavy moments with Frank Woods caught in a hellish nightmare of guilt over killing David’s dad, Alex Mason, and the torturous time he spent locked inside a shipping container with all of his dead squadmates.
The mission styles have a good variety and usually offer either stealth or action in order to get the job done. Some missions try to nudge you toward the stealth route, but thankfully, you aren’t punished for not being sneaky and choosing to go guns blazing instead. You also get to fight across a wide variety of locations, despite a few missions taking place specifically on Avalon. Some of the hallucinations take David and his team back to past Black Ops campaign missions, so there’s some nice fan service with unique spins on iconic moments, such as the Battle of Los Angeles, Alex Mason’s prison break from Vorkuta, and the rescue of Frank Woods in Angola.
A lot of these throwback locations are used in a way that’s meaningful to Mason and his team, and as a Black Ops fan, I enjoyed seeing places like Vorkuta show up in Black Ops 7, but it is worth mentioning that the campaign does reuse some assets in a way that’s off-putting. Some of the creatures you encounter look demonic or undead, and those work for the hellish hallucinations, but a few missions use the Vermin and Parasite enemy-types from Black Ops 6 Zombies, and those feel jarringly copy-and-paste in Black Ops 7’s campaign. Most of the throwback locations feel purposeful except when the characters walk through the Skyline multiplayer map from Black Ops 6, as that feels weird to see even though it technically is a location that exists inside Avalon.
The campaign also has co-op, so the story puts you in the boots of David Mason or one of his squadmates. You’re Mason when playing solo, or you’re one of the other three squadmates in a co-op session of up to four players. Call of Duty having a cooperative campaign is something we haven’t seen since 2015’s Black Ops 3, where it was poorly received. Initially, I was feeling skeptical at the announcement of this being a co-op experience with some large-scale missions. I love co-op games and open-world environments, but I don’t think those formats often work well for Call of Duty–campaigns are at their best when you’re thrust into tightly controlled set pieces designed for a solo player. You’re the main character, and all the cinematic moments and immersion carry so much more weight.
Thankfully, the solo experience is still possible in Ops 7’s campaign. You can choose to play the full story alone, and the other three members of David’s squad just disappear. You still hear the characters’ voice lines as if you’re still fighting with the full squad, but you’re visually alone in the fight as the star of the show–initially I thought this was going to be awkward, but I didn’t think much about it. Going solo is the best way to fully experience the story’s scripted moments of tension and the eerier hallucinations you’ll encounter. This can still be a fun romp for those who want to play with their buddies and level up, but I’m glad my first playthrough wasn’t interrupted by friends during emotional moments of the story.
One downside is that the campaign is always online, meaning it doesn’t allow you to pause even when you’re solo. I always needed to make sure I was somewhere safe or keep playing until a mission was fully wrapped up before stepping away for a quick break. The checkpoints are pretty abundant and forgiving though, so I never found myself having to replay too much of a mission if I had to take a break midway through or I reached a challenging section where I died a lot.
Black Ops 7 blends the various set pieces you’d expect to find in a Call of Duty campaign with elements of this year’s new Endgame mode, which takes place in Avalon, a massive map used for the campaign’s new playable epilogue, that will also eventually become a battle royale map. You have a typical stealth mission, there are grueling gunfights through tight corridors and most of the other expected level designs, but there are also new elements like additional movement mechanics or supply crates that let you pick between special abilities. You get to use grapple guns, protective shield bubbles, or super soldier-like kinetic jump to leap higher. The result of this approach is hit-or-miss. There are times you feel Treyarch’s strong cinematic style, with tense, linear moments while trying to use stealth to move through narrow corridors of enemies, but there are other instances where you’re looting boxes for gear in a way that feels a little too much like Warzone or Modern Warfare 3 Zombies.
A majority of the 11 campaign missions are traditional linear style, but a few are large open-world missions that take place on Avalon, which is a massive map used for the campaign’s new playable epilogue called Endgame, and it eventually will become a battle royale map. In a previous interview with Treyarch, the developer explained its decision to include the open-world Avalon missions was to help ease players into the full endgame experience, which is unlocked after completing the campaign.
These Avalon missions are more engaging than the awful open-world-ish filler missions featured in 2023’s Modern Warfare 3’s campaign, but they still don’t push the story forward in any meaningful way. They simply feel like they are meant to let players easily dip their toes into an endgame-style experience, without too much of a commitment. Avalon missions have an abundance of Guild enemies, and you can explore and pick as many fights as you want, but doing so isn’t necessary. I poked around a few areas of Avalon and engaged in a few fights with Guild soldiers before realizing I could just use my grapple gun and wingsuit to zip right past most of the enemies and quickly reach my objective. These missions don’t totally kill the pace of the game like Modern Warfare 3’s did, as you’re still there doing objectives like hacking servers to try to investigate the Guild, but this is another attempt at open-world missions in a Call of Duty campaign where the objectives just aren’t very enjoyable and could be better spent as a typical linear set piece.
despite a few stumbles, the Black Ops 7 campaign does enough to leverage the potential of its more psychological narratives, while also moving the satisfying shooter gameplay into a new framework
In an unusual move, you can’t select the difficulty of the campaign. Instead, it scales based on how many people you’re playing with, adding a greater challenge with more players. This doesn’t mean flying solo is the easy mode, though. There’s still a fair amount of challenge, but you do get plenty of items to assist you, like an abundance of ammo, armor plates, and self-revive kits. I found myself overwhelmed by robotic Guild enemies more than a few times, but even if I went down, I usually had a self-revive kit to pick myself back up, and it never took me long to resupply myself with another kit. The lack of a difficulty setting is definitely an unfortunate compromise for the sake of offering cooperative play. The difficulty is supposed to scale, but that likely won’t be enough to appease everyone. I usually play the campaigns on the hardest difficulty, so this wasn’t a bad experience for me, but some players might get frustrated by the sometimes overwhelming amount of enemies that swarm you in the solo experience.
The entire Black Ops 7 campaign eases you into the power structure of Endgame by slowly leveling you up during the course of the story. You’ll eventually get increased health, weapons of higher rarity, and so on. You’ll also encounter the occasional weapon upgrade station, and each one lets you pick one weapon to upgrade to a higher rarity. There are also a handful of abilities you can choose over the course of the campaign, and some of them prove really useful. I liked using the ballistic shield bubble to temporarily protect me from heavy waves of enemies and the Black Hat device to hack and disable the Guild’s robotic enemies.
The eleventh and final mission of the campaign does wrap up Black Ops 7’s story, despite the ending not feeling very satisfying. All of the emotional moments the campaign builds up in the hallucinations fizzle out with Kagan falling flat as a villain, and there is a small plot twist that won’t spoil, but it does feel very underdeveloped. However, the game doesn’t end after the credits roll. Instead, you’re asked to create a character profile for Endgame, Black Ops 7’s new sandbox-style experience meant to deliver more story and content with post-launch seasons. This gives a new co-op experience to Call of Duty beyond the campaign, andI’m really excited by the potential this post-campaign content has.
Treyarch said the endgame was inspired by elements of Modern Warfare 3 Zombies and Modern Warfare 2’s DMZ extraction mode, which is very noticeable when you jump into a match. The endgame grants access to Black Ops 7’s full Avalon map, and you can play solo or in squads of up to four players. Either way, Endgame consists of PvE matches that consist of open-world gameplay with up to 32 players, and the goal is to level up your soldier’s combat power to unlock new abilities, as well as increase your health and other attributes. Avalon’s map is divided into four tiers of difficulty, and it requires a lot of leveling to be able to fight through enemies in the tougher regions. It’s much like DMZ, MWZ, and other extraction-style shooters, as Endgame is designed around high-risk and high-reward missions that require you to survive and successfully exfiltrate from Avalon to keep your progress and gear. If you die, you lose everything and will need to start over.
Endgame is where co-op shines in Black Ops 7’s campaign, and as someone who enjoyed both DMZ and MWZ, this gives me a new place to play and level up with friends. There are tons of mission types to complete, with some being fairly simple and others requiring more time and effort to complete. There is a mission to steal a Guild vehicle and deliver it to a specific location, while other missions are designed around breaching containers or attacking and defending areas. Another more challenging objective requires you to use your wingsuit to follow a floating path of toxins in the air, but if you miss even one of the marked areas, you fail the objective. The guns aren’t great in the tier one areas, which forces you to carefully consider the right upgrades for your playstyle in order to survive and scavenge some better loot in tougher regions of the map.
Endgame is let down by AI that isn’t very intelligent. Enemies have eagle eyes for spotting you, but they can often make silly mistakes that allow you to easily outplay them. You can’t underestimate them, though, because they can still overwhelm you with their numbers. The bullet-sponge enemies in the higher-tiered regions have sent me fleeing back into the lower zones, but I’m always left feeling eager to power up and return.
Endgame continues the story of the campaign, and there are already Guild facilities to investigate and a mysterious toxin spreading across Avalon. Of course, getting to the heart of this story requires being powerful enough to work through to the highest regions of the map. This is also where having friends to join you can help a lot. Venturing into the harder regions alone is a tough challenge, and it will always help to have someone nearby to revive you, especially when the cost of death means losing all your character progression.
Endgame will change over time, but at launch, some areas of Avalon can feel empty. Treyarch has teased some big boss encounters coming in Season 1, though it remains to be seen how those pan out. Endgame doesn’t do anything particularly fresh or innovative, but I still enjoy Call of Duty’s satisfying gunplay and mechanics in these sandbox-type experiences enough to keep coming back. In addition to new story elements, you also have this space to level up weapons and try new things outside of Call of Duty’s normal campaign and multiplayer experiences. I can see a lot of potential and replayability for the mode, especially if Treyarch remains committed to making thoughtful seasonal updates.
Outside of the story moments, one of my favorite additions to Black Ops 7’s campaign is the shared progression. For the first time ever, you can jump into a campaign and level up before ever touching the endgame, multiplayer, or Zombies. This includes overall player progression, weapon leveling, and it will include battle pass progression once the first season arrives. After my full campaign playthrough I ranked up to level 30 and already made progress with leveling several weapons. You also unlock unique campaign weapon camos, and there are plenty of challenges to complete for rewards like calling cards and other cosmetics.
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Overall, this is the most robust Call of Duty campaign experience, and depending on your preferences, you can fully level up, unlock rewards, and prestige all without ever leaving the campaign. This opens the door to more types of players to enjoy the longevity a Call of Duty game can have, without needing to focus on competitive scenarios.
The Black Ops 7 campaign has some successful missions and emotional ties to the characters and the overarching Black Ops story, and those moments make up for some of its shortcomings. However, this is not one of Treyarch’s strongest campaigns, and the twist and villainry here feel a little underbaked for a game designed to be a sequel to such a beloved storyline as Black Ops 2. The campaign still offers plenty of emotional character moments and touches on the impacts of Black Ops 2 story, so I think the story is definitely worth experiencing. Endgame also serves as an intriguing new way to play Call of Duty, and while it’s uncertain how much seasonal content will allow the mode to grow, I am excited to play more and see how Treyarch expands on it.
