For years, Call of Duty campaigns have been pining for their glory days – that era when each instalment felt tight, confident, and genuinely surprising. Recently, though, every new campaign seems to swing harder in hopes of recapturing that old magic, only to watch the spark slip through its fingers. 

Black Ops 7 is no exception.

Call of Duty campaigns used to arrive with a swagger, certain of what they wanted to be. Black Ops 7, however, arrives in a moment when the series seems increasingly unsure of itself. 

Released barely a year after the critically adored Black Ops 6, this new chapter carries an unmistakable anxiety: it wants to be bold, it wants to be different, and it wants to prove that yearly CoD campaigns can still matter. That ambition shows, but the execution wobbles.

Raven and Treyarch lean heavily into experimentation this time, crafting a campaign that rarely resembles the meticulously authored, tightly controlled CoD experiences of old. Mission hubs feel lifted from the studio's own Zombies history or the now-defunct DMZ, and the entire mode seems reverse-engineered around four-player co-op. 

When played with a full squad, the campaign often hums with energy: bosses with multiple weak points, stealth sections that benefit from tactical teamwork, and chaotic rushes that feel like horde shooters wearing military uniforms. 

Black Ops 7 is ambitious, uneven, and occasionally thrilling. It swings for the fences, but many hits land off-centre. Not a failure, not a triumph – simply a campaign caught between eras, searching for the spark it once had.

But playing solo exposes the scaffolding. Without AI companions, simple tasks balloon in length, pacing grinds down, and an online-only structure means you can't even pause.

The imbalance is noticeable almost immediately. Enemy counts don't scale convincingly, and difficulty options have been unceremoniously removed. One moment you're swarmed by dozens of feral enemies, the next you're greeted by a pair of half-asleep guards who seem unsure why they're there. It's a campaign that often feels torn between two identities: co-op spectacle and solo storytelling, satisfying neither completely.

Narratively, the game sprints rather than strolls. Set in 2035 with the world once again teetering on disaster, the story hurls players through 11 missions in just over five hours. The return of Black Ops 2 villain Raul Menendez kicks things off, and soon the unit Spectre One is thrust into a battle against an evil tech conglomerate, The Guild, run by Emma Kagan (played with icy relish by Kiernan Shipka).

The Guild's weaponisation of a fear toxin injects the campaign with swirling nightmare sequences – part psychedelic horror, part sci-fi opera – that allow for some genuinely striking art direction.

The problem is that beneath the visual flair, the objectives rarely shift. Corridor shootouts and familiar breach-and-clear beats dominate, with much less of the inspired level design that made Black Ops 6 such an unexpected triumph. 

There are exceptions: a Tokyo mission teeming with verticality, momentum, and cinematic punch; a luxury yacht sequence that channels Nolan-esque action excess; and a handful of genuinely memorable set pieces. These moments remind you that CoD can still conjure magic. They're simply too sparse.

The campaign's structural eccentricity continues with its post-credits "endgame," an open-zone extraction-lite mode set in the island city of Avalon. On paper, it's a clever way to extend the experience, borrowing lightly from DMZ and Helldivers 2. 

In practice, it becomes a repetitive loop of clearing out colour-coded hotspots, watching enemy AI behave like cardboard targets, and grinding for combat rating upgrades. The traversal – grapples, wingsuits, high-speed sprints – is delightful, but the mission design flatlines into monotony long before the final boss emerges from the toxic fog.

Character work is mixed as well. David "Section" Mason takes centre stage, grappling with personal history and familial loss. Long-time fans will appreciate the returning faces and lore threads, but newcomers may find the plot opaque, tangled in years of backstory the game expects you to recall. Most of Spectre One is sidelined, and some of the writing – particularly for Harper – borders on cringe.

Still, the fundamentals of CoD shine through: the gunplay is as tight and responsive as ever, the gadget suite is inventive, and movement feels wonderfully liberated. There is fun here – just not consistently enough.

Black Ops 7 is ambitious, uneven, and occasionally thrilling. It swings for the fences, but many hits land off-centre. Not a failure, not a triumph – simply a campaign caught between eras, searching for the spark it once had.