Call of Duty already had a lot on its plate with its mission of beating Battlefield 6 as the shooter to have in 2025. Now, it seems that mission got a whole lot more complicated: as reviews of the game start pouring in, more and more people are finding out about how incredibly strict and unforgiving Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Campaign mode can be.
According to several outlets, the mode that has always been correlated to solo, offline players does a lot to, well, keep you from playing solo. Not only does it have a mandatory, always-online feature (which, honestly, is the least problematic part of this), Black Ops 7 Campaign mode also does not allow for checkpoints, saves and will even boot you off the session if you stay idle for too long.
The idea, apparently, is to create an experience where even story-driven players will have to connect on a quasi-multiplayer session in order to join a group of other players and fulfill mission objectives tailored to be undertaken as a crew, not as a solo flyer.
That alone is already difficult enough for some, due to unpredictable, day-to-day comings and goings, but it actually goes further, as the not-so-single player experience also does not have AI bots to fill empty spaces in case less people than the minimum, four-member squad numbers required join in.
So, to put it simply: you might be waiting a while to start playing a Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 session that was supposed to be solo, but isn’t, only to be kicked off of said session because you had to do the dishes.
It is no wonder that guys like IGN and Eurogamer, to name a few, are referring to Black Ops 7 Campaign mode by using adjectives like “uneven” and “lopsided”. Not that the whole game is bad, mind you: OpenCritic lists it with a 70/100 rating at the time of this writing, so you know that it’s solid.
But given the game is set in the future, with some, say, “artistic freedom” when it comes to animation (I believe some other websites referred to them as “like Looney Tunes”), this might indeed turn some heads — except not for the reasons Activision/Microsoft might think or want.
Somewhere, an EA executive with new, Saudi billions in their pockets is smiling while sipping premium coffee…
