Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is bad. There is no way around it, no possibility of sugarcoating it. Released in November 14th, 2025, the latest entry on the eponymous war shooter from Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard King has been mired in controversy over its less-than-stellar performance — so much so that the studios behind the game (Treyarch and Raven Software) have already apologized over it.
And now, it has a discount, And a big one at that: several storefronts, such as Best Buy, Target, Gamestop and Amazon, are reporting sale prices nearly 50% below the original, $69.99 launch mark.
One might think this is a good thing: a famous new game sold for half its price does bode some head turning here and there.
The thing is…Black Ops 7’s woes are well known by now. Everybody and their mothers are fully aware that the game fails to deliver in pretty much every aspect — don’t even get us started on that terrible single player campaign thing… — so what could’ve been seen as a steal, might actually feel like being stolen.
Oh, the criticism: what’s the community saying about Call of Duty: Black Ops 7?
To say that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is getting lambasted everywhere would be an understatement. Last time we covered the game here at PRG, we quoted how outlets like IGN and Eurogamer called the game “uneven” and “lopsided” — both adjectives you wouldn’t want to correlate to your product.
Furthermore, at the time of that writing, Black Ops 7 was sitting at a 70/100 score on aggregators such as OpenCritic: that score is now 35% favorable for professional journalists, and less than 20 on user ratings.
Not even on PC, where Call of Duty tends to be king alongside the (much better) rival Battlefield, things get better, as nearly 1,500 user reviews were published, with only 35% of them saying something kind of nice about the game. Everywhere else, Black Ops 7 sits in “mostly negative” labels.
There’s just so many negative points that we actually had to scour the internet and compile a list, when usually a single paragraph would suffice:
- Weak campaign story and gameplay: Nonsensical plot with hallucinations replaying old missions, bullet-sponge enemies, rushed design feeling like a Warzone tutorial or forced co-op slog.
- Campaign technical flaws: Always-online requirement even for solo play, no pause/checkpoints, inactivity kicks forcing mission restarts.
- AI-generated “slop”: Low-quality AI art in calling cards, cutscenes, backgrounds; undisclosed and seen as lazy cost-cutting.
- Sweaty multiplayer lobbies: Open matchmaking fills games with high-skill “sweats,” exhausting casual play; persistent SBMM complaints.
- Multiplayer technical/netcode issues: Poor servers, bad spawns/balance/audio, head glitches, instant TTK, floaty movement/UI.
- Underwhelming/buggy Zombies: Crashes, glitches, uninteresting maps for some despite praise as “solid” by critics.
- Overall value and fatigue: Feels like “$70 DLC,” annual release burnout, heavy microtransactions, poor marketing/hype.
- Performance and launch problems: Bugs (e.g., classes not saving), low sales.
Recently, the game’s developer came out apologizing for how things are turning out and making a bunch of promises — no more back-to-back releases for both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or Black Ops, for instance. But that did little to dissuade an already unsatisfied community.
Granted, the Black Ops 7 discount could have something to do with this being December, a time where end of year sales usually take place for that final push to close a year in a commercial high note.
But in this case, the “note” was never high in the first place. Hell, it barely scratched the “average” mark. So yeah, this whole thing smells like a “Hail, Mary” in order to save some face and try to move on.
What say you? Will you buy Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 now that its costing less than $40? Let us know in the comments!
