After months of waiting, and a weeks-long beta phase, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 finally launched on November 14. Across the world, thousands of people started logging on – some for the latest version of the multiplayer, others (like myself) to play the campaign.
The campaign-heads were looking forward to something in the vein of last year’s acclaimed Black Ops 6: an addictive ride through the world of modern spycraft (or 90s spycraft, if you want to get technical).
What awaited them was something rather different. Firstly, it was set in 2035. No big deal; most Call of Duty games are set in the near future. Secondly, the campaign was designed to be played with other people. Live. It’s even called ‘co-op.’
Wait, you say; don’t that sound a little bit like multiplayer? It does. A lot, in fact.
When somebody logs onto the campaign mission these days, they’re encouraged to invite up to three other friends to play too. Those friends will assume the roles of Mason (our hero) and his three squad mates: together, you will seek to vanquish the game’s rather bonkers plot and bring down the villainous Guild.
Playing by yourself in Call of Duty is a bizarre experience, not least because it feels like the devs don’t want you to. To start with, even beginning a solo campaign involves a lot of tinkering with the game’s settings to find a workaround: the default is playing with friends. The cheat method, in which you turn off the ability to find those friends online, is not well signposted, and involved some rather confused Googling when I first logged on.
Just as in the multiplayer, characters can choose to emote at the touch of a button and explore levels which look more DMZ maps of the multiplayer game than the more linear layout of games past. Actually, they don’t just look like DMZ maps; they are DMZ maps. That level which takes place on the boat in Tokyo? It’s a map called Hijacked, which has been stolen straight from the multiplayer in Black Ops 2 and reskinned with modern graphics.
Doing the missions solo also feels like a slog. The computer doesn’t create any AI friends to fill in for missing humans, which means everything has to be done the hard way.
Battling one’s way out of an enemy base? Best believe you’re shooting all those guards yourself. Attaching four loads of explosive to a secret lab? You’re going to be doing a lot of running around. Nobody signs up to Call of Duty to spend most of their time running errands; but here, a lot of the campaign’s promised 5-hour runtime ends up being legwork.
The game’s commitment to making this multiplayer campaign a ‘thing’ has even extended to taking it totally online. For the first time, it’s not possible to save progress in-game – or even pause the game. As a result, you’re locked in to playing each level in its entirety, rather than sneaking a quick half-hour here and there.
There aren’t even the game’s traditional checkpoints; if somebody quits halfway through a level, they go back to the start. “Its [sic] like not being able to pause the movie you are watching,” one disgruntled Redditor posted. “This is so disconnected to reality, its [sic] surreal to me.”
This pivot to all things co-op isn’t really a surprise. It’s taken a while for Treyarch, the team behind Call of Duty, to accept that most people log on for the multiplayer, rather than the tight, action-packed campaigns that the series made its name with.
As far back as 2018, player interest in taking on the franchise solo was tanking, with significantly more people reaching level 55 in the multiplayer (36-45 per cent) on Vanguard, for instance, than completing the campaign (around 15–22 per cent).
And that’s before you even factor in engagement levels. It’s all well and good getting big-name actors to star in the latest edition of your franchise – Milo Ventimiglia, Kiernan Shipka and Michael Rooker among them – but what’s the point of that, if nobody bothers playing the campaign anymore?
This was clearly an attempt to rectify that: bring players back by essentially creating a multiplayer lite.
So no, it’s not a surprise. But it is a shame. The campaigns were one of the best elements of the Call of Duty franchise – at least they were, before the franchise started churning out a title once a year and storytelling took a back seat to profits.
Modern Warfare 2 and 3, and the original Black Ops (as well as its sequel) were some of the series’ highlights, combining slick combat with compelling storylines and some of the most audacious action sequences put to screen thus far, such as the Eiffel Tower blowing up in MW3.
Now, it looks like we might be stuck with nothing but this half-way house multiplayer campaign, and as a story-focussed player, that’s a pretty miserable concept.
I’m not opposed to playing online. But sometimes, I don’t want to be sniped by a 12-year old in his mum’s living room. Sometimes, I want to play the game on my own terms. Or duck in for half an hour and be able to leave again without having my progress wiped.
At least there are the old games. And Treyarch will doubtless be monitoring the response to this year’s game and seeing what to change next year.
Maybe that will include a switch back to solo campaigns and we’ll be able to save our progress once more. Here’s hoping. Don’t hold your breath though.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is available now on PlayStation, Xbox and Windows
