I booted up Black Ops 7 expecting the same old routine, and yeah, the series has been coasting for a while. But within the first hour you can tell they've tried to kick the door in. The campaign isn't just "walk here, shoot that, watch a cutscene" anymore. It flirts with extraction-style pressure, throws in co-op choices, and actually asks you to make calls on the fly. If you're the type who tinkers with loadouts or messes around in a CoD BO7 Bot Lobby to warm up, you'll recognise that same itch here: systems that want you to experiment instead of obeying a script.

Where The New Stuff Works

The best missions are the ones that give you room to breathe. You're not stuck on rails. You're scavenging, weighing risk, deciding whether to push your luck or bail. With a friend, the co-op angle can be a blast when it clicks—covering angles, sharing resources, laughing off a messy escape. And when the game drops a proper set-piece, it still has that CoD punch: big movement toys, clean gunfeel, and those "oh, that's slick" moments that make you sit up straight. It's the first time in years the loop feels like it has a different heartbeat.

UI Friction And A Story That Won't Settle

Then the cracks show. The menus and matchmaking feel like they were designed by someone who never had to actually party up on a weeknight. You end up wrestling the interface instead of getting into the mission. That annoyance bleeds into the narrative too. The campaign keeps referencing Black Ops history, but it doesn't feel grounded in it. Characters pop in and out, motivations get hand-waved, and big lore beats land with a thud. It's not that it's "confusing" in a fun spy-thriller way—it's more like the game's telling you it's important, while also not earning it.

Hallucinations, Pacing, And Boss Fights

The pacing is the real killer. There are so many psychedelic hallucination stretches that it starts to feel like padding. Purple fog, warped rooms, distorted voices—over and over. After a while you're not intrigued, you're just waiting for the mission to resume. That choice also guts the villain. You barely see them doing anything concrete, so there's no rising threat, no personal grudge, no "we have to stop this now" urgency. And the boss fights. Some are fun mechanically, but they often feel stapled on, like the game needed a checkpoint spectacle more than the story needed a confrontation.

What I'd Want Next Time

There's a version of this campaign that really works, because the raw pieces are right there: bold mission design, genuine player agency, and production value that's hard to deny. It just needs one clear creative spine so the gameplay, the villain, and the tone are all pulling the same direction. Keep the experimental systems, sure, but stop smothering the plot in dream logic and start letting the antagonist exist in the real world. If you're jumping in with friends or even messing around outside the campaign—say, looking at a CoD BO7 Bot Lobby buy option to keep things light—this is the same lesson: the fun's there, but it needs cleaner support around it.