Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 05/Dec 03:07

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 – Review

It’s barely been a year since we covered Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which managed to surprise us with its high-quality gunplay, its omnimovement system, and the really amusing gameplay loop. Black Ops 6 did have an exciting campaign mode to play through, but the main focus was, as always, on multiplayer action. Black Ops 7 takes this a step further by even making the campaign mode multiplayer-oriented. While the idea of this sounded rather interesting, the execution wasn’t always up to snuff, and that’s the case for the rest of the game as well. Even so, we quite enjoyed ourselves, but we would have perhaps loved another Call of Duty subentry outside of Black Ops to take the limelight rather than releasing this one too quickly. In terms of presentation, even with only the one-year gap, it seems that a lot of the environmental physics effects have changed. Explosions and other effects, even impact effects, look slightly different, and some effects even look a bit washed out. Don’t get us wrong, however, as Black Ops 7 still looks very good. The maps are decently designed, the explosion effects are satisfying, and we even had a few laughs when ragdolling our opponents through the air. There are, of course, also the few graphical glitches where we would get stuck in walls or doors, especially when being gunned down by the opposition. The sound design complements the on-screen action really well with realistic-sounding guns, massive explosions, and decent voice acting in the scenes that matter. If you played Black Ops 6 last year, or many of the previous installments, you’ll probably know what to expect here. You’ll be treated to a competitive first-person shooter experience with a heavy focus on online multiplayer. Luckily, this one also has a fairly interesting campaign mode that, for the first time, also unlocks general progress. While the campaign can be played solo, it’s still a lot more fun if you have a few buddies to team up with online. Sadly, the campaign doesn’t support local co-op, which is a shame. Normal online multiplayer does support local co-op if the second player also has an Activision account. The split-screen options do not apply to all types of modes. Of course, for those who were wondering, screaming kids are still very much part of the experience if you have voice chat enabled. A new mode has been added to the online experience here, namely Overload. This reminded us a bit of a carry the flag type of mode, as each team will need to pick up a device and score points by bringing it to one of the designated enemy ‘goals’. It’s a simple format, but it did prove to be rather enjoyable. A tight-knit team is key to victory here, as defending the player who is carrying the device can also make it easier to pick it up again if they perish. While we personally still often chose classic modes like Team Deathmatch a bit more, we still quite enjoyed what Overload had to offer. Of course, the Zombies mode and the campaign are significant parts of the game too. The Zombies mode offers more of the same, albeit with new content. There are no real surprises here. The campaign mode, however, does things a bit differently this time around. Instead of a full single-player experience, the campaign focuses on multiplayer play for up to four players. As mentioned earlier, the campaign mode doesn’t support local multiplayer, which is a bit of a shame. It would have been great to be able to play locally, as this would have been an amazing experience to play locally with a buddy. This means that to get the best possible experience, you’ll have to play online. Luckily, you now also gain general progress for playing through the campaign, which is certainly great for those players who eventually go to competitive online play. That being said, the campaign mode does tread new water, which is a good thing, but it does feel less focused and perhaps a bit blander than the interesting campaign of the previous installment. The thing that stood out the most for us with this new release of Black Ops 7, which came too close to the previous Black Ops game, was that it felt a lot less focused. Don’t get us wrong, the core experience is still decent, the gunplay is good, the omnimovement system is extremely satisfying, and the maps on offer are interesting enough to keep coming back for more. It’s just a well-rounded package for the most part, but it feels in some areas a bit too similar to the previous release and also like a small step back. We noticed more graphical inconsistencies, performance issues when playing split-screen online when a player would open the scoreboard or change loadouts, and minor bugs such as waypoints for objectives (like hardpoint) not updating. Conclusion Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is a competent new Call of Duty release, but it feels as if it was released too soon after Black Ops 6, and it drops the ball on a few occasions. Nonetheless, we enjoyed the tried-and-true multiplayer content, we loved teaming up in the Zombies mode, and in all honesty, we did quite like the concept of the multiplayer-oriented campaign mode. We do feel that this one should have stayed in the oven a bit longer to reach the same quality level as Black Ops 6. Nonetheless, as far as yearly iterations of game releases go, this one isn’t half bad.