We went hands-on with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at Call of Duty NEXT

Sure as the sun rises, another Call of Duty is headed our way. Ok, jokes aside, there’s a palpable amount of anticipation for the upcoming Call of Duty Black Ops 7, and recently we got a deep dive into several of the game’s major components at Call of Duty NEXT. With a co-op campaign for up to four players, a Zombies mode, Call of Duty Mobile, Warzone, and yes, the next iteration of the ever- popular multiplayer, there’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get to it.

Before we get started, I wanted to offer a bit of a disclaimer. I’ve been playing Call of Duty since the series wasn’t preceded by a number afterwards, so I’ve seen the series progress across its entire journey since it started in 2003. That said, the last time I would say I was truly competitive in the multiplayer arena was around Infinite Warfare. Since then the team has integrated a great deal of advanced movement techniques and an ever-expanding mesh of interconnected perks, streaks, upgrades, levels, and underpinned systems. It got to be a full-time job to keep up with all of it, and frankly, I just couldn’t invest that much time into it.

As such, my time with the game this last weekend was that of one returning to the series. I’ll return this to the capable hands of our Lead Editor David Burdette, who has spent a great deal of time plugged into this series and understands it at a level I no longer do. It ensures we cover the game from both angles - somebody who might be jumping into an already-moving stream, and those who are already swimming in it. That said, some of this is very much going to sound like “Old man shakes fist at clouds” as I view this through the lens of somebody who served in the military in a Special Forces unit for six years, so certain things are always going to stick out to me. Chalk it up to gray in my beard or my unwillingness to bend to “arcade” shooting.

First and foremost, this is the first time we’re getting a back-to-back entry into the Black Ops series as this one follows directly from Black Ops 6. Set in the year 2035, it’s also building on groundwork laid by both 2 and 6 – a world shaped by fear, political psy-ops, and destabilization at the speed of information. The teaser trailer (INSERT TRAILER BELOW) sets the tone with “Embrace the Madness” and that seems to be the central rallying cry to a more surreal, mind-bending direction for this entry. If you thought being strapped to a chair and trying to figure out where reality starts and ends was bending your brain, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

While we didn’t get to play the campaign (Though I’ve not kept up with the multi, I’ve played every one of the storylines), we kicked things off with multiplayer. First and foremost, you’ll get to experience some of what we saw for yourself shortly – specifically, six maps entitled The Forge, Cortex, Exposure, Imprint, Blackheart, and Toshin, out of a total of 18 available at launch. There were a few things that were immediately noticeable.

As I mentioned earlier, movement is a bit more advanced than it used to be. Wall jumps allow the player to bounce off the wall, and now that can be chained up to three times but they do lose some momentum after each jump. This allows you to pop off the wall, taking shots mid-air before hitting another jump. It’s a core component and the next generation of the Omnimovement system that was introduced in Black Ops 6.

To put a bit of a damper on the ever-increasing speed of it, the team has removed the tactical sprint as a default, now only available as a selectable perk, though the base speed is also increased, putting it somewhere in the middle of where it was for 6. In practice and as a returning player, I found I got used to this system pretty quickly. That said, I’m ok with sliding as I’ve done that in my real-world time in the military, but bunny hopping is still insane to me. It gave me great pleasure stalk-walking bunny hopping nitwits into the ground and shooting them into oblivion, doubly so when they’re pros. Stop it.

The next thing was something I didn’t realize had changed until it was pointed out – the return of weapon prestige. Previously you could “prestige” your weapon (that is to say, reaching max level, then resetting your progress to earn new and special rewards, perks, items, skins, badges, etc. for completing a fresh set of challenges) but this had disappeared in recent years. It’s now back, allowing you to hit two prestige levels per weapon, which unlocks an additional 250 levels of unlockables like new attachments, camos, skins, etc. for mastery. Investing your time and effort into a specific weapon once again carries rewards. I’ll leave it to David to go over them, but there are a total of 30 weapons to tinker with 16 of them being brand new to the franchise. There’s even a new Overclock system to level up your ancillary gear beyond your primary weapons. This sits alongside classic Prestige for everything else, but with a small twist.

In previous games, all of them existed in a bit of a progression vacuum. In Black Ops 7, if you’re playing, you’re earning. The cooperative campaign (and its Endgame mode), Warzone, multiplayer, and yes, even Zombies now gives you progression across all of the prestige systems I just mentioned, meaning you’re always getting something for playing – a series first.

If you’re like me, it’s hard to swim through the literally tens of thousands (if not more) of combinations of Gunsmith options available for each weapon. Sharing these with your friends has always been a manual process, but that’s no longer the case. Now you’ll be able to generate a code to share that build with your friends or stream viewers so they can try it out for themselves. In my case, if I want to try out the loadout that has put me in the dirt one too many times, I can even copy it on pickup, letting me snap it into use immediately without even leaving the match! There’s a sense of that “always progressing” system you’ll find the first time you level up something in the middle of the fight where you can immediately employ whatever you just unlocked. The team clearly wants you spending less time in menus and more time in the fight.

As a returning player, I found my niche, eventually settling into either a shotgun (with dragonfire shells and a holo optic) and the MXR-17 rifle at David’s recommendation. While I never quite got the hang of sliding (it’s just difficult on mouse and keyboard – I’ll concede that the combination of axis is easier on a controller), I was becoming somewhat effective at some maps by the end. A step towards proficiency after a few hours, even against the pros? I’ll take that, even if it was likely painful to watch in practice.

I also found that the seemingly impermeable amount of options and interconnected systems aren’t quite as complex as they otherwise appeared to be. Sure, there’s a meta to be found somewhere in there, and I’m sure I’m wildly inefficient at my approach, but there’s fun to be had here. I will still bristle at the long-standing (but wasn’t always this way) problem with Call of Duty where it encourages, even demands, and very much rewards reckless combat behavior is only worsening, and I’ll always hate the fact that bullets are damned near analog (either somebody is fully fine or all the way dead – bullets are otherwise pointless as they cause no ill effect whatsoever until your health is zero) but that’s not changing anytime soon it seems. Leaning into weapons I enjoyed using and slowly learning the maps, when combined with some coordination with friends, could even drag a returning curmudgeon like me to the game. Will I ever be competitive in Call of Duty again? Unlikely. Is there fun to be had? Absolutely. Let’s talk about the mode I had the most fun with before we close out with Warzone.

The Zombies mode for Call of Duty was introduced as a bit of an experimental Easter egg in World at War all the way back in 2008. It’s since evolved into a much-anticipated fully-formed multiplayer juggernaut. It’s really the only PvE mode, or it was until the co-op campaign that’ll come with this year’s entry. In this mode, you’ll face ever-more-dangerous waves of zombies who intend to gobble your face off, and you’ll be feeding them lead until they are once again mulch, or you join them. The mode we got to play is round-based, throwing more and more zombies and with greater strength at you until you eventually succumb. You can play this mode yourself, or you can team up with friends to fight the horde. There are even a few surprises in store, including a “Zursa”, which is to say a Zombie Ursa. Yep, that’s a zombie bear. While I didn’t quite get to the round to face him, I did see somebody else do it, and well…they died. Quickly. The whole team did. Quickly.

To help you fight off the horde, you’ve got a “Wonder Vehicle” called “Ol’ Tessie”. This upgradeable, repairable, and fully-functional battle truck is how you’ll race from place to place. Killing zeds and collecting scrap lets you build it up and maintain it, with the aid of T.E.D.D. – a disembodied bus driver from Black Ops II’s Zombies map “TranZit”, and Black Ops 4’s “Alpha Omega” map. As part of the “Dark Aether” storyline, T.E.D.D. would zip you across the map, and I guess in chunky little pieces and welded to the hood, he’s kinda still doing that? It’s a horrible zombie infested world – we take what we can get.

The map sees a bit of a change this time around. The Dark Aether seems to have taken on a sort of Mobeus strip, with multiple zones dotting the edges, and a large central area in the middle. You’ll have to choose which direction to traverse the map, and each zone will have a main quest as well as special side-content for players who want to push their luck. There’s even a guided non-round-based map called Ashes of the Damned for a more story-based guided experience. There’s a whole lot to discover here, and that was apparent from the word go.

Without a doubt I enjoyed Zombies the most. Sure, I had no idea what the new weapons did, or how to unlock various things, or even how best to push the Dark Aether narrative (turns out, we’re all trapped there, so you’ve got that going for ya), but I was giggling like an idiot most of the time. The same goofy and unrealistic systems pervade this mode as well (albeit without the wall jumping), but the change in venue and objectives let me turn off my brain and just enjoy it for good gory fun. I could see really digging into this mode, checking out all the ways to upgrade Ol’ Tessie, figuring out how best to use the GobbleGums, and all the other goodies unique to this mode. I think it’d be perfect for breaking returning players back into the game without as much friction, and I’m eager to get back to playing it at launch.

We briefly got to check out Warzone – Call of Duty’s dedicated Battle Royale game mode. The newest map, Haven’s Hollow, is set in rural Appalachia, inspired by two fan favorite RBZ maps, Liberty Falls and Shattered Veil. We played it for all of five minutes before we were pushed into the massive Verdansk map, so I’ll rely on the chat going on during my stream which said it was tight quarters and smaller than other maps. It has nine POIs, and some very long sight lines, though I had a hell of a time lining up a solid long-distance shot. I’m going to need practice to be effective here.

This event, surprisingly, never quite got the comms situation sorted. I asked Tech to look at it a few times, but they’d have to solve it for the whole room it seems. As such, there was little to no coordination between players, and that’s a key component to an effective squad for Warzone. As such, I felt like I was operating on my own entirely too often. I imagine I’d have enjoyed it more had that gotten ironed out, but what I did get to play (both in this new map and Verdansk) was tense and enjoyable. It’s another mode made better through practice and a thorough understanding of the maps, where objectives lie, and how best to exploit them with the help of your friends. While I was assured an “attachment and movement balance overhaul”, I just don’t have the experience to speak on it, so you’ll have to wait for David’s assessment on that one.

I spent a good six or so hours with the game’s modes, and came away impressed with what the team is doing to unify the game for new and returning players. The unification of progression, cooperative campaign play, shareable loadouts, and zombies all sounds like my brand of awesome. As a returning player, I found that the game is not nearly as much of a brick wall as I had anticipated it has become, and that speaks volumes. While I can’t get into some of the specifics some of you might be craving, you’ll have all of that with David’s help soon enough. Just as in years past, we’ll be flooding the zone with all things Call of Duty so stay tuned. We’ve got a lot to share. Speaking of sharing…

The official release date of Call of Duty Black Ops 7 is November 14th, 2025 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, but that’s not the first time you’ll get your own chance to play it – we’ll be giving away beta codes for the upcoming Closed Beta test running from October 2nd to October 5th, with an Open Beta running from the 5th to the 8th. Keep an eye on our social media, as well as our YouTube channel, and right here on the main page for ways to get a key for the closed beta.

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