Chatter Box Film

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is the latest game in the biggest gun game of all time, Call of Duty. The game has a multiplayer mode, a story mode, and a zombies mode.

The story mode is a mixed bag for me. I understood some of the plot but not all of it. Having only played half of Black Ops 6, that may explain why, but after some research, I understood it better. The story follows the Guild, who lie about selling weapons for security, but are actually evil and want to cause wars so people will come to them to buy their tech and equipment, making them more powerful. They also try to make countries dependent on them.

The Black Ops team receives a video message from someone they know is dead, which makes them question whether he is alive or not. It turns out the Guild has a new leader called Emma, played by Kiernan Shipka, who is messing with them. Her plan is to release a fear gas into cities, or possibly the entire world. The JSOC Black Ops team, who you play as, tries to stop her and her plans of controlling the world.

I thought this was a clever idea for the game and unlike previous Call of Duty games I’ve played, where it’s mostly just about war. This game had a more unique approach by using fear gas, which added an interesting element to both the story and gameplay. I also enjoyed the gliding throughout the game. The game tricks you with what is real and what isn’t, as sometimes you are shooting at what you think are enemies, but they are actually hallucinations. This makes it harder to work out which enemies you are meant to be killing. You also get a cool giant dagger thing at one point that’s fun to use.

In the hallucinations there are these spider-like things, they are a little bit creepy, but you get used to them and I’m very grateful they don’t look fully like spiders; the best way to describe it is… they look like the Mind Flayer from Stranger Things.

Kiernan Shipka is great at playing the ruthless and powerful leader Emma. The rest of the cast is good, but throughout the game, you don’t really learn much about them, and there aren’t many character bonding moments. It feels more like “mission, then next mission,” with no side plots or storylines to explore the characters. Because of this, I felt they focused more on Emma’s power than the heroes’ dynamics. You do have to appreciate that everything is done with motion performance capture, which gave me a new appreciation for games. I half enjoyed the story and thought it was unique, but I did get confused at times and wish there was more bonding between characters. 

Unfortunately, there is no checkpoint option, so you have to complete each level in one go or restart from the beginning, which I found strange and annoying.

As for the multiplayer modes, I like that you can select numerous characters to play as. However, you can only pick characters from the team you are sorted into each round. For example, you can play as either the good team (JSOC) or the bad team (the Guild), but you can’t play a Guild character if you’re on JSOC. I always play as Emma when I can because I’m a fan of Kiernan and not familiar with the other cast. Another clever thing is that enemies can drop fear gas hallucinations, making your vision blurry and shooting at enemies who are not there. I’ve not worked out how to use this yet but it’s cool and clever that they brought something from story mode into the multiplayer game modes. I also found the matchmaking to be very bad. If you play with friends who are extremely high level and then join a new lobby without them, the game still puts you with high-level players, which means you keep dying.

Another thing I find annoying is that the battle pass takes ages to complete. I’ve spent a lot of time on it and still haven’t been able to finish it. I’ve heard we are getting a Fallout collaboration, but I think it’s too little too late. I also don’t think anything on the current battle pass is worth it, and they should have added the Fallout content to the battle pass instead. This might still happen, but since the battle pass is near the end of its run, it seems unlikely.

I did find one glitch where sometimes I would shoot people and no damage would happen, so I had to quit the game and restart. This has only happened twice, though.

Endgame is an interesting mode where you have to shut off the fear gas, but it’s very challenging. I’ve worked out how to escape, but I’ve never figured out how to fully complete the endgame mode. I also don’t think it saves your progress, which is very annoying. 

Overall, Call Of Duty Black Ops 7 is a fun unique twist on the game, the multiplayer modes are not much different to previous games but the story mode has a unique twist and style that makes for a fun original gaming experience with a great cast. I would recommend this game, and I love that it’s available on PS4 and older-generation consoles. It shows that Activision cares about its players, because with such a huge game, you might expect them to skip older consoles like most major games do nowadays. So definitely makes it worth a purchase!