Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (Zombies)

Activision's promise of "the biggest Black Ops ever" was perhaps inflated. Sure, there's a decent breadth of content in the latest chapter of the series, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, three core modes worth of features that you can unpack. But when you start looking underneath the surface and actually focus on what is being offered at a granular level, it somewhat feels misleading.

As Petter previously shared, the Campaign was wide of the mark and felt very different to what we expect from Call of Duty. I'd agree with that opinion, even if I do also believe that Treyarch has tried some interesting things in this latest single-player offering, even if most of it doesn't work. Then we have the Multiplayer, which never exactly landed with me during the beta window, and which Magnus shared similar issues and concerns with for the review phase, leading to a chapter in this storied series that is already uneven at best. But again, Call of Duty is a stool made up of three legs, so how does Zombies fit into this equation?

As of recent memory, I've found Zombies to be the part of Call of Duty games that intrigue me the most. The Campaigns have been of wildly different calibres, the Multiplayers require such focus and determination that they can feel suffocating, and battle royale has never really been my jam, hence Warzone not exactly holding my attention since its launch years ago. Zombies on the other hand has been the place that I find the most enjoyment from Call of Duty. This interest and devotion began in the late 2000s with Call of Duty: World at War, and since then it has been the place where myself and a core group of friends reunite to complete the complex and weird Easter eggs and otherwise spend hours gunning down hordes of undead.

While Black Ops 6's Zombies had its quirks and areas that could be improved, it also offered a really strong Zombies package with some truly excellent maps too, like the epic Terminus. I wanted to point a finger back at last year's chapter first because of the fact that "the biggest Black Ops ever" already pales to 2024's game by only having one launch Zombies map... Yep, instead of choosing between Liberty Falls and Terminus, here you only really have Ashes of the Damned to select. Granted, Dead Ops Arcade returns and is still good fun, but for main and core Zombies, it's already a more scaled back experience.

What Ashes of the Damned does offer is a very broad and complex experience, somewhat in-line with Tranzit from Black Ops II. It's similar because it's a wider map that is spread into separate sections that can be reached by using a vehicle to traverse incredibly hostile intermediary areas, with this regarded as the Wonder Vehicle Ol' Tessie. This is a fun and interesting idea that adds tons of depth to the experience by making it more challenging to hobble around and to acquire Perks, snag wall-buys, find Intel and Easter eggs, and otherwise even construct the Pack-a-Punch machine. Ashes of the Damned is not an easy Zombies map, which will be music to the ears of the veteran Zombies player, and it requires a good amount of learning and practice to understand its various quirks and features, and to uncover the broad collection of secrets that are dotted about.

I'll whine that there is only one map available right now because I enjoy variety (and frankly because a company of Activision/Treyarch's size should be able to launch with at least two maps...), but the truth of the matter is that Ashes of the Damned is a strong Zombies map. It has everything that you could want from a Zombies experience, all of the challenge and complexity merged together with depth and variety, asking you to adapt to new situations and mechanics while employing familiar tactics and methods that have coined Zombies for nearing two decades. The theme, the tone, the variety, all of this is some of the finest Zombies work that Treyarch has delivered to date, and to me it further goes to show one thing in particular about modern Call of Duty: Treyarch should make only Zombies, Infinity Ward should make only Multiplayer, and someone else (perhaps someone new) should make the Campaigns.

What does slightly rub me the wrong way is the reset that happens between every Call of Duty game as of late. I don't like starting up a new Zombies experience, which is fundamentally and seriously connected to the last game, with nothing at my disposal in a Gunsmith setup. After spending a year starting every Zombies game with the gun and attachments that I want to now having next to nothing on offer feels brutal at times, especially since many of the standard guns from Black Ops 7 are abhorrent in a horde-like Zombies mode. The wall buys are diabolical at times and due to the size of Ashes of the Damned, finding a gun worthy of your essence can be a true challenge. Still, the fact that progress on Research and Augments continues between BOPS 6 and 7 is a huge boon, especially now that there are added options and new researchable elements worthy of your time.

Anyway, quickly moving onto Dead Ops Arcade. This mode is everything that you likely remember about it from former chapters in the series, and it's just as fun. It doesn't have the mechanical depth and range of the core Zombies maps, meaning it won't entertain for hours at a time, but for a short play session of horde action, you won't go too far wrong with this top-down alternative. One of the main new additions is that you can now play in first-person, which is a bit of a shock to the system when considering how Dead Ops fundamentally functions, and I'd strongly suggest sticking to the top-down approach. Otherwise, there are new (and familiar) bosses to face and extra challenges to overcome with a fun retro-feel to them, and again you won't go too far wrong with Dead Ops in BOPS 7, even if it's perhaps best consumed on a more infrequent basis.

So overall, when considering the rather disastrous Campaign and the uneven Multiplayer, Zombies does stand out as the strongest pillar of this year's Call of Duty. But even though Ashes of the Damned impresses, it does still feel as though Activision and Treyarch are pulling their punches a tad. When you think about the wealth of maps now available in BOPS 6 compared to the singular one (soon to be two with Season 1) in Black Ops 7, and the fact that mechanically it's all very similar, there's no demand to leap forward to this latest shooter chapter, not unless you're desperate for fresh Zombies experiences.