The Worst Launch In Franchise History

So we need to talk about what is easily the worst Call of Duty campaign in Call of Duty history

but I want to really get onto the overall point here, which is that none of this should have

happened. If you look into the way that Activision has been running Call of Duty, running their

different studios, running them into the ground, to be honest, specifically in regards to the

developers Treyarch and Raven, my beloved Raven software. Shout out to Singularity, one of the

finest games ever made before Raven were hoovered up by Activision. You will see that, you know

you have a handful of studios that are completely overworked and being asked to turn around these

campaigns in a ridiculous amount of time. Treyarch and Raven just did Black Ops 6 last year

which was a demonstrably better put-together campaign, series of set pieces, you know

everything else in regards to the way the entire game was put together was so much more proficient

last year in comparison to how it is this year. So let's run down a few things in regards to

you know, if you don't know what the hell the big deal is with Black Ops 7, why it's being review

bombed, why the user score is 1.7 over on Metacritic, I will run those things down and then I want to

get into the real factors behind why this is happening. And hopefully things can get turned

around next year. You would think that Activision and the big wigs, the corporate structure over

there has to listen to the way this is going down. However, as we found out with Modern Warfare 3 a

couple of years ago, sales do speak louder than actual quality. So if the game still sells, if

Black Ops 7 still sells, then they'll probably just charge ahead anyway. However, it is worth

mentioning at this point in the video that Black Ops 7's current player count over on Steam

is like 70,000 or whatever. It is an absolute fraction and it's hilarious

You can compare it directly to Battlefield 6, which has had over a half a million players

checking in every single day since launch. That's an incredible comparison in regards to something that, you know

their direct competition, but you can also look at Black Ops 6's numbers and how well received that was

in regards to just people checking it out anyway. Obviously, Black Ops 6 has some of its

you know, detractors. There are certain, you know, changes that were made to that game's

gameplay feel overall, the increased speed, the way the campaign goes, whatever, but it's still a full product. Black Ops 7 doesn't feel like a full product. If we start

delving into these specifics, it feels like we have the most pressure-cooked Call of Duty

in recent memory. You know, Modern Warfare 3, back in the day a couple of years ago

was meant to be DLC for Modern Warfare 2. That was what all the rumors said across most of that year

only for Activision to slap a full price tag on it and release it as a full game. Like I said

it's still sold, so they kind of learned all the wrong lessons for that, which feels like that's

what led into Black Ops 7, the idea that you can just put whatever the hell you want out and people

will hoover it up regardless. I feel like Black Ops 7 takes all those lessons, takes that core

ethos from Modern Warfare 3, especially in regards to its campaign structure, and the overall idea

that you can do a campaign that is just reused, reheated assets from the multiplayer. The idea

that that is acceptable in any way is one of the main reasons that people are completely peed off

with this thing, because Black Ops 7's campaign is very much more of the same idea that Modern

warfare 3 had where it's this open campaign open combat idea of just giving you different maps to

piss about in with different um you know objectives just being survive waves of enemies

reach a different point on the map and then progress and maybe you'll get a cut scene in

between if you're not just booting into the next arena to do the same thing all over again clearly

in black ops 7 this campaign was designed for four players there are always four different soldiers

in the cut scenes themselves you'll go through these maps looking for these different ways to

progress to the next place and you supposed to be interacting with four different things all at once so if you playing solo you just have to ping pong between the different interactable objects to go to the next area again clearly it was made for four players and that brings me nicely onto the most over the top and memed parts of the campaign which you probably seen online

um the ridiculously over the top boss fights where you have a giant health bar in the middle of the

screen and uh one of them you're fighting this giant kaiju version of harper michael rookers

harper character and it's worth saying that um the third mission in the campaign takes place inside

David Mason's head. That's how they're able to do all of this ridiculous stuff. We got teases of

this, you know, back in Black Ops 3, where you have, you know, like, mindscape, shared consciousness

stuff going on, which means the developers just kind of get to run with it and do the most crazy

over-the-top stuff possible. However, even Black Ops 3 didn't go so far as a giant over-the-top

flower-based Resident Evil-style boss fight. Well, honestly, it feels like, you know, you're fighting

this over-the-top version of Frank Woods, becoming, you know, something like you would

find in a woodland. This over-the-top creature that has a flower petal design that, honestly

I think they're cribbing from Stranger Things. Like, I feel like that was a studio note handed

down behind the scenes where it's like, can you make the petals just look a little bit like the Demogorgon? Because Stranger Things is going to be a bit of a thing in a few months

and we just want to get in on that. It just, it all feels so nakedly, soullessly corporate. And I

love Raven in particular, but I value Treyarch as well as a dev. They have given us some phenomenal

games over the years, and I cannot imagine that there's anything other than being given, you know

various different corporate mandates from on high, being told, hey, that DLC that you were making

that's now going to be a full campaign a couple of years ago, and hey, whatever you guys were working on for Black Ops 6, we're going to do that as a full campaign in Black Ops 7. We're

going to do the same thing again. I'm sure it'll all come out from Bloomberg, as they were the ones

that revealed the truth a couple of years ago. But still, the set pieces here in the Black Ops 7

campaign what set pieces you know they are in the the lowest frequency that we've ever had in a call

of duty campaign and like i said you're just fighting waves of enemies you're just getting to a point on the map there's even a bit where it feels like they just reuse the zombie ai from

the zombies mode threw that in there and you have like vague control over the zombies it's like okay

sure um the biggest red flag in regards to this just being an online mode that you're you know

that's stitched together with cut scenes though is the fact that you can't pause for one you can't

pause a single-player campaign and also you will be kicked from the campaign for inactivity so

how is this the world we're in if you decide to go to the toilet while you're playing your

single-player call of duty game you'll just get kicked for inactivity because you know it's not

like you've got anyone to respond to um also i saw over the weekend people realizing that

they could matchmake into other people's campaigns that they were still showing up in the multiplayer

lobbies in the matchmaking and so there was a clip of a guy just in the middle of a cutscene

getting joined by a whole squad. And the guy was like, what are you guys doing in my game

It's ludicrous, man. And there's no AI squad mates to make up for the whole idea of it being a four-person squad

making their way through the maps. It is absolutely ridiculous. You know, for some reason

Activision wanted Treyarch and Raven to not only, you know, give up some of their pride

and put the multiplayer modes and the multiplayer map pack stuff into the campaign

but also chase this idea of a four-player squad hero shooter type creation

like doing raid battles against these over-the-top bosses that take forever to kill

where you're jumping over shockwave attacks in a Call of Duty game

like something that would be straight out of Destiny and you know maybe they thought that you know Marathon would be out by now or people would still care about Overwatch or something something that would lead to some sort of train of thought going like yeah people are going to want to do four you know looter raid bosses where we have to do all these

different methodologies to take down the creatures, like we were doing literally 10 years ago in

Destiny 1 and Destiny's expansions. So for some reason, that's what we've got, even though this

year has completely proven them wrong. Like I mentioned, Battlefield 6 is doing extremely well

and Ready or Not is flying the swap based tactical shooter very much a

old school Rainbow Six game and I would recommend Ready or Not in a heartbeat

that thing is fantastic if you if you miss boots on the ground tactical

angles based infiltration hostage stopping gameplay and there's various other modes in there too but that game has a killer campaign that

favors gameplay minimal cutscenes but enough to stitch it together but still that's a gameplay framework that you want if you kind of yearn for

what COD to a degree used to feel like but especially that more militaristic feel that

Rainbow Six used to give us. It's worth touching on that Activision have this weird obsession with

the Black Ops series of games like they just want to do Black Ops stuff no other chunk of characters

in all of Call of Duty has been given as much attention as the Black Ops games but I do want

to read out you know it's kind of crazy the series timeline like say you want to take this stuff

seriously say you really care about David Mason's realizations about his father and you want to get

stuck into the overall timeline initially you'd have to go all the way back to world of world at

war and to get the very first taste of it but the rest of the main timeline the named games

um goes in timeline order it's black ops 1 then it's black ops cold war and then you jumped you

do black ops 2 and then you jump to black ops 6 then back to 4 even though 4's campaign was scrapped

it was still set um after black ops 2 and 6 so you go 1 cold war then i don't write this down but

One, Cold War 2, then 6, then back to 4, then through to 7, where we are now, and then go to 3

3 is still the one that is set the furthest point in the timeline, where everything is overrun with mechs and androids and everything else

and mindscape future consciousness stuff. But it's a complete mess. And they keep playing the Black Ops 2 card

You know, they did it with Black Ops 7, where it's like, well, you guys love Black Ops 2, we're carrying on from Black Ops 2

trying to fill in this chunk of time in between Black Ops 2

and 3, where they keep trying to squeeze things in, because it's like Star Wars, where it's like

oh, you know, if we do stuff in between episodes 3 and 4, that's the golden period, or whatever

but their assumption that people like this Futurescape stuff, I like to think that we

were all loud enough with Black Ops 3 that they should never go near this stuff again, or Black Ops 4, where they canned the campaign, they reduced it down to just a few cutscenes that

you could access in the side, on the spec ops side mode, so you could still see what they were

planning for the main campaign, but it didn't come through, Black Ops 4 was ostensibly a

multiplayer suite. And like I said, people hate this Futurescape stuff and it's led to the likes

of the Harper Kaiju fight or the Frank Woods flower fight and all that kind of stuff. Okay

let's talk about the fact that none of this should have even existed in the first place. If you go back to 2022 and the Activision acquisition by Microsoft, all of the court

documents that were heard during those conversations between Phil Spencer and trying to get the deal

over the finish line as they were trying to get Call of Duty on Game Pass. What would that mean for the future

What would that mean for Activision? And what would that mean for annual releases in regards to Call of Duty

The only reason that Call of Duty has had so many sequential, quick releases is because of Bobby Kotak and the idea of pleasing the shareholders above everybody else Make sure there a new Call of Duty every single year even if it breaks your studios even if that leads to various different layoffs and different team members and the humanity behind it

Just saying, look, we can't turn these sizes of games around in quick succession across multiple generations

It is nigh on impossible. It doesn't matter because that's what Bobby Kotak wanted

The whole part of the Activision acquisition going through was that Bobby Kotak would step down

Phil Spencer would step in, the rest of the Xbox Microsoft contingent would also step in

And one of the things that Bloomberg revealed back in the day was that they were looking forward

Activision were looking forward, talking to different Activision insiders. They were looking forward to relaxing the annual release model

They would prefer to have a Call of Duty, and I quote, every two to three years. That would be the sweet spot

We're talking about something where you look at the average game development time in the modern day

as being about five years. And you can also look to longer projects that are cooking for a lot longer

like The Last of Us 2, Red Dead Redemption 2. GTA 6 has been in the hopper for about 11 years

if not even more than that, in regards to when the idea took shape, looking at the likes of Dan Hauser's interviews

in regards to different ideas he had for the follow-up to GTA 5. It takes a lot longer than one year

is what I'm saying. And Activision, you know, behind the scenes, seemed, the various different studios

you know, underneath the Activision corporate, like the likes of Raven and Treyarch, etc.

would just prefer to do something every two to three years. Even that is an insane Herculean task

in regards to the modern gaming industry and turning out a AAA title. But the idea of doing Black Ops 6 in 2024 and then Black Ops 7 in 2025

with the same dev team is ludicrous. It really is truly a painful idea and we're seeing that on screen

So that should never have happened. That's one thing. And all of that came from Call of Duty Vanguard back in the day

Vanguard was received so negatively that apparently internal conversations led to the idea that a 2-3 turnaround cycle would be a lot better

and at the time they were looking forward to Modern Warfare 2 being the game that would restore the franchise

and make people care about Cod again, and then they would go forward with more considered approaches to the sequels after that

Clearly that didn't happen, and this pressure cooker turnaround has maintained, even though it was said that it would change

Now, it's only been just over two years since the Activision deal went through, but still, it is just worth saying how much things have not been relaxed or talked about or followed up on

in those initial conversations of, oh, get the deal over the finish line, it'll be better for everybody

the consumer will get a more quality product and the developers will have more time to work on it

that has not happened whatsoever it hasn't even been talked about and speaking about something else that hasn't been talked about is call of duty coming to nintendo platforms that was another

thing that was put on the table is get this over the finish line and we'll bring card to switch

again only been a couple of years since the deal went through but it hasn't been talked about whatsoever and phil spencer mentioned to the washington post back in 2022 that once we get

into the rhythm of development he said in the rhythm of this our plan would be that when a

Call of Duty game launches on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. It would also be available on Nintendo at

the same time. Now, I would say that a two-year turnaround from that deal going through is too

tight, but we have a company that is dealing with one-year turnarounds. So can you not at least put

a teaser trailer out or a delayed Switch release or whatever the hell you need to do, like Sonic

Racing Crossworlds style, and bring the Switch version out a few months later? Crossworlds went

down a storm and runs incredibly well on Switch 2. I don't believe that you can't address this as

one of the major reasons that the deal was put over the finish line in the first place. Like I said, all of this stuff has only been talked about for the last two years

but the brass tacks reality is that the absolute travesty that is Black Ops 7 right now

should never have happened