So, everywhere I go, I see Black Ops 7 being dunked on for being infamously bad. I admit, I haven't played it myself yet since, due to previous discussions about the cost of games and habits, it should be obvious I wait for sales, and it's currently $70, but yeah. As a long time fan of COD and online shooters in general, I do have some opinions on it based on past trends.
So...first, everyone's dunking on the campaign. I havent played the campaign, but based on the infamous screenshot that gets passed around, it reminds me of black ops 3, which is, IMO, among the worst COD campaigns of all time. Mainly because it was an acid trip. The end ended up being really weird, and it looked a lot like the kind of thing they're doing with this. Quite frankly, the black ops campaigns do this a lot, especially the latter ones. Entire missions are basically drug fueled hallucinations and they're not really fun to play. And it looks like BO7 is doing THAT trope again. Except this being another distant future one ended up making the whole thing worse. It's just...less relatable. Again, like BO3. This brings me to the second point.
People don't seem to like future CODs much. Sad to say, but that's just reality. Remember the mid 2010s? From Ghosts through Infinite warfare, the CODs just became increasingly unpopular. Part of this was due to the fact that by this time, the games seemed to just decline in quality. They sucked. Really, the series didn't evolve into the PS4/XB1 era well. At all. The model felt dated, as it hadnt been updated in 10 years (see future points I make in this article). And idk, it's like when there's a setting change, the fatigue sets in. People seem to love the "modern warfare" style CODs most, while hating setting changes, especially ones set in the future. Once you get away from the relatable setting, it's like the rose colored glasses fall away and people dont like them.
I remember the last time this happened, when infinite warfare released. It was the third hyper futuristic game in a row and people were like NO MORE, THIS SUCKS. Back then, between 2014 and 2016, the series felt like it was trying to rip off titanfall so bad and it just failed at it. And IW was considered historically unpopular. Was it really that bad? No. As I see it, the negative reaction to IW was more a combination of the series clearly stagnating and doing the same thing every year, and battlefield just upstaging it. Both of which are points I will address themselves later in this article since history is repeating itself.
But yeah, to some extent, simply changing the setting is a positive thing. COD WWII in 2017 wasn't any better than the last 4 CODs IMO but it was treated better simply for being "boots on the ground." People like "boots on the ground." They dont like the future, or this advanced movement crap.
With that said, there's a few different points that draw a parallel to IW, but first I wanna address the advanced movement thing. A lot of people dont like the advanced movement. It's cancer. Even BO6 had this and it wasn't super popular. I almost didnt buy BO6 because of it. It just wasn't fun. Like, there's this attempt in the modern era to make games more hardcore for streamer audiences, either from going in a hyper realistic direction with more recoil to guns to make it harder, or have more movement. Both have their cons, and both kinda suck, if you're like me and you just want a normal shooter, but yeah, COD has been going in this direction for a while of appealing to esports streamer types who like "skill ceilings" and advanced movement is one way to make a gap between the pros and everyone else. So the pros do this twitchy crap of abusing the movement mechanics, and casuals literally get dunked on. And again, it's not fun. Especially when the game's biggest competition is going in the opposite direction.
So...the last time we were here was IW in 2016. Let me show you what the vibe was that year. Notice anything? Yeah. The fact was, COD was upstaged by battlefield. It had to compete against BF1, and BF1 crushed it. And what's the big game of the block this year that seems to be dethroning call of duty? Battlefield 6. Everyone wants battlefield this year, and in this era where everything is expensive AF and people only buy 1-2 games a year, this year, people are making battlefield "that game." I'm probably gonna get both by christmas honestly, but yeah. The fact is, it's 2016 again. The games industry is releasing one banger after another, this is actually the one year this generation i can say they're really killing it, this is the modern 2007 or 2016 type year IMO, and the COD game just...isn't standing out. Battlefield took the crown this year, gg no re.
Now, for reference, I did try the beta of BO7 AND BF6 this year, and while I clearly favor BF6 myself as well, BO7 ain't bad. But....it does feel like a reskin of BO6. The maps didnt seem interesting, the game seemed kinda average. With the BF beta I was hooked every second of the beta weekends. With the COD one...I was like, meh, let me fit an hour in at night. Ya know? It just wasn't that interesting.
And that's kind of how IW felt, except IW was WORSE. Because it WAS in that era of COD just...being genuinely bad. Here, since then, COD did clean up their act a bit, while BF made many missteps. BF5 kinda sucked, 2042 if you ask the community was the worst thing ever, and BF6 is kind of the "return to form" game. COD had this moment during battlefield's more recent "dark" period. MW19 was a revolutionized game. And it did set the bar, and cement COD as THE franchise to play in the modern era.
But....COD has other problems, and these likely contribute to what I call "franchise fatigue". COD releases games EVERY YEAR. They're the FIFA of FPSes. This is good given...let's face it, I haven't had a ton of decent new games to play since...2021 now, wow, has it really been 4 years? Time flies, but yeah. The last really decent year for multiplayer shooters was 2021 where we had halo infinite, bf2042, and cod vanguard, and tbqh people hated on all 3 of those. Halo started strong but fell off from lack of support in its early years. BF2042 was just mired in controversy after controversy and was a hot mess. And vanguard was....hated by the community for some reason. I dont get it myself. It felt better than black ops cold war. It was like MW19 but a WWII game. But again, remember what i said about setting? It's like once you get away from the modern era, the fatigue around the franchise becomes more noticeable and people dunk on it more. So...vanguard, not a terrible game, but it got done dirty. Then we had MWII and MWIII, MWII felt mediocre AF to me, MWIII felt good but mainly because it remade MW2 2009's maps. It really only was popular due to nostalgia of the good old days IMO. BO6 was meh, and now with the futuristic setting of BO7, people are like NO MORE, THIS SUCKS!
I think this actually speaks of a deeper problem though. COD IS the FIFA of games. They tend to put out one game a year, every year. They got 3 studios, which all do them slightly differently and makes the series feel all over quality wise (quite frankly, IW games feel best as of late, treyarch games feel worst, BO7 is treyarch). But here's the thing. If we really look back, was MW19 kind of a one hit wonder? I would argue yeah. BOCW was mediocre. Vanguard wasn't bad but the fan base took it bad because WWII IMO. MWII and MWIII were mediocre. BO6 felt like cancer with the omni movement, not gonna lie, and BO7 is BO6 with a futuristic skin basically. Honestly? I kind of wish COD would pull it back a bit. While in a way I gotta commend the yearly releases as many years there just isn't much else out there i wanna play, when something like a battlefield comes out, the COD game looks particularly anemic. The series just tends to fall into long spells of creative bankruptcy where they put out slop every year that gets worse and worse until the fan base just says NO MORE. I kind of wish they WOULD have a more 2-3 year cadence for games. But that would make them less money, so they tend to go yearly to milk people for it.
But seriously, when there IS a good COD game, I feel like it should go on multiple years. like MW19 was so good to me, I didnt even want BOCW to come out. And playing it, it did feel like a downgrade in every way. And if i were to go back to any of those CODs at this point, it would be MW19 all day every day. Heck, Im kinda tempted to drop BO6 since it's no longer the new thing and try MW19 again. Simply because it was that good in its own way.
And that's the thing. When your business model is to continuously pump out content of dubious quality for constant profit, eventually the fan base is gonna reject it and tell them they gotta step up their game. Activision gets very complacent with COD. They always have, quite frankly. And that's also where battlefield does better for the most part. Sure, they've made some missteps with recent games too, but historically, BF games perform more consistently because the developers take years to make them, they're made better as a result, and they really put their heart and soul into them. They're genuinely good games. Not just mediocre content slop. In some ways, COD focuses on quantity over quality and while that makes them money, eventually the fans just lose interest.
Again, this is not to say that battlefield is perfect either. The past decade is kind of "the decade of humiliation" for them. Battlefield hardline (which got ripped because it itself was "content slop" and felt like BF4 DLC), BF5, BF2042, they made mistake after mistake, with only BF1 and to a lesser extent BF5 being beloved by the community, and a lot of BF5's reputation being revised by the fact that BF2042 bombed so hard. BF6 is the first game since BF4 or BF1 to really unite the fan base in relative adoration for it. Will THAT be a one hit wonder, a "MW19" moment for them? Maybe, we'll have to see what happens next. But again, the fact that BF is having this moment is also why COD is having theirs. The two are competing with each other, and battlefield has that magic right now, and COD does not. So again. I think going back to 2016 and watching this sums up all you need to know about the BF6 vs BO7 controversy.
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