So...I actually watched one of my favorite game streamers' video on black ops 7 and it was...genuinely awful. My god, who thought this was a good idea? It's like they took everything wrong with black ops 3, dialed it up to a 10, made it the whole game, and then added cringey "modern gaming^TM" elements like always online and forced coop to it. Like...who thought this was a good idea? Holy crap. No wonder this is getting destroyed. After watching this i dont even think im gonna play the campaign if i buy this, I mostly play multiplayer.
Heck, BO7 was so bad said streamer then went back to playing BO3, im assuing because everyone was making the same comparison i was, and he was like, compared to BO7, this is a masterpiece! And looking at his video, it was. Yeah, I hated the acid trip parts that made up the last...idk, 25-33% of the game, but up to that point it wasn't that bad. It just got REALLY weird toward the end. It was enough to sour me on the game, and my opinion of COD campaigns just declined from there, IW was mid. WWII was even worse than BO3 due to the game play changes IMO. MW19 was good, but most 2020s era COD campaigns have just been awful, and here it's like they basically took BO3 and dialed up its worst aspects by a factor of 10.
Honestly, watching BO3 now makes me somewhat nostalgic for it. I might hate the PS4/XB1 era COD multiplayer games with a passion, but most of the campaigns aren't THAT bad. I actually hate most of the modern ones even more for the simple reason that they just changed the game play radically. Yeah, maybe going through waves of generic soldiers is repetitive, but man it was fun, and they had some really good campaigns back in the day. These days everything has to be so overly complicated and then black ops games turn into massive drug trips (BO6 was the same way, honestly). Honestly, they just aren't fun any more.
I mean, if I were to really rank the COD "eras" roughly by console generation, here's how I would do it.
Campaigns
Gen 7 (COD2-Black Ops 2)
Gen 8 (Ghosts-BO4)
Gen 9 (MW19-BO7)
Gen 6 (COD1, Big Red One)
So....that 360/PS3 generation really put out banger after banger. Outside of COD3, I think they all were solid games, and most from COD4 on have aged well. BO2 is a bit overrated and where we start going into that "future" era of COD, but it still stands among the greats.
The PS4/XB1 generation also had good campaigns, at least at first. I liked Ghosts. I liked AW. BO3 kinda sucked but compared to what they do now...oh man...it's being renovated. IW was also okay. WWII I didn't like but yeah that's when I started really souring on them. And then BO4 didn't have one. And yes, I know MW19 was technically gen 8, but Im counting it with gen 9 since that's where we get into the "modern" era of the series, with MW19 being the clear delineation whether we like it or not. And yeah, at this point, I feel like, at least campaign wise, we didn't realize how good we had it.
MW19 marked the start of the new era, and that was good, and Black Ops Cold War was good, but they got mid to bad after that. Vanguard was forgettable. MWII started forcing stealth sections with greater aggression and doing this "no you play how WE tell you to!" thing. MWIII was more of the same. BO6 wasn't awful but it wasn't really great either. And BO7...yeah, I don't even wanna play that one it looks so bad.
But the originals from the PS2/Xbox era...haven't aged well. COD1 felt dated even by like, 2007ish. I know it started the series, but the lack of recharging health and how rare healthpacks are are just...no.
At the same time, how do I feel about multiplayer?
Multiplayer
Gen 9
Gen 7
Gen 8
Here, I'll say it. Controversial opinion for a lot of the old timers who are nostalgic of those core 360/PS3 era games, but yeah no...the modern games are mostly better. We got more content, more weapons, the games actually handle well. Yeah, you can feel nostalgic for old maps, but new games brought back the best of the old maps, so yeah. MW19 particularly stood out to me. That was was SOOOO good. Definitely the best COD EVER IMO MP wise. But yeah, the newer CODs are actually good in a lot of ways. We just suffer franchise fatigue from them doing the same thing every year....which they did back then too.
Gen 7 games...yeah. I know a lot of people get nostalgic for them, but from a tech perspective they werent that good. They were P2P, they lagged hard, although they still had relatively solid game play. Some of the OGs were more janky than others, and on PC they're a total mess these days. I know someone once told me not even to play them since people can hack your PC that way, so yikes. But yeah, they're no longer good. They were even questionable at the time which is why COD tended to always struggle with PC audiences. People would rather just play battlefield, especially from 2010ish onward. Those games were so much better than the COD ones. Because, again, back then the franchise STILL had the tendency to milk things while not innovating much and letting their games go to hell over time. This ain't new. They've ALWAYS done this. It's just that PC gamers knew it back then whole console gamers tend to get rose colored glasses over them. Especially ones younger than me. Ya know, the whole "muh childhood" types. Meanwhile I was an adult in this era and had a more grounded perspective on them.
Gen 8 were the worst. Like, really, this was just...a terrible era to be a COD fan. Ghosts was awful, AW was awful, BO3 was mid, IW was somewhere between mid and awful, WWII was mid, and BO4 was...better but still kinda mid. If we count MW19 here, that was the only saving grace of this whole gen, but given it culturally fits more with the modern era, yeah, I count it with the modern era. But all these games were terrible. Especially on PC, and they died after a couple years. Yeah. These just...weren't good.
And Gen 6, did that even have MP? Maybe but i never played those MP so...I wouldnt know.
Anyway, different opinions there.
I won't do zombies since i never played zombies much as it's not my cup of tea, but to combined the campaign and the multiplayer, here's how they rank:
Gen 7- 1st+2nd (1.5)
Gen 9- 3rd+1st (2)
Gen 8- 2nd+3rd (2.5)
Here, we get gen 7 being the best, gen 8 being the worst, and gen 9 having a mixed reputation, delivering an excellent multiplayer and poor single player experience.
Of course, this is assuming campaign and multiplayer are 50/50. If we assume 25/75, which I think is more fair since idk about you, but I spent FAR more time on multiplayer than on single player:
Gen 9- 1.5
Gen 7- 1.75
Gen 8- 2.75
Yeah, now gen 9's multiplayer advantage has it edging out gen 7. Both are very solid though. And gen 8 is just...bad. But yeah it depends what you're into.
Either way, I don't plan on playing BO7's campaign. Even if I did, I'd play it once and likely never touch it again like I have for the last 4 CODs or so. But yeah, Im skipping it. If I buy BO7 it's primarily for the multiplayer, which...despite franchise fatigue, was still decent based on the beta. Remember how I am among those who only buy a handful of games and focus on what gives me the most play time. COD MP delivers on that front.
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