Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Arrives

It’s Call of Duty day, the annual event when we drop everything to install a mammoth 180 GB download and then play a new game that is curiously identical to the previous title. Can I get a Halleluiah?

“Black Ops 7 is now live!” the Call of Duty blog announced. “Experience the brand-new Co-Op Campaign and its replayable Endgame, deploy across 18 Multiplayer maps, and brave the Dark Aether alongside the original crew in Round-Based Zombies.”

Black Ops 7 is to Black Ops 6 what the 2023 Modern Warfare III was to Modern Warfare II, an add-on update masquerading as a full game release. The single player campaign is a continuation of that from the previous game and the general look and feel will be immediately familiar. In the good news department, having 18 multiplayer maps at launch is nice, though BO6 launched with 16. And I’m happy to see that yet another Nuketown remake is on the way, plus Standoff, an all-time classic MP map.

I wasn’t too impressed with the size of the download (literally, 180 GB), given that it happened Monday and was non-optional for me (playing the games, as I do, through Game Pass) despite having never agreed to download and stage it ahead of time. But that’s behind us. The game is available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, Steam, Battle.net, and PlayStation in cross-gen Standard and Vault editions at $69.99 and $99.99 respectively. Standard Edition is available on Day One on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, and you can upgrade to Vault edition for $30.

You can learn more on the Call of Duty website.