I went into the new Black Ops campaign hoping for that classic mix of tension, mystery, and jaw-dropping moments the series used to nail. Instead, from the first mission, it felt like I was walking through a set of oversized multiplayer arenas. You can almost see the map design rules baked in—three clear lanes, obvious flanking spots, and open spaces that scream Domination mode. Even the big set-piece moments often boil down to “hold this point” objectives, which might as well be Hardpoint with bots. It’s hard to stay immersed when it feels like you’re just prepping for online matches, almost like a polished CoD BO7 Boosting session rather than a proper single-player story.

The pacing takes the biggest hit. Older Black Ops campaigns had those quiet stretches—time to breathe, to let the story sink in—before throwing you into chaos. Here, it’s non-stop gunfire. No slow build, no tension, no room to care about who’s talking. The characters feel more like interchangeable operators than people with histories or motives. You don’t get a Mason or a Woods; you get skins with a few lines of dialogue. The plot’s just a thin excuse to push you into the next firefight, and it misses that psychological edge the series used to have.

Even the gear system feels lifted straight from multiplayer. Instead of scrounging for whatever’s lying around, you’re basically running your online loadout. That kills the sense of adapting to the battlefield. The HUD’s busy too—hit markers, XP ticks, objective icons everywhere—more about feeding you gameplay data than pulling you into the world. It’s like the campaign’s wearing the wrong clothes, dressed for competitive play instead of cinematic storytelling.

There are flashes of what could’ve been. Some missions have great visual design, and there’s potential in the premise. But the way it’s built, the campaign plays like a checklist item, something they had to ship alongside multiplayer rather than a core focus. You end up feeling like you’ve been given a guided tour of maps you’ll fight on later, not a true single-player journey. And that’s the real shame—there was a chance for Black Ops to deliver another standout story, but it’s buried under multiplayer-first thinking. For players chasing that old-school campaign magic, it’s hard not to walk away disappointed, even if you’re tempted to jump straight into CoD BO7 Boosting for sale afterwards.