Note: This review focuses specifically on the Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Our thoughts on the other modes can be found in our campaign overview or ours multiplayer review.
Even though I play a recent game every year, I never know what to make of the current Call of Duty – a first-person shooter so huge, so successful, that it is no longer a standalone game, but a platform with file sizes so huge that it requires you to choose the other two things you would want to install on your computer or console. This year’s PC version includes frustrating recent anti-cheat module this apparently caused my CPU fan to choose death instead, so while I would normally base my gaming time on this version as God intended, I’m initially putting it aside on PlayStation 5 to share with you some early impressions of this year’s Zombies mode. There’s still plenty left for me to see as the community comes together to hunt Easter eggs and solve mysteries, but for now I’m interested in exploring what’s here, even if it may take some time to get to the vital organs beneath those bones.
Zombies is my favorite Call of Duty installment, both the silliest and silliest side thing the series has ever done, and probably huge enough to be a mini video game in its own right. I mentioned a similar feeling in last year’s review, but remember when it was a earnest war game series and you were storming the beaches of Normandy with machine gun fire blowing sand in your face? When you died, you got quotes about how terrible the war was from people who lived through it. Now I play roulette on a huge mystery box covered in skulls instead of weapons, the best of which is a ray gun so I can shoot zombies in the face while a disembodied voice that calls itself the Guardian taunts me from a distance; my character jokes that the voice reminds him of his high school PE teacher. Zombies have been doing this for a while now, but I still don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Apparently there’s a story involved – Raul Menendez, who has apparently been living and drinking beer on his porch for the past decade, returns and threatens to cause chaos around the world, a shady security company is somehow involved, and of course, massive, brutal zombie deaths. It’s all very well produced and so goofy that all I could do was watch the introductory cutscene imitating the face I imagine a cow would make after being given cocaine, giggle a little, and be done with it. I guess I answered my own question there, didn’t I?
This year’s Zombies is a tough one to get a handle on so far, as most of the Zombies activity will come down to the community working on recent maps in the coming days and maybe weeks. We’re all scrambling at the moment, wondering what’s what, which is both fun and frustrating. Many of last year’s problems remain at the beginning – for example, you can’t gear up until you’re level four, which means that if you want to do zombies (and in my case I do), you’re stuck with a gun and what you can earn by buying things on the walls once you’ve eliminated enough undead. Remember when games just let you have fun from the start instead of having to unlock it?
Other than that, the basics of Zombies are pretty much the same. You’re on a map, opening recent doors and paths with the currency you earn, and you have Pack-a-Punch machines to upgrade your weapons. There’s extra armor you can stick on the walls, an Arsenal that will really pump up certain aspects of your weapons, Gobblegums that will give you some flavor if your mouth is lonely and you want to cheer me up mid-battle, and so on. And of course, while you’re dealing with all this, the undead rise and hunger for flesh. Ghouls, man.
The gameplay here is similar to last year’s – I still love sneaking up on a group of zombies and blasting them with a shotgun until they’re just pasted and so on. No, what’s recent is the maps. I’ve played both maps in round mode, Ashes of the Damned and Vandorn Farm (the latter seems to be part of the former, but I haven’t gotten to it yet in standard mode), and so far I prefer the farm. Ashes of the Damned seems to have a more customary “find secrets to complete the map” option, while Vandorn Farm is more of a “you’re locked in here with the undead, kid, so try not to die too hard” game.
Our adventure with the former ended when one of my teammates, who wasn’t communicating with the rest of us, grabbed the truck and started driving it to the next destination… before deciding it would be more fun to punch the zombies until they exploded. The rest of us spent most of the map trying to catch up to the truck or waiting in vain to be revived after we all died. It went as well as you think. I’m curious to see what Ashes of the Damned has to offer with a more talkative crew; Right now, if you told me I was hallucinating, I would believe you.
The farm is more ancient school. Zombies hang from the rafters in a huge barn, a smaller one houses the Mystery Box where each of my teammates made offerings in the fleeting hope of a Ray Gun, and there was a house with a skeleton family sitting around a table and a roof in desperate need of, well, more roof. This was a much more engaging map than Ashes of the Damned, and I enjoyed navigating its intricate twists and turns, figuring out where everything was, and spending the time in between killing misborn horrors that were once human.
The problem was, once again, that we didn’t know what to do yet. One of the machines that seemed to power the farm was developing a mysterious infection, but when we destroyed it, our target told us to wait until it came back. This we did, killing zombies and increasing the number of rounds. The problem is that the infection never came back. This is usually a good thing. The antibiotics worked and the patient is recovering, thank you. In this case, that meant we got to round eight, nothing happened, the four of us spent a few minutes looking for zombies we had somehow missed or a way to progress, and then all three of my teammates left the game when we couldn’t figure out what would happen next. It’s challenging to blame them. The farm is nice, but I’d like something with warmer colors and less rotting corpses, you know?
Like I said, I’m never sure what to make of Call of Duty, and that includes this year’s Zombies. It certainly plays well, and the absurd amount of money spent on its development shows on screen – but oh, the sticky, juicy parts of this mode have yet to be revealed to me. As is usually the case, its success will largely depend on how the maps turn out. I’m going to need a bone saw and a rib spreader to get to this thing’s still beating heart, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I can’t say I’m not interested in seeing what’s inside. I just hope I don’t get caught in the process.
