Call of Duty is a cultural touchpoint in gaming. It has held the title of most popular first-person shooter for years, in a genre filled with high-quality multiplayer games that have constantly gunned for the top spot. While major elements persist across titles, each game tends to introduce--or at least attempt to introduce--something new to the formula, as Activision bounces development duties between internal studios including Treyarch and Infinity Ward.
Season 1 Reloaded includes more weapons to unlock, additional maps for multiplayer, and a crossover with the Fallout TV show. Call of Duty has teased a crossover with Amazon Prime Video's Fallout TV show, which seemingly includes operator skins for Lucy, The Ghoul, and Maximus. Call of Duty's big IP collaborations are also usually paired with in-game events for players to participate in. However, it's uncertain if these Fallout skins will be included in an event pass or as shop bundles for purchase.
The story presented the Federationa fictional alliance of South American countries whose capital was Caracasas a military superpower that becomes the main enemy of the United States. At the time, this narrative choice sparked considerable controversy in Venezuela, where the newly elected president, Nicolas Maduro, considered that the game was associating his country with a global military threat and symbolically positioning it as an antagonist.
The shock of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 having stumbled out of the gate has clearly hit publisher Activision hard. Reports that the latest entry in the annual franchise has seen a slump in player numbers are seemingly confirmed by a statement the publisher put out late last night, in which it was stated that "the Franchise has not met your expectations fully," and that as a result there will no longer be "back-to-back releases of Modern Warfare or Black Ops games."
GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links. Call of Duty is a game that many players call home. It may be a gunfire-filled battlefield where players shred each other every minute of a match, but it's still home. One of the best things you can do at home? Dress up. You have plenty of options, from Call of Duty licensed skins like Nicki Minaj to Godzilla.
There were a lot of great Xbox 360 games during its run. But looking back, it's staggering to see how many of the top-selling Xbox 360 games were from the Call of Duty franchise. Circana's Mat Piscatella has shared the 20 best-selling Xbox 360 games in the US, and 7 out of the 20 were Call of Duty titles. Six of those games were in the top 10, and four out of the top five as well. Three Halo games and two Gears of War titles made the list, as did perennial best-sellers Minecraft and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. Since the acquisitions of Bethesda, Activision, and Mojang Studios, Microsoft now owns the rights to 17 of the titles on this list.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's new version of Nuketown arrived on November 20, and one of the first things people tried on it was shooting off all the mannequin heads to unlock the long-running Nuketown Easter egg. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in Black Ops 7, at least not yet. This isn't a huge shock, though, as Black Ops 6's version of Nuketown didn't unlock the Easter egg right away, either.
A lot of the ire in the Metascore reviews is focused on the game's "lackluster" multiplayer-only campaign, faulty matchmaking, litany of bugs, and very unfavorable comparisons with Arc Raiders, but the use of AI also comes up a great deal as people vent their frustrations. It was noticed immediately after launch that the latest entry in one of the biggest franchises in the world had used AI-plagiarized art for player banners, calling cards and even artwork within the campaign.
As I was about to return fire, something hit me," Green said. "Later [I learned] it was the blast, the RPG. When I was in the hospital, I decided to look down. That's when I realized that my left arm, my dominant arm, was shorter.
Activision has announced a new perk to help encourage people to play Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at release. The company is giving everyone five hours of double XP for player progression and five hours of double XP for weapons if they play Black Ops 7 before Season 1. Activision has not announced when Black Ops 7 Season 1 will begin, but it's expected in early December. For comparison, 2024's Black Ops 6 launched on October 25, with its first season arriving on November 14, which was a period of about three weeks.
Call of Duty has spent the better part of three decades as one of the biggest video game franchises, and much of that is thanks to the popularity of its recurring Zombies mode, which has been a major part of the series ever since 2008's Call of Duty: World at War. Since then, the mode has appeared in 13 Call of Duty games, including this year's upcoming Black Ops 7, launching November 7 on console and PC.
Recreations of classic maps and modes from other games are nothing new in shooters. Lately, however, publishers have started getting prickly over users remaking maps from their game in someone else's, and it seems this may be especially true when those games are as competitive with each other as Battlefield and Call of Duty. Battlefield 6 players remaking CoD maps via the game's new portal mode are finding this out the hard way, with their recreations of modes and maps from Activision's popular shooter getting taken down over intellectual property violations.