I've been playing Call of Duty Zombies since the days when you'd finish a campaign and suddenly find yourself in a creaky old bunker, surrounded by the undead, wondering what just happened. Over the course of seventeen years, we've seen 11 games in the Call of Duty franchise feature the Zombies game mode, which, somewhere along the way, became a part of the trident that the entire Black Ops subseries rests on.

We've seen some great Zombies games that we'd happily go back to even today, and some middling, at best. Black Ops 7, sadly, falls in with the latter, regardless of how you put it. With two maps at launch and one I'd prefer not to go back to at all, Black Ops 7 Zombies now has the rest of its maps to rely on if it wants to be considered one of the better Zombies games. If not, well, there's always Black Ops 6, and even that treaded the fine line between middling and great.

Two consecutive Black Ops games don't feel right

Black Ops 7 could've felt fresh, but it doesn't

For the first time in Call of Duty history, we've gotten two Black Ops games back-to-back. Black Ops 7 comes hot on the heels of last year's Black Ops 6, and it isn't surprising at all that it feels... worrying. You can feel it the moment you jump into Zombies, because there's a faint sense of déjà vu, like the game is wearing a coat that hasn't fully dried yet. The bones are strong, sure, because this is Treyarch, at the end of the day, but that "newness" you expect from a fresh Black Ops game simply isn't here this time around, which is a damn shame.

It's such a missed opportunity, too. Zombies deserves breathing room to become weirder, bolder, and stranger, much like the way past entries have managed to put something fresh on the table. Instead, BO7 Zombies struggles to feel anything more than a direct extension of BO6, much less its own beast. It's fun and chaotic, yes, but that's the absolute bare minimum, and I couldn't help but feel that shorter production window tugging at the game's seams the entire time.

Black Ops 7's Zombies mode offers two maps at launch

One is amazing, and the other one feels... wrong

At launch, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's Zombies mode offers two maps. There's Ashes of the Damned, which is a huge, sprawling round-based map that stuffs objectives down your throat by the dozens to complete, and could go on for hours. You and your allies are now in the Dark Aether and are facing the Warden. There are tonnes of objectives to complete here, more secrets to uncover than you could count on your first go, an impressive number of POIs (Places of Interest) to visit, and multiple new zombie types to fill with lead before finally confronting The Warden.

Then, there's the smaller, cozier Vandorn Farm map. This one is actually a POI from the bigger Ashes of the Damned map, but you can also just play the Vandorn Farm map, which, to me, is the highlight of the show right now, at least at launch. This is more of a traditional Zombies map, where the waves never stop coming, and neither do the bullets. It's smaller, but feels a lot more engaging on a moment-to-moment basis.

Vandorn Farm has become one of my favorite Zombies maps ever

It's snug, it's small, and it's quintessential COD Zombies

I'm going to start with the good and the best, first. Vandorn Farm is inarguably the better experience of the two Zombies maps right now, even if it's still a POI in the larger Ashes of the Damned route. As I said, it feels traditional in the way the waves keep on coming. You unlock doors to get to other "areas", except it's just a barn holding a Pack-a-Punch, a shed holding a Mystery Box, and a farmhouse with a Perk-a-Cola vending machine.

That's... pretty much it, which is what I love about Vandorn Farm. It's Zombies as god meant it to be — waves of zombies, a few mini-bosses here and there, and just you, your squad, and your equipment and movement against them all. It's no wonder that it's the POIs in Ashes of the Damned that really make the game worth playing — they bring a sense of place with them that really makes you want to run around and see which floor, room, and lane has what.

I must've spent an entire session from midnight to noon grinding it out on Vandorn Farm with randoms before finally feeling my eyes droop near round 85. After waking back up, it was right back to the Farm, without a second thought spared for Ashes of the Damned.

Ashes of the Damned is a sprawling map

It offers more variety in a Zombies map than ever

Look, it's not like the Ashes of the Damned map is downright horrible, but it doesn't feel enjoyable in the way a Zombies game traditionally does. I had never been a fan of Warzone's Zombies map, because driving around in a COD game with zombies chasing me just never felt right to me. The Outbreak mode in Cold War may have been impressive for a lot of players, but by and large, I couldn't find myself going back to it, which is why I gave up on zombies for that year and went back to 2019's Modern Warfare remake. So, with Ashes of the Damned, despite my investment in the story about the Dark Aether, I couldn't spend more than a few hours trying to get ahead in the game, driving between multiple POIs and checking off objectives.

Sure, there's crumbs of a story here to follow, and one that I really do want to see unfold, but it's not going to be one I'll manage to do without friends in the same lobby. With Black Ops 6, that wasn't the case, since the maps felt engaging enough for me to try and solo through them. Still, having my Pack-a-Punch machine on the back of a pickup truck that I'm driving just doesn't feel right, and no matter how much I try to stay engaged, I keep going back to Vandorn Farm, instead.

Dead Ops Arcade 4 makes a comeback

It's one of the very few saving graces in the game

It's been five years since we saw Dead Ops Arcade, and I'm glad it made a comeback in Black Ops 7, because boy is it one of the very few saving graces this game has proven to have. You can choose to play it with a first-person perspective, but that would honestly feel like blasphemy, so I stuck with the top-down view. Similarly, the other Zombies maps are playable in third-person, but I chose not to, and if you do, well, there are other games you could (and should) be playing.

Dead Ops Arcade 4 simply starts with zombies in your face, and I love that about it. The one thing it doesn't do is lose sight of the "Arcade" in its title, which means that it's fun immediately, and it stays that way. However, much like an arcade game, it does get boring if you keep pouring hours into it, which means that Dead Ops Arcade 4 is good in short bursts, and nothing else. Still, I'd prefer it any day of the week over Ashes of the Damned, and that's certainly saying something.

Black Ops 7 Zombies's future depends on future maps

Black Ops 7's Zombies mode isn't a disaster, but it's really stuck between identities, as is the rest of the game. There's brilliance here, especially in Vandorn Farm, but the rushed turnaround is clearly palpable.

Still, credit where credit is due — Treyarch's foundations are strong, the gunplay is tight, the chaos is addictive, and the formula still sings when the stars align. The future of BO7 Zombies now depends on the updates, the maps, and the risks Treyarch is willing to take from here (if they're the right ones).