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They want you afraid. Fear makes you easier to control. Play time is over when traps in. It's time to wake up. It's Do I have to talk about Black Ops 7? Mommy, I can't go to school today. I'm sick. I don't get you. Don't get you no more. So, Black Ops 7 just had its big reveal trailer and a 17-minute direct video going deep into the weeds of what this game is all about. And from what I've seen, Black Ops 6 is the equivalent of finally coming up with the perfect comeback 8 years after some kid on the playground hits you with the I know you are, but what am I? It is proof beyond a reasonable doubt to me that Call of Duty
is creatively bankrupt. Maybe it has been for a long time. Maybe we've just been in denial. Perhaps some part of me just wanted to be positive at times. You're stupid. The well of ideas is completely dried up and we are witnessing one of the most creatively confused and unfocused games I've ever seen. What's up everybody? This is the ActMan here and today it's time for our annual [__] and ball torture hour, aka the reveal of a new Call of Duty. Please don't make me do this. Tough [__] I have never been more excited to talk about a video game than I am right now with Black Ops 7. Look at that.
It's Dead Ops Arcade. Remember that? Oh my god. I can pre-order now and get the Resnoff challenge pack. Get the Resnoff challenge pack when you pre-order now. This is equav. The pain is difficult, isn't it? You guys remember him? Look, he's a force ghost now for some reason. Isn't that neat? Remember Harper? Now he's in a robot suit based on a scrapped hero design from Concord. Isn't that neat? I want to die. Now, I am going to reserve ultimate judgment until I'm able to play the game myself. But if what I continue to see is like so uninteresting that I don't even want to play it, it's like a Vanguard situation, I don't know
what's going to happen. So, I would take every critique in this video with a little grain of salt. Nothing is definitive or determined, and we'll see how this plays out. But right now, folks, I got a bad feeling about this. Boy, you always got a bad feeling about something. What happens when a franchise continues way longer than it ever should have? Well, eventually you hit a creative wall. It's a wall you can run on, but it doesn't really take you anywhere. Just kind of provides this illusion that you are moving somewhere. For Call of Duty, it's like there's an invisible barrier
preventing this series from doing anything truly revolutionary or innovative with the IP. And it's also incapable of achieving its former glory. So, we're left in this kind of limbo state where you can't even really tell what sort of theme or identity the game is supposed to have. I think the series has done everything it was ever going to be capable of. There are no other magic tricks to show us except maybe the new [__] Teletubby skin. I'm sure that one's coming in, right? I have to do a separate video on the art style alone, man. Actually, post a comment. Let me know what you think the worst Call of Duty skins or bundles are. I might do a compilation video. When a series goes on for way too long, eventually the studios
have to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Nostalgia bait. Remember when this series was fun and cool, and you liked it, and now all the new games were making suck ass and have no real consistency? Well, guess what? If you shut your [__] mouth right now and pre-order Black Ops 7, you'll get the original challenge pack. So, today we're going to be looking at this trailer, the Black Ops 7 Direct. And just by the way, they're absolutely botting views on this. Have you seen these stats? You expect me to believe this has 31 12 million views in 2 days, but can only muster up 45,000 likes, 34,000 comments.
This is not a ratio where people are interacting with this like they do on normal videos. They're botting the [__] out of this. So, you know, that's kind of a worrying sign where there's already some sort of manipulation of interest. Like, look at this. You expect me to believe 31 million people clicked on this video, but not even 1% of this audience translated to this video? Something ain't right, Dutch. It just ain't adding up. The big question for today is there anything that actually looks slightly good about Black Ops 7?
No. Why does this game feel like it's doing free advertising for Battlefield 6? Let's find out. Real quick though, I don't want to throw shade at any of the devs that appeared in this direct. We're here to criticize the product that's being shown. You know the rules. Just don't be a dick to people. Okay. One thing I will say is these maps. I guess I kind of like the Mario Kart 8 aesthetic. It looks super chaotic. I don't know if this is multiplayer, but I could see maps like this going one of two ways. Either they're ridiculously fun or they're the worst [__] they've ever come up with. I there's like no middle ground with if this is their multiplayer design.
Your streets shall once again run red with your blood. Okay, so Raul Mendez is back or at least a hologram of him. Now, here's a question. Why? But why? Why would you do that? Why would you do any of that? I mean, the actor who played him, Kamar Deloreo, well, he's he's in the next dimension. Why bring back Menendez? I feel like it's both an insult to the character itself and the guy who played him because for all intents and purposes like his arc was complete. What does he have to do? Just come back and be a [__] terrorist again? A real original? Is nothing sacred to you? Of course not. How do you think we sell
skins? Now, I will say I thought it was cool that even though Black Ops 4 didn't have a campaign, they still were like, "You know what? Here, play as all these fan favorite characters in Blackout." And it was like a separate thing that didn't feel intrusive. Didn't really feel forced. This does. This feels like we can't come up with a compelling villain on our own. So, let's What's in the recycle bin? Oh, it's Mendez. Menendez. Wait, wait. I thought I spared your life. Ending the perpetual cycle of violence and revenge that was the entire point of Black Ops 2's story and the character arc that I, David Mason, overcame. I thought you were arrested
and charged with war crimes. I didn't commit those crimes. The way this franchise has been handled over the last 5 years makes me want to commit a few war crimes of my own. Menendez is a terrorist. I see they're still writing A+ dialogue. Menendez, are you a terrorist? No. You look like one. He refuses to let me go. That's what you call ironic. You know, it seems like Call of Duty refuses to let the Black Ops story go. I agree. Yeah. Wow. That looks like Call of Duty. This isn't real. No [__] No [__] Killing the man is a hell of a lot easier than killing the idea.
What? What the [__] is happening, man? So, they just killed a man. Wait, Menendez survived. He escaped prison and Woods is dead. They killed him off screen in a trailer. Wow. I get that this is a trailer, but like why reveal a character's death in a [__] trailer? What? Like, what? You already You just spoiled the game for me. What? I guess that's all they got to show us for this one. challenge pack when you clear. [__] you. What am I looking at? Look at this [__] Karm's back. Harper's back. Remember Ted? No. And Reaper the black. Look at all this [__] man.
Yeah. I mean, I'm not surprised why it looks like it has over 278,000 dislikes. That is one heck of a ratio. But, you know, maybe this Call of Duty Direct, maybe they'll they'll recover it from there. This is a story we've been building for years. Is it? And Black Ops 7 gives us the opportunity to take valuable player feedback and infuse it directly into our development to make this the best Black Ops. I'm too old for this [__] They literally say the same [__] every year. This is the best Call of Duty ever. It's the best Black Ops experience. I mean, we're doing so much.
It's just perfect. And I kind of miss that just like brutal honesty of old vioc and documentaries infuse player feedback into the development. What does that mean? We're going to listen to the players and kind of make a game that we think they'd like. Is it like that's new and revolutionary? Now guys, this year we're actually going to listen to what players say about the game. Okay, it's not looking good so far. Now that we're starting off with these like generic shill corporate talking points that don't sound like they're being delivered by a real human being who's being interviewed about a game he's really passionate about working on. Like I think what you'll notice about these types of videos is that the people that
are talking about the game all sound like they're reading off a teleprompter. So it gives this really like unnatural corporate soulless vibe to it. You'll be able to squat up with friends or play solo in a fresh and innovative co-op campaign. Okay. A co-op campaign. I like that idea. I'll give you a little bit of props there. From the start, our goal was to tell a story that could stand on its own while also honoring the legacy of the series. Uh what? That doesn't make any [__] sense. Clearly, you're not honoring the legacy of the guy who played Raul Menendez cuz you just revived his character for no reason. This is a story that literally cannot stand on its own because it's
built off of Black Ops 2. I like how they try to pretend like they give a [__] about Call of Duty's legacy. The legacy of this series has been pissed [__] on and dug out of the grave. There's no legacy left to honor. [__] Teletubbies and Hank Hill and American Dad and there's there's no honor or respect left. How can a game stand on its own if it has to reconnect to a 13-year-old entry in the series? This is the biggest problem I have is like you should have done just done this for Black Ops 3. I don't know why you didn't. This is what I talk about when I say creative bankruptcy. Like this is how far back they have to go for any
sort of like inspiration or ideas. They just have to recycle the plot of Black Ops 2 and probably, as we saw with Modern Warfare 2 and 3, end up making just a much worse version of it. I think that's where we're headed. Let's say we wrap this [__] up real quick today. Okay, I need to hit the beach and work on my tan. Okay, I'm not going to lie, that was a good line. Harper might be the only thing I like about this game cuz he sounds like he's too old for this [__] and wants to retire on a beach somewhere. But um so I played Black Ops 2 and in the best ending Harper [__] dies. So what this direct is doing is canonizing the ending of Black Ops 2, but it does so in such a weird way where
they don't even describe it to the point where it's like what's what's canon and what's not. Why wouldn't the best ending to Black Ops 2 be the canon one? It leaves all the right doors open for a sequel. Alex Mason is still alive. So is Frank Woods and Mendez and Karma. I thought the true ending would be Fared kills Harper, but Karma survives to thwart Menendez, so he doesn't escape prison. David spares Raul, and it turns out Woods is a lousy shot. But if Menendez escaped prison, then that means Karma died. But then why is she a skin in the [__] vault edition? That brain hurt. Rain hurt. Make it stop. Make the pain end.
You know what? Nah, you're just crazy. Actually, you didn't play Black Ops 2. That game was It was just all in your head. You're just crazy, bro. Embrace the madness. No, I don't think I will. I guess what bugs me the most about this is we didn't really need answers on what the canon ending of Black Ops 2 was, right? Why did we need that? cuz all it seems to have done now is just retroactively make all of our choices feel pointless. I mean, this isn't like Mass Effect 2 where your choices and your progress carries over to the next game and affects it. It's like the gap has been so wide. This is what I mean.
Creative bankruptcy. We don't know what the [__] else to do. Uh go to the future at Black Ops 2. I don't know. I don't know, man. I just work here. It's such a good period of time because how have these characters changed over the last 10 years? They haven't. They were all dead or locked away and you just dug up the corpses. They straight up said, "Actually, nobody died. Everyone is fine." Except for that one guy who voice acted a character and we didn't really like him, so we kind of let him go. You know, we just don't want to [__] with Frank Woods
no more. This is like the eighth or ninth time where a character has been visibly killed on screen and then just years later in the timeline just miraculously appears again. How many times can they keep doing the same trick? I'm honestly so perplexed. All right, imagine if at the start of Halo 4, Master Chief just reappeared on the Pillar of Autumn and with no explanation and Captain Keys is like, "Oh, you were having a crazy dream, too. Here's Cortana." Maybe, you know, some people are probably going to be saying, "T-Man, you're getting all autistic about this. Campaign's really not a big deal." I'm sorry, but my suspension of disbelief has been shattered about 15 times already, and we're not even 2 minutes into this.
At the end of Black Ops 2, Raul Menendez was seemingly killed. Do I have to watch this? What do you mean seemingly? Did we shoot him or not? There was really only two choices. What do you mean seemingly killed? Are they doing the my brain wasn't in my skull [__] again? What are Raul Mendez was seemingly killed? Teammingly killed. Seemingly killed. Teammingly killed. I just I can't. Somehow Menendez returned. Are you for real right now? Now in 2035, he's back with a mysterious video threatening to burn the world down in 3 days.
Okay. Yeah. So, just sounds like the plot of Black Ops 2 all over again. Fantastic. In response to this imminent threat, The Guild, a global tech conglomerate, has stepped in to offer protection where governments and nations have failed. Might as well rip the uh the plot of Advanced Warfare while we're at it. What else do we got? Come [__] Is there anything from I don't know. The Big Red One. Can we salvage anything from that game? As they uncover a weapon engineered to turn fear into an instrument of war. Every [__] Call of Duty for the last like eight years, the plot has been stop the gas or stop the missiles. And we get nothing else. We gas or missiles. It's your two choices. Where are the missiles?
Tony's got their own missiles. No missiles inside. Two missiles. One missile gone. Two missiles. Missile. Am I high? Was I exposed to this drug? I could have sworn in last year's Call of Duty. They did this exact same thing. How is this game somehow rehashing last year's Call of Duty? I mean, it's You want to talk about creative bankruptcy? Wow. What is up with Call of Duty's obsession with the sort of like psychological what you're seeing isn't real type of storytelling. You guys remember in the first Black Ops, it wasn't about like what you're seeing isn't real. It was your character has been brainwashed and he's hallucinating. But the hallucinations were never meant to pull you out of the story and be
like, "Oh, that's not real." It was supposed to build up to the big twist at the end. You'd get these little breadcrumbs of like something isn't quite right. Black Ops 2, the psychological aspect was direct. It wasn't like you're seeing [__] that ain't there. It was like there's this guy, he's manipulating you. He's trying to make David Mason a hatefilled, revenge-seeking [__] just like he is. And then Black Ops 3 is like, "You're in a frozen forest in [__] techno wonderland." And I don't know. I just I don't know what they're doing anymore. At the heart of it all is David Mason, returning from Black Ops 2 and now portrayed by Milo Ventilia.
See, I feel nothing at this knowledge. I feel nothing. like character whose arc was more or less completed is back played by a completely different person. So, it's likely not even going to feel like the same character. Also, since it's been so long since we played as him. It's just creative bankruptcy. David is a true leader, but he's riddled with doubts. He's always worried. Did he do the right thing? The right thing for what? For what are you talking about? Did he do the right thing in regards to You see what I feel like I don't even know what I'm watching. I It's so hard to make sense of this. I feel like I'm I'm a [__] idiot right now.
50/50 is one of our new characters. 5050. What kind of name is that? Are we going to add oo into this game, too? She's pretty amazing. Chisamo. Just a friendly tip for any aspiring uh writers out there. If you're presenting a new character to an audience as part of an established franchise, uh, you probably don't want to pick their race or where they're from as the first thing you say about them. It starts to give COD Vanguard vibes. You know what I mean? Like, imagine if I started a story and I was like, "Yeah, so this one time I met a guy and he was black, right?"
You're like, "Why did you feel the need to mention that at the start of the story? Where is this going?" It indicates to me that if you immediately start talking about someone's like nationality, maybe the other parts of her character are not strong enough to hold up on their own. She is willing to get some of her limbs replaced with bionic limb replacements. Another thing is maybe let the character speak for themselves instead of just describing their backstory cuz that's really boring. Look at how awkward it would have been if Bungie was like and let's look at Noble Team Cat. you know, she's got a bionic arm because of some degenerative disease. I don't give a [__] I don't know this person at all. If it's important, reveal it in the
story. You know, leave something for me to uncover rather than directing me towards what I should be caring about or thinking about. She sure does sound like a strong female protagonist. Alongside these new and returning faces, we're introducing Emma Kagan, portrayed by Kieran Shipka. I love how they have a character who's like a CEO of a tech company and she looks like a [__] vampire. Very accurate portrayal. Very accurate. Integral to our story is the enduring shadow of Ral Menendez. Guess you could say Call of Duty is haunted by the ghosts of its past. You know, the subscribe button is right down there.
I'm sorry. Now, as the world spirals towards chaos once again, the question isn't just whether Mendez is back. It's whether David is ready to face what that truly means. Bro, what are you talking about, man? What? The question isn't whether he's back or not. What? He's He's right there. What do you mean? Is he back or not? Look at him. He's right [__] there. Did we shoot him or not? I It sounds like before we shot him, but he lived, but he didn't go to prison cuz Did we shoot him after he escaped prison? Did I think the question is why did the writers bring him back? Don't try to make sense of this in universe.
You'll drive yourself crazy. Think about why the writers brought him back. BO2 already ended on a perfect note. As far as I'm concerned, there was more you could have done with it, but you missed your opportunity with Black Ops 3. David already confronted his past when he faced down Menendez. And you as the player got to decide, does Mason go down the path of revenge and follow in the footsteps of Raul, or does he embrace mercy and defy Menendez despite the fact that he has every right to take his [__] life for getting his dad killed? Not only are these not going to be the same characters, but they already had completed arcs. Just bringing them back and saying fight again. This isn't Mario
versus Bowser, right? I don't know, man. Things are going to progressively get really, really crazy the more you play. Why? Why is there a reason? Is there a reason we fought zombies in the last game? I barely even remembered that. We can go to Nicaragua. We can go to Los Angeles. All within the span of seconds because there's no limitations on what this mindscape can bring. That sounds really [__] awful. There's no limitations in what we can do with the story. Therefore, it doesn't feel bound by any sort of rules, coherency, logic, or any type of groundedness in some kind of reality. We can do whatever we want. You know, in creative writing classes in college,
they wanted you to write a story without like magic [__] because it's such a cheap, lazy copout to just be like, "Oh, how did they get from Nicaragua to Los Angeles in two?" up magic. It was just not just in their head. This type of stuff has to serve a point. And the way that they're presenting it is like they don't know what the point is. They don't know what to do with this series or franchise. It's creatively bankrupt. Okay. I like the idea of a home base. It worked in Cold War. It worked last year. Wow. Wait, that's actually like something about this. Who would have thought? Built for solo or co-op play, this campaign pulls you into a threat
that demands your attention, twists your expectations, and reminds you exactly why Black Ops stories are so unique. You smell that? That's irony cooking. That's burnt irony. This looks like and sounds like the least unique Black Ops story. I still don't even know what the [__] it is. Is it a sequel to Black Ops 2? A remake? Did we shoot Mendez? Did he die? Did he not die? was they didn't even try to clarify what the canon ending was. And if you're going to make a follow-up to a game that has multiple alternate endings, you have to address that. Like just tell us what the canon ending was, what decisions they made that you settled on that felt provided the most interesting opportunity for a new story to be told.
That's all you had to [__] do. This is ass. This is real ass. Do I even need to talk about the multiplayer? Listen to how they talk about it. It's always about finding the right balance of something brand new as well as delving into some of our past experiences. Yeah, that's part of the problem. The series has run its course and there's nothing left to do but remake the Modern Warfare series and remake the Black Ops series. The overclock system puts even more agency and power into the hands of
our players, allowing more customization of your gameplay experience than ever before. I don't know what any of that means. What does that mean? Expanding omni movement to include new ways to outmaneuver. No, bro. We're back to this. We're back to the bottomless pit in the middle of the map. The reason why this is so funny, uh, I'm just going to play you a clip from one of my favorite and a very underrated review. So, you're going down this lane and oh gee, it's a big flat wall. I wonder if I can run on that. No, hey,
look, it's another big flat wall in a bottomless pit. I wonder if the game wants me to wall run here. Please tell me, what meaningful interaction does this create? How is this interesting? How does it add anything? But more importantly, why does this make the mechanics worth adding to your game and your franchise to begin with? This wall run over the bottomless pit, what does it meaningfully add that a regular path doesn't other than this appearance of danger or the ability to run on one of these super obvious designated wall running walls often times literally marked with directional arrows like we're [__] stupid. Shout out Favian.
This might be uh the best proof I can show you uh to illustrate how stagnant this franchise is. I mean, it's it's like they can't even fake it, man. We've also taken a close look at feedback and have made tuning adjustments across the board for a more controlled experience. What am I listening to? This is just a bunch of nonsense jargon words. We're We're listening to feedback and prioritizing balancing our enhanced movement capabilities to provide unique and dynamic video game interactions in our futuristic science fiction
firstperson shooter to optimize everyone's play. Like, what the [__] It's just gobbledegook. This is just horseradish. I just I mean I got a bunch of other notes I could talk about, but honestly I'm just kind of done. Like the last thing I want to mention is the skins. Now we are so creatively bankrupt with this series we have to sell skins for a character that died like seven games ago. I think that's another point. Resnav hasn't even been relevant to the story in 13 years. And in Black Ops 2, he was briefly mentioned once as kind of like a little bit of fan service. We're being sold cosmetics for characters written by people who aren't even at the company anymore. All this series is capable of
doing is rehashing its best ideas that other people created and made and put love into. But like Clones, the longer you stretch this DNA, the worse it ends up becoming. Modern Warfare 3, for example. Eventually, you need a new batch of DNA to produce a new army. Yeah, I'm about as excited for Black Ops 7 as I would be a colonoscopy. Clearly, I'm not the only one. The decision to do backtoback Black Ops games to also pull all of this source material from the best story the franchise has ever offered, these are just terrible decisions. Remember what how they treated Modern Warfare 3, okay? Like I can't think of anything that was shown in both of these two videos that I was like, "Wow, that's unique or different
or that's kind of cool." And maybe that's an indication that my time has come. I may have simply just played these games too much and I got to move on to something else. Man, I can you believe I interrupted working on Red Dead 2 videos to make this one? What the hell is wrong with you? I might be creatively bankrupt, too. But where's the entertainment in not stopping to make fun of Call of Duty every now and then? I think the creative bankruptcy of Call of Duty is symptomatic of a greater issue plaguing the entertainment industry. Everything is either a sequel or part of a bigger franchise. Run out of ideas, I just dip into the well. How about you just create a multiverse where you completely ignore any established cannon and just make up
whatever [__] you want. I don't know. I Black Ops 7 looks utterly terrible. It looks horrible. I give these presentations a 1 out of 10. Like I got virtually nothing good to say about it. There's nothing excites me or anything. But what do you honestly think of Black Ops 7? Was I too harsh on it? If you had to pick one game, would you play this or Battlefield 6? Let me know your honest Steaming hot takes in the comments below. Roast me if you're excited for this game. And feel free to disagree. Thank you all for watching. Don't forget to leave a like on this video if you enjoyed it. Certainly helps out the channel. And don't forget to click that notification bell so you never miss an upload. All right, everyone. That's all I got for today.
This is the ActMan signing out.
