Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 review – hallucinogenic romp through dystopia is stupidly pleasurable

I t seems like an anachronism now, in this age of live service " forever games ", that the annual release of a new Call of Duty title is still considered a major event. But here is Black Ops 7, a year after its direct predecessor, and another breathless bombard of military shooting action. This time it is set in a dystopian 2035 where a global arms manufacturer named the Guild claims to be the only answer to an apocalyptic new terrorist threat - but are things as clearcut as they seem? The answer, of course, is a loudly yelled "noooo!" Black Ops is the paranoid, conspiracy-obsessed cousin to the Modern Warfare strand of Call of Duty games, a series inspired by 70s thrillers such as The Parallax View and The China Syndrome, and infused with'Nam era concerns about rogue CIA agents and bizarre psy-ops.