This year's 'COD Next' served up everything wrong with Call of Duty: Nonstop ads, manufactured hype, and a stagnant game

As cameras panned around the Las Vegas venue of COD Next, I tried and failed to identify anything real.

There were the LED walls, which flanked attendees on all sides with larger-than-life Call of Duty logos. There were the hosts, overflowing with excitement for Black Ops 7's meager alterations to CoD's current form. There were the hyped creators in attendance, many of whose livelihoods are directly intertwined with the success of Call of Duty. And there was Black Ops 7 itself, a back-to-back sequel that not even its developers appear to feel strongly about.

It was the pinnacle of videogame marketing excess: loud, abrasive, and insecure. Between extended ad reads for Little Caesars Pizza, AMD, Monster Energy, and Herman Miller chairs, we were treated to Black Ops 7 multiplayer with live commentary that fluctuated between 3 am infomercial and awkward riffing over gameplay that could easily be mistaken for the last handful of games.

Much like Call of Duty itself in recent years, the stream had an air of importance and awe that didn't line up with our eyeballs. Developers took the stage to talk up minute changes to perks like they were unveiling the iPod, while hosts struggled to land the hard sell on "game-changing" features that we all know are fleeting gimmicks conceived to fill space on the back of a $70 box.

Black Ops 7's wall bounce, a compromise for "boots on the ground" purists and movement sickos that allows for extremely regulated verticality, has some promise. I like that you can catch players off guard by bouncing over something you'd usually vault, but like last year's Omnimovement, it's obvious Activision is overstating its importance. Sprinting backwards was neat, but not neat enough to hang a game on.

It felt like nobody's heart was really in it at COD Next this year. Streamers went through the motions, hamming up normal Call of Duty play and grasping for anything to have a real opinion about, like an "overpowered" killstreak gun that shoots through walls (as if a killstreak that gives you free kills is anything new).

This isn't the first time Call of Duty has had an off year, but it's remarkable that the Black Ops 7 vibes are this bad despite Activision doing all the things that usually work:

1. Put Black Ops in the name
2. Create a million new guns
3. Add hundreds of hours of grind
4. Zombies

Maybe it's a sign that Call of Duty—or more accurately, the machine that produces a clone of the previous Call of Duty every 12 months—is in decline. Maybe doubling up on Black Ops right after doubling up on Modern Warfares finally broke Call of Duty.

Pre-Modern Warfare 3, you could at least argue that Call of Duty had a fun thing going with different studios taking a crack at the series each year. Now, Black Ops 7 is giving people the (probably correct) impression that it's quite literally just Black Ops 6 with a new wrapper and more maps. You can only blow so much hot air.

And while your cousin who buys three games a year is usually happy to overlook Call of Duty's rut to have new weapons to grind over the holiday break—well, this year's a bit different. The response to Black Ops 7's many trailers, promotions, and directs has been unusually negative at the same time that Battlefield 6 is offering a genuinely convincing alternative.

If there's anything that could turn around the hobby's loud disinterest, it's the Black Ops 7 beta. If you watched COD Next live or watched a streamer play for a few hours, you're already in on October 2. Everyone else gets to play a few days later, on October 5.