Over a decade ago, Call of Duty: Black Ops III introduced a new multiplayer game mode to the franchise: Safeguard. This team-based mode had players pushing and defending a walking robot from another team tasked with stopping it. It was very good. But the mode’s last appearance in a main game was in 2018. So I was over the moon to see the mode return as part of Black Ops 7‘s second season. And while I have some issues with it, Safeguard is still a lot of fun in 2026.
Booting up Safeguard in the new season of COD: BLOPS7 was like returning to an old friend’s house after years away to hang out. Something I’ve always appreciated about the mode was how it gave the defense a way to fight back that wasn’t just “Kill the other team.” You can instead focus your damage on the robot, and if you do enough, it will stop moving and have to reboot. This gives less skilled players a way to help without having to hunt down highly skilled COD pros each match. It also leads to an interesting dynamic where a defending team can over-focus on taking out the bot and let the attackers flank them and wipe them out. But focus too much on the attackers, and the bot will walk its way into the checkpoint, and you’ll lose before you realize it.
This time around, the robot you are defending is a four-legged Boston Dynamics-like mechanical dog. The bots were previously bipedal humanoids, which was fine, but I’m far more into guarding a robo dog than a random mechanical man. But it felt to me as if this robot dog might be moving faster than the past bots had in Safeguard. So I talked to the devs behind the mode, and they confirmed that, no, the bot is moving at a “pace consistent with previous” versions of Safeguard.
However, “BO7’s tighter map layouts, updated pathing, and the new animation set can make its movement feel faster, even though the underlying speed hasn’t changed much,” said a Treyarch spokesperson. They also confirmed they are looking at data to decide if the bot should move a bit slower.
Another issue with the current version of Safeguard in Black Ops 7 is that you can sometimes win, but still lose. Basically, the game mode is built around how fast you get the bot to the checkpoint. Each team gets a shot at pulling this off. If the first team does it in let’s say two minutes, then the other team goes, and if they get the bot there in two minutes and three seconds, they’ll lose despite the bot making it to the checkpoint. This feels bad, and Treyarch tells me they are looking into this.
“We’re evaluating options to end the second round early in situations where the attacking team hasn’t pushed the Robot far enough in time,” Treyarch told Kotaku. “And we’re looking at this alongside the broader UI improvements already in progress. Our goal is to make the rules and win conditions as clear and intuitive as possible for all players.” The team is also open to bringing back overtime, which isn’t included in Safeguard right now.
Besides those issues, and an odd bug that let people knock the bot out with a combat axe that has already been patched, I’ve really enjoyed playing Safeguard again. I think it’s a great example of how Call of Duty‘s gunplay can be incredibly successful in modes that aren’t simply about killing each other.
I hope the mode sticks around past season two and, like Kill Confirmed and other fan favorites, return in future Call of Duty games. You don’t even have to have a robot for this mode to work. If the next Call of Duty isn’t set in the future but instead WW2 or something, fine, use a jeep. That would still let me enjoy this mode with my friends, even those who aren’t great at FPS games.
