Call of Duty Games Ranked
by: Bryce Jackson
With the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 in the fall, I want to take the opportunity to give a personal ranking of each entry from COD4 and after. The criteria for my ranking will be weighted on how I feel about the campaign as well as the multiplayer and any other added content. In full disclosure, I personally don’t care for the Zombie modes.
11. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Decent story, middling multiplayer. COD’s first try with 3-D movement and energy weapons and I never caught on with feeling comfortable with anything but the IMR. Press F to pay respects.
10. Call of Duty: WWII
After the abysmal reception that IW got, Activision went back to their roots. The campaign was fine. The Uncanny Valley was tested multiple times. The guns were cool but they have not captured that magic back from past titles. I actually rented this title so that I can play the campaign to say I have but I plan to buy it just to keep the collection going.
9. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
This game got so much hate. And to a point, I get it. The community saw COD straying from they thought it was. Here’s the thing: The campaign was awesome! As a fan of anything pertaining to space, as hated as this title was to the people, I wanted it. The campaign was one of the best in the series. There was a lot of emotion written in and you care about the NPCs especially Ethan. But after the campaign, the title lost me. I was never comfortable with the types of weapons and how they handled. The movement was also dodgy, secondaries were near useless, equipment was ughhhh. Just not a great end game experience.
8. Call of Duty: Ghosts
This tile wasn't afraid to try things: Specific gun classes, KEM strikes, Snoop Dog as an announcer. The campaign was decent. Not the best ever, but not a terrible attempt. It took a different approach to the futuristic timeline and I actually am a fan of the science-fiction space-based defense system. The multiplayer also tried things with the map-changing KEM strikes and Juggernaut-type special characters like Michael Myers but they ended up being more nuisances than franchise icons. I did have fun mastering the Marksman rifles though (except the SVU. That thing was awful.)
7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
I’ll admit, I’m probably against the grain on this one, but let me explain. The first time I ever played it, it was with fellow C4S Gaming writer Kyle kicking my ass. I also saw the game’s big mission where Paul Jackson gets killed by Makarov’s nuke. After that, I didn’t get the full experience from MW until the Remaster. By then, I had been spoiled by the history of the franchise. The campaign was fine and I cared when Briggs was killed but I found myself being bored at certain points. The multiplayer was fine but it was the base of what COD had later become and I didn’t gravitate to the barebones killstreaks and class loadouts. But the game is good.
6. Call of Duty: World at War
This title I loved for the campaign only. At the time, Modern Warfare 2 was already out and thriving, but by happenstance, I played this title that a few of my friends at the time had (I didn’t have a current generation console until shortly after this) and I loved the campaign. It didn’t do anything that special either. It was still in that time where Call of Duty still had you go between two different characters. The “Black Cats” mission was my favorite closely followed by defending the Shrine area and the campaign’s final mission. I played through the campaign multiple times. Another friend let me play through the whole campaign in a night cuz they wanted to unlock the Zombies mode. I tried it soon after and it didn’t take and I wrote off Zombies from then. But for the great campaign and my love for the semi-automatic rifles, (S/O to the M1 Garand and Mosin Nagant), it’s high on the list.
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops III
This game is the exact opposite of IW. The multiplayer was great. The campaign was awful. To this point, I had played and finished every campaign within hours of getting it home. This one was hard to understand with the way the home base area and the incoherent story. I was so upset at the nonsensical third act, the loose tie in to the other two Black Ops games, and the “twist” at the end would have made me crack the disc if the multiplayer wasn’t great. The 3-D movement was smooth, the guns had their stars and their scrubs, the killstreaks were menacing. Also, here was where the loot box frenzy was born in COD. This should be lower on the list for the amount of hours I put in to trying to get the MX Garand and I never did. The Specialist characters save it though. Outrider was my favorite specialist because I just got super into Arrow and an archer with exploding arrows felt like a call back to Black Ops 1 with the exploding tip crossbow.
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
The finale to the series that we all deserved when it comes to the campaign. The range of emotions from the death of Soap to Delta Force's sacrifice and killing Makarov finally was so satisfying. In my opinion, the multiplayer was one of the most fun experiences I've had in COD history. I don’t know how the regional servers really work, but I was pitted against fellow Virgin Islanders and then ended up playing with 2 or 3 along with my own group of friends. We became that team that spawns trapped the enemy in Ground War and I was the Support Streak nuisance with the SAM-Stealth Bomber-EMP set up and MK14 double tap king. No semi-auto weapon never felt better since that game.
3. Call of Duty: Black Ops
The first Call of Duty I actually owned for myself on a then-current-generation console. The campaign was pretty good and the scoring was one of the best in the entire franchise. The Himalayas mission followed by the Vorkuta escape immediately come to mind when I reminisce on the campaign. The multiplayer was really good. Somehow, that multiplayer felt the fairest when pitted against every other COD’s multiplayer. I play more defensive with my kill streaks so a SAM turret was always on (that and because the Chopper and other high kill streaks were hard to deal with without it. I came 3rd in a 2v2 Cod tournament and that was the closest I came to going pro in eSports (M14/Famas and CZ75, who want to try me?)
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops II
The sequel to a pretty good title and the first COD to experiment with having multiple endings. In my first play-through, I killed Mason, got Faried killed, didn’t get to Karma in time, and killed Menendez (because he really pissed me off) so I got the really bad ending. But all in all, I was invested in the story that they were telling and how well executed the set pieces were. For the multiplayer, It stuck with me so much that towards the end of the life cycle of the game, I was comfortable with almost every gun. Blops 2 was also the only Season Pass I ever bought. The one gripe I had with it: The knife in that game didn’t work. I believe they tried to cull the epidemic of panic knifing that was prevalent in previous titles and this was COD’s first attempt to slowly remove it from the game, but it was ridiculous how bad they made it just to stop the learned behavior of the community. That’s the only complaint I would have about this title. That and Target Finder…
1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
This is the creme de la creme. The King. The reason COD has the legacy it does. This was my hook. The great campaign missions: Wolverines, the mission right after Price uses the EMP, the most controversial mission in gaming history, The mission where we have to defend the router that led to Shepard’s betrayal, and the subsequent mission where we throw a knife into his freaking eye. Then the multiplayer was great (minus One Man Army Noob Tubes). “ENEMY AC-130 ABOVE!” That should have struck fear into your heart followed by an audible expletive. All of the 7 and higher kill streaks did. This was the first time I committed to playing COD multiplayer and watching others play. Spec Ops game mode and the Mile High Club mission that they essentially recreated in MW3. MW2 helped start the culture of Youtube COD gamers and 360 no-scopes and a plethora of other COD video genres. For its importance to the industry, this is number one.