Call of Duty 3 Full Movie

Every Call Of Duty Campaign Ranked

It’s not something my parents tell their friends, but I am a man who has played every Call Of Duty campaign. I’ve been in more helicopter crashes than you could believe. I’ve seen capital ships on fire off the shoulder of Mars, watched sniper scopes glitter in the smog near Brandenburg Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Unless I can record them in a big list, of course, clawing back some of that sunk cost in the process. While the COD campaign no longer holds the high ground at the water cooler, where it once dominated pop culture discussion, it’s still a place you can reliably find solo thrills in a world of service shooters. You might be surprised to learn that, despite diminishing returns, some of the best examples are hidden among the duds of the last decade. I’ve made it my duty to point them out to you - the spotter to your artillery.

California's Department Of Fair Employment And Housing are currently suing Call Of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard for discrimination, harrassment, and retaliation, alleging that women are paid less and treated poorly in "a pervasive 'frat boy' workplace culture". Over 2600 current and former employees signed an open letter condeming the company's initial response. Blizzard Entertainment president J. Allen Brack has now left the company, and a number of others have reportedly been let go. A new report now alleges that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was aware of the allegations but did nothing about them. The company has recently set up a new committee to prevent harassment and discrimination, but Kotick remains in power. Employees and shareholder groups are still calling for Kotick's removal.

You’ll find every annualised entry of the series accounted for - bar Call Of Duty 3, which never came to PC, and probably never will. I’ve also made room among the rank and file for United Offensive, COD’s sole expansion pack. Both because it’s excellent, and because this is a safe place where you’re allowed to feel nostalgia for defunct PC gaming release formats.

In terms of criteria, I’m looking at the size of the explosions, the storytelling chops, and whether the spectacle is matched by sufficient agency to ground you in those big lacy boots that soldiers wear. There’s also a certain amount of gut feeling - intellectual hipfire in the spirit of a game that never asks you to think too hard. It’s the latter that’s going to get me into trouble in the comments.

17. Black Ops 3 

“There’s never just one route,” a comrade claims in Black Ops 3’s opening. “High, low, left, right, different paths yield different advantages.” It’s an extraordinary mis-sell. Rarely has a game with a jetpack enabled less freedom. Play in co-op and you’ll be jerked around, thrust into cutscenes you haven’t triggered, in order to absorb a weaksauce sci-fi plot put together by the creatively bankrupt.

By the end, Treyarch is lobbing in bits of zombie defence and an excerpt from the Battle of the Bulge, setting be damned. It’s the distinct vibe of a team that longs to be left alone to tinker with its multiplayer maps. The studio got its wish: it launched Black Ops 4 without a campaign, and hasn’t made another one since.

16. Ghosts

This is not the Call Of Duty game with ‘offensive’ in the title, but it is the one that truly deserves it. Adrift after the departure of Jason West and Vince Zampella, Infinity Ward decides to concoct a near-future where South America has banded together to subjugate the US. Given North America’s history of the reverse, it’s an insensitive fantasy to say the least.

There are flashes of the coming brilliance of Infinite Warfare here - namely in the flash flood that crashes through Caracas as a dam bursts and leaves you gasping for higher ground. But when your chief inspiration and namesake is the Modern Warfare character whose personality consists of a skull-patterned balaclava? Well, there’s not much drama to wring out of a headsock.

15. Advanced Warfare 

A rare COD with a clear purpose - which is to warn about the danger of private armies with private interests that diverge from the states that fund them. This is a confidently told story from the creative leads of Dead Space. Unfortunately, its message is much too tightly controlled. Advanced Warfare is linear the way a tightrope is: one step to the left or right of your objective and you’re punished with death.

You get a brief, beautiful holiday in Santorini, but pay for it in quick-time events. Plus: the villain is Kevin Spacey, and there are many who would now justifiably object to rendering his face on their screen.

14. Black Ops 2 

How would you choose to soundtrack a shootout in a club full of civilians? Not dubstep? Then you have a stronger grasp of tone than Treyarch. Black Ops 2 is a mishmash of bizarre juxtapositions - real-time strategy, branched storytelling, romanticised revenge rampages - and you have to credit the ambition, despite its deeply unpleasant character.

It’s interested in the generations of pain America’s secret wars leave behind - and how that legacy backfires on the West. Trouble is, one of those generations inhabits the far flung future of 2025 - a setting Treyarch brings to life with a rather embarrassing focus on bleepy-bloopy gadgetry. It’s less Goldeneye, more Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse.

After release, game director Dave Anthony joined a Washington think tank dedicated to dreaming up non-traditional threats to America. You couldn’t make it up - unless, I suppose, it’s your job to make up the unimaginable.

13. Black Ops 

If this was once your favourite Call Of Duty, I can say with some degree of certainty that you were a teenager in 2010. You loved Fight Club, and so, it’s clear, did Treyarch. But following in the immediate wake of Infinity Ward’s best efforts, Black Ops felt clumsily constructed and mean-spirited.

The Forrest Gump of war crimes, it places you at the scene of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the explosion of a Soviet spacecraft, the Vietnam War and Kennedy’s assassination. And it doesn’t give you a break between any of them: Black Ops is a constant cacophony of tinny machine gun fire. It sounds like the album Lou Reed made when he got sick of having fans.

Pacing problems aside, Black Ops did at least offer a refreshing anti-nationalist perspective: “The flag may be different,” muttered Gary Oldman’s Viktor Reznov, “but the methods are the same.”

12. Modern Warfare 3 

It’s remarkable that Modern Warfare 3 is as coherent and consistent as it is, given the circumstances of its creation - right after Infinity Ward’s core team packed up and headed for Respawn. This is a series treading water for the first time, however - settling for familiar kinds of spectacle as it bulldozes one European capital after another.

There’s some slick perspective-swapping, and several moments of laugh-out-loud wonder at the audacity of the setpieces - most notably the crash of a tube train stuffed with terrorists. But at its worst, Modern Warfare 3 is a shooting gallery played with pop guns. It can’t match later iterations for oomph, and fails to advance the surprising storytelling of its predecessors. And as COD taught us early on, if you’re not advancing, you’re a sitting duck.

11. Vanguard 

Like a commando breaking your neck, Vanguard twists your head 180 degrees so that all you can see are flashbacks. Hope you like playing out tragic origin stories, because that’s all you’ll be doing, over and over - witnessing the untimely deaths of best mates and reminiscing about how formative they were for you.

There’s promise in the supposed premise of this campaign - a Marvel-like band of mismatched heroes with complementary abilities from all over the world - but they only spend a tiny fraction of the game working together. The rest they spend being threatened by Merry from The Lord Of The Rings, which is precisely as boot-quaking as it sounds.

10. WWII

Sledgehammer’s finest eight hours. There are lots of lovely mechanical touches to this soft reboot: the returning health kits that encourage caution and consideration; the squadmates who pass you grenades and ammo when requested; the now-customary slide replaced by a tumble to the prone position, leaving you face down in the mud.

The most aesthetically artful COD ever made, it’s also a broad success in the story department: putting you at the mercy of a sergeant who seems hellbent on getting you killed. It’s the eternally relatable tale of a bullying boss whose personal failings become so dominant in your life that your own problems take a backseat.

If there’s an issue, it’s the sheer familiarity of the French locales. These spaces seem to bypass memory, slipping straight out of your brain - as if there are no new connections left to form in Normandy.

9. United Offensive 

A typically challenging batch of levels from Gray Matter, the team behind Return to Castle Wolfenstein - which, incidentally, lent COD the backbone of its original engine. This is a developer with one foot in the old school, leaving room in its Sicilian bunkers for you to backtrack and hunt for health kits. Progress isn’t a given; it’s won, by ensuring you’ve taken out the MG42 gunners first.

United Offensive is stuffed with standout scenes, but the very best takes place in a flying corridor - a Boeing bomber, or “damn yank rattletrap”. You hop between seats as enemy fighters punch holes in the Flying Fortress’s flank, exposing you to the dizzyingly distant Netherlands down below. The roar, and that rattle, stay with you forever.

8. World At War 

Treyarch’s single-player efforts never got better than this. Folding Gray Matter’s Wolfenstein team into its ranks, the studio brought a horror sensibility to an ostensibly historical shooter, directing its firefights as Wes Craven might have. During the Pacific missions, that tendency goes awry - dehumanising the Japanese soldiers by casting them as kamikaze zombies. But there’s a theatrical quality to the Russian segment in particular that still stands up, like a well-constructed set. It has to be sturdy, since Gary Oldman gamely chews the scenery every chance he gets. His Viktor Reznov introduces some welcome uncertainty to your assault on Berlin - taking altogether too much pleasure in revenge for Stalingrad.

7. Modern Warfare (2019) 

The original Modern Warfare trilogy ended with World War 3, maxing out the bombast and leaving the series with no room to escalate. For the reboot, Infinity Ward mercifully turned down the volume, introducing some much-needed dynamic range. The new Modern Warfare’s most successful moments are its most intimate - see the raid of a North London townhouse that finds you squinting at the hands of would-be targets to check if they’re armed before you go anywhere near the trigger.

That said, old mistakes are repeated: the demonisation of Russians; the lionisation of unaccountable special forces; the rewriting of real history in America’s favour. These are ugly blemishes on a story otherwise notable for its nuanced characterisation and critical take on Western-backed proxy warfare.

6. Call Of Duty 2 

A worthy sequel, though not one that sets any new paradigms - to the point where it can be difficult to distinguish between memories of the first two games. A change in setting helps, the British segment taking in North Africa. And of course, this is the entry that does the D-Day landings - a remake of sorts, since Infinity Ward had originally tackled Omaha beach in Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault.

At its bravest, Infinity Ward dabbles in non-linear objectives - hinting at an alternate future where COD embraced Halo-style sandbox scenarios, rather than taking the path of ever tighter choreography. Call Of Duty 2 is also the last place you could pick a random squadmate and commit to seeing them through the fight - a minigame with no tangible prize, but deeply rewarding all the same.

5. Modern Warfare 2 

If you’re going to jump the shark, do it on a snowmobile. The swansong of the original COD team is a catalogue of brilliant Bond moments, so absurd that you don’t notice the cracks starting to show in the ice beneath your skis. The scale of its events severs any connection to the world we know, but the payoff is an electrifying sequence in which you fight house-to-house betwixt the picket fences and burger bars of idyllic America. It’s the incongruity that sells it.

No Russian’s airport attack understandably divides opinion to this day. Though it’s handled with an appropriate sense of distress, it’s arguably the moment that Infinity Ward lost the run of its own series - overestimating its tonal reach and burning its wings.

4. Black Ops: Cold War 

If you’re fond of a spy story, you’ll find plenty to love about the debut campaign from Raven, the custodians of Warzone. Rooted in a Berlin safehouse during the early ‘80s, it taps into the Stasis surveillance and atom bomb paranoia of the era to terrific effect - leaving you straining to hear the muffled conversations behind the office door of your handler, lest they reveal something about what’s coming to you. Rarely has performance capture been so subtly deployed as in the hub where you observe your peers and sift through intel to locate targets.

Away from your temporary home, you’re treated to fantastic mission variety: a mountaintop zipwire adventure; a scrap in a Spetsnaz simulation of an American high street; the Dishonored-lite infiltration of KGB headquarters. These levels are all elevated by a new body shield mechanic, which allows you to escape death by closing the distance with your enemies, evoking Doom Eternal. The only mark against Cold War is that it’s over in a flash - precisely the eventuality your nuke-fearing superiors are prepared to do anything to avoid.

3. Call Of Duty 

Before Call Of Duty, first-person shooters largely concerned superheroes. Infinity Ward’s trick was to make you vulnerable - a face in a crowd that was rapidly reducing in number, whittled down by machine gun fire and mortar shells that flattened you prone, as if knocking the wind from your body.

This is the game that establishes COD’s cadence - flitting between dug-in American squads and moustachioed British commandos. But it’s the Russian campaign that sticks with you. In Stalingrad, survival is a matter of keeping your head below the parapet, listening to your orders, and enacting the desperate hail marys that might just stop the slaughter. The whistling rattle of an encroaching tank still makes me cringe in fear - a pitiful mortal hoping to pass unscathed between the caterpillar tracks of an unforgiving god.

2. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 

Infinity Ward had long cast us as multiple protagonists in Call Of Duty; its stroke of genius with Modern Warfare was in realising they were all disposable. Each playable character in its defining campaign is merely a roving camera, an impossible perspective on events you could never experience firsthand and live to recount. Ground zero of a nuclear attack; the victim’s eye view of a presidential execution; this is tornado chasing at its most extreme and alluring. As a storytelling device, it remains incredibly powerful - a shocking and unpredictable form of first-person cinema. It turned Call Of Duty into COD, the pop cultural phenomenon.

The title was a statement of intent. Leaving behind the relative straightfowardness of WW2, Infinity Ward determined that modern conflict was defined by ambiguity and unease. Those themes run through All Ghillied Up and Death From Above - missions that continue to echo through COD campaigns as a new generation of developers attempts to recapture the magic. What distinguishes the originals is their clarity of message, and a developer at the height of its powers.

1. Infinite Warfare

A portion of the Call Of Duty audience dismissed Infinite Warfare long before it came out, downvoting its debut trailer into oblivion. That’s their loss, and a terrible one. This is not the floaty, unimaginative futurism that plagued Black Ops. Instead, it’s a hard science fiction story that lashes itself firmly to terra firma, even as its cast breaches the exosphere and leaves gravity behind.

Its Martians are not green, nor do their eyes grow on stalks. They are human beings, colonists descended from colonists with no experience of life on Earth and, consequently, no allegiance to it either. They think we are soft and pampered, an ungrateful drain on their mining resources, and they hate us for it. They’re probably not wrong to. Even Ethan, the combat robot programmed for bants, makes a kind of sense - his one-liners endearing him to his fellow Marines, improving their efficiency as a unit.

In fact, all of Infinite Warfare’s characters are designed to endear themselves to you. Ahead of this game, Infinity Ward rebuilt itself around an influx of senior staff from nearby Naughty Dog, and it shows. This is top-notch storytelling, with a thematic throughline as satisfying as any in the FPS genre. You learn to love your crew, and then learn how to live with steering them to their deaths - a chewy lesson that Infinite Warfare tackles seriously and with both hands.

All the while, the action shifts breathlessly between outer space dogfights and zero-g ambushes. Even the simplest encounters leave room for vertical motion, stealth and, as a treat, bot hijacking - another shift of perspective from the studio that first mastered the art. It’s the decade’s worth of invention that had been missing in the years since Modern Warfare, and a wonderful redemption story for a developer that had lost its way.

We Revisit The Great 'Call Of Duty' Versus 'Battlefield' Showdown Of 2011

Heading into the winter of 2011, all eyes were on the showdown between 'Battlefield 3' and 'Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3'.

2011 was a bumper year for gaming, with the likes of 'Batman: Arkham City', 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution', 'Portal 2', 'Gears Of War 3', 'Dark Souls' and 'Skyrim' all hitting shelves, but the clash of the FPS titans dominated most of the media coverage this time 10 years ago.

Like any good media campaign, the war was fought on many fronts.

'Call Of Duty' had the advantage as it were, heading into the showdown full of confidence coming off the back of the era-defining FPS 'Black Ops' and with MW3 serving as a direct sequel to 'Modern Warfare 2'.

'Modern Warfare 2' was a cultural sensation, and to this day is mentioned in the same breath as 'Halo 3' or 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' whenever games of the 2000's are invoked.

The ending of 2's single-player campaign was a cliffhanger, and fans had to wait 2 years to find out what happened next.

That built-in audience and captive interest in how the single-player interest was going to unfold was a major advantage for 'Modern Warfare 3' heading into the autumn showdown.

For all their qualities, the 'Battlefield' games were no Billy Wilder film when it came to scripting.

'Battlefield', despite the financial backing of the mighty EA, was the underdog heading into the bout, but was ready to play; the game boasted a brand new Frostbite engine, an exhaustive multiplayer suite and a marketing blitz to boot.

To that end, it is estimated that EA spent over $100 million dollars on the marketing campaign alone.

If 'Call Of Duty' was going to win the battle to be the game under the tree on Christmas morning, it wasn't going to have an easy time of it.

In hindsight, it is strange seeing two big FPS games with lavish marketing budgets advertise the single-player element when the multiplayer was the bread and butter of these experiences, but from a marketing standpoint, it was probably a lot easier to take pre-existing assets from the scripted single-player campaign than the unscripted chaos of multiplayer.

The voice cast for 'Modern Warfare 3' was fairly solid, with names like Idris Elba, William Fichtner (that guy from 'Prison Break' and the guy from 'Armageddon' who delivers the 'space dementia' line) and Timothy Olyphant lending their voices to the campaign,

'Battlefield 3' who had solid video game talent like Gideon Emery and Travis Wittingham involved, but the campaign itself was a poor man's 'Call Of Duty' from the interrogation plot framing device to the 'shocking' headline-grabbing moment of Paris being nuked in an attempt to capture some of that sweet media outrage that 'Modern Warfare 2' received with it's 'No Russian' set-piece.

'Battlefield 3', has a single-player campaign that is as worth committing to memory as the lyrics of an S Club 7 song, and the main hook of trying to find a missing nuclear bomb is a cliche as old as video games themselves.

Cliches themselves are not inherently bad things so long as you do something interesting or new with them, but 'Battlefield 3' is basically a run-of-the-mill episode of '24'.

 'Battlefield 3' and it's depiction of Paris

'Modern Warfare 3' and its single-player campaign went for Hollywood bombast and spectacle, with a plot centring around Russia launching an invasion of Europe - yes, all of it.

Logistics aside (only unpleasable game critics pick about a game's plot for realism) it does set the scene fairly well for players - Russia has invaded Europe, a place people know and live in, go get it back.

The shocking tabloid headline-grabbing moment involves a shootout on the London Underground to prevent a bombing, which invoked memories of the 7/7 terror attacks to some British media outlets.

In the first 'Modern Warfare' game, the player is memorably cooked alive in a nuclear blast and you play as a soldier in their dying moments, 'Modern Warfare 2' has it's infamous Russian airport massacre sequence which the player can take part in, and the best 'Modern Warfare 3' could muster up is killing a child on-screen in a bombing.

By that stage, it seems that the developers were in their own minds just seeing what they could get away with, but frankly, no one raised a fuss.

The final level of 'Modern Warfare 3' saw players fight a private army in Dubai

The multiplayer mode is the lifeblood of any good FPS, and both games had memorable offerings.

'Battlefield 3' and its great novelty was destructible environments, and the Frostbite engine did a great job of serving up some dynamic environments such as that one map that had a massive radio mast that was collapsable and changed the complexion of the map.

The one area where 'Battlefield 3' had the advantage over 'Modern Warfare 3' was the vehicles.

While both campaigns had on-rails sequences in fighter jets or attack helicopters that were basically 'press X to continue the plot' functions, 'Battlefield' let players hop into the cockpit of a fighter jet and let players live out their 'Top Gun' fantasies.'

'Battlefield 3' also encouraged teamwork a lot more than 'Modern Warfare 3' ever did, and also had a higher player count to boot.

However, when you're discussing first-person shooters of the 2010's, the 'Modern Warfare' games set the template to follow.

It had the 'easy to learn, difficult to master' philosophy of game design off to a fine art, and the addition of the perks system helped establish a more arcade feel.

Both games play fundamentally different, with 'Battlefield' taking the more realistic approach and 'Modern Warfare' serving as the more fast-paced 'Rambo' alternative.

Movement in the 'Battlefield' games still to this day feel that bit more restrained and slow-paced in comparison to 'Call Of Duty' and its fast-paced nature, which ultimately boils the two games down to a matter of personal preference.

'Battlefield 3' was released in late October 2011 to positive reviews and a strong first week of sales (5 million copies, to be precise) but 'Modern Warfare 3' ended up breaking its own series' lofty expectations.

'Modern Warfare 3' was at the time the biggest entertainment launch in recorded history, with first-day sales alone of well over 6 million.

From a pure numerical and financial standpoint, 'Modern Warfare 3' won the great FPS showdown of 2011, and judging the games as a whole 10 years after the fact, it has lingered culturally, too.Top 10 Call Of Duty Games

Credit: Activision

Call of Duty is a perennial giant. Every year, despite releasing in the 11th month of the year, the franchise outsells most other games consistently. Call of Duty: Vanguard releases this Friday, November 5th, and is poised to continue the franchise’s previous success. With its release just days away, I went ahead and ranked the Top 10 Call of Duty Games in the franchise. This list is based on opinions from gameplay experiences, factoring in what each of these titles brings to the table.

10. Call of Duty (2003) 

Never mind feeling nostalgia that takes me back to my 21st year on this earth, this was the birth of a storied franchise. While only giving us a single-player campaign, 2003’s Call of Duty was the first game in the series. The epic opening Soviet mission alone earns this entry a spot in the Top 10 Call of Duty Games.

9. Call of Duty 3 (2006) Credit: Activision

In 2006 the Xbox 360 was a year old and Call of Duty 3 took advantage of that technology. It expanded Call of Duty  2’s eight-player lobbies to 24 player lobbies. The game also launched on the previous console generation allowing 16 player lobbies for those systems.

The campaign was solid as it continued the vignette style of the previous two games. It also added scripted sequences and single button quick-time events. It was not a technological masterpiece by any means, but it still holds a special place in the hearts of Call of Duty Players

8. Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) Credit: Activision

In Black Ops, we went back time again to the 1960s, and Call of Duty dipped its toe into the Cold War and CIA wetwork missions. With this, we got new tech in both the campaign and in multiplayer. These were in the form of killstreaks and weapon attachments that became more customizable than ever before. We were introduced to one of the most iconic maps ever in Call of Duty, Nuketown. This map would go on to be included in numerous games.

Zombies are back after a year off, this time giving you the chance to kill the undead as JFK, Richard Nixon, and Fidel Castro. Black Ops was also the first time COD points were earned, which you could use for weapons, cosmetics, and other in-game items.

7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) 

Modern Warfare 3 builds on the success of the past two Modern Warfare games. Not only did the game boast 36 multiplayer maps that were a combination of new and old, such as Terminal, but new game modes like Kill Confirmed. This game mode is now a staple in Call of Duty multiplayer playlists.

The campaign returned to vignette-style which was a welcome change from the past linear stories. A new mode called Survival was added as well. This was another wave-style game mode. The franchise felt like it could do no wrong and continued the tradition of a solid online experience with a fun campaign.

6. World at War (2008)Credit: Activision

After a year off from World War 2, Treyarch returned the series to World War 2. World at War earns a spot in the top 10 just for the introduction of the infamous Zombie Mode, but the game also built on the mechanics of Call of Duty 4 into a pre-digital era. We got new killstreaks such as the attack dogs. Maps like the village map of Nakin made this game a blast to play.

World at War also introduced online and split-screen co-op, taking a page from competitor Halo’s book. As previously stated, this title gave us the first look at a Zombie Mode in Call of Duty. While the mode has evolved, the first time you ever shoot a Zombie Nazi in the face is still the most satisfying.

5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) Courtesy Activision

After dealing with an identity crisis during the last generation of consoles, Call of Duty decided to go back to its roots before the new console wars began. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reinvigorated a series and finally gave us a worthy title of the current platforms. While the past titles had some fun mechanics, none were innovative, we never felt satisfied that we were getting a unique experience.

We were instantly taken back to a nostalgic place but with current-generation graphics. Players did not have to go play a graphically inferior game to experience the type of gameplay that made the franchise great. With the addition of a battle pass, game modes like Gunfight and Warzone, playing with a squad became more important than ever. Infinity Ward put together a product that brought players like me back to the franchise. Plus, Activision has locked me in for its last three games, including the upcoming Vanguard. That is why 2019’s Modern Warfare earns this spot in the top 5.

4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) Credit: Activision

After campaigns that took place during World War 2 and the 1960s, we returned to a present-day battlefield. This game picked up from the previous entry in the Modern Warfare series. The story is filled with twists and turns that include the controversial airport terminal massacre mission and betrayal at the highest level.

Multiplayer had few changes from the first entry. However, with added perks and killstreaks, the game’s main focus did not skip a beat. It was not broken so they did not need to fix it, and the addition of new maps like Rust and Terminal and the return of favorites like Vacant, Strike, and Crash make this one of the top Call of Duty titles ever.

3. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020) Courtesy Activision

2020 was a very odd year but one thing that stayed the same was a new Call of Duty came out. After the franchise had seen somewhat of a rebirth the previous year, there was really nowhere to go but up. With the next generation of consoles hitting the markets there were high expectations. While the full title may be a mouthful, my jaw dropped seeing the game on the Xbox Series X. The graphical upgrades and frame rates are where Black Ops Cold War shines, literally. The lighting and textures immerse you into the matches.

Cold War offered a solid campaign, coupled with a fun and replayable Zombie mode. More weapons, attachments, perks, and killstreaks enhanced the multiplayer experience. The game integrated Warzone into its seasons. Both Modern Warfare (2019) and Cold War weapons could be used. The battle pass returned and seasons had fun and exciting themes like ’80s action movies and Donnie Darko. Cold War also followed suit from 2019’s game and brought back classic maps like Raid. If Cold War is a sign of things to come, the future looks bright for the franchise.

2. Call of Duty: Black Ops II Credit: Activision

After a five-year run from 2007 to 2011 of amazing games that all built on the success of its predecessor, Black Ops II stormed onto the scene. Not only did the game boast a fantastic campaign set in both the 1980s and the 2020s, but the multiplayer got an overhaul as well. No longer were kills the main focus.

Killstreaks became scorestreaks, so getting things like assists and zone captures (in Domination) became just as important. Weapons also got an upgrade as every weapon was given its own level with the progression that earned you attachments and skins for that weapon. Zombies also returned as it had in the past Treyarch installments of the game. Black Ops II also introduced my favorite Call of Duty Maps of all time – Raid and Hijacked

1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) 

In 2007, Activision decided to step out of the World War II era and into the present-day with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. From the epic scene of the nuke going off from your chopper in the campaign to the iconic maps like Crash and Vacant in multiplayer, the next generation of first-person shooters had arrived. The original Modern Warfare introduced a leveling system that we had never seen before; the prestige system. This mechanic is in countless games over several genres.

A first-person shooter meshed with RPG elements, the more you leveled up, the more you unlocked things. Killstreaks and player perks allowed players more ways to battle. This was the beginning of a run of critically acclaimed titles that still stand the test of time. This is what earns Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare the top spot for our Top 10 Call of Duty Games.

Top 10 Call of Duty Games Conclusion

During the years between 2003 to 2012, Activision gave us a product we could say is paving the way for the future of first-person shooters. The only game in that timespan that did not make the top ten is Call of Duty 2, due to its limited multiplayer lobby sizes. However, during the last generation of the console wars, the franchise seemed lost and was unable to set itself apart from games such as Battlefield and Titanfall.

Courtesy Activision

The past two entries seem to have righted the ship and Vanguard should follow suit nicely. If my experience with the beta is any indication of what to expect, the 61 gigabytes the game is taking up on my Xbox Series X hard drive is well allocated.