Every mainline Call of Duty game ranked from worst to best

All of the main Call of Duty games that you remember, ranked from the very worst, to the very best

Author:
Dave Aubrey
Publish date:
Nov 10, 2023 11:08 AM EST

Call of Duty is the premier shooter, the defining console FPS experience. Love it or hate it, this is what peak performance looks like: army men aiming down sights. Call of Duty became so popular that FPS titles that didn’t at least attempt to replicate COD’s controls and sensibilities were rejected by a lot of players in days of the Xbox 360 and PS3 – it’s not hyperbole, this series made a dramatic impact on the gaming landscape of that era, and you can still see its influence in popular shooters to this day.

Call of Duty is still absurdly popular, even if more people talk about with a hint of nostalgia these days – or maybe I’m just showing my age with that one. Call of Duty: Warzone and the reboot of the Modern Warfare series is bringing the franchise into a bold new era, and with that, it’s time to look back at the mainline Call of Duty series – all 20 mainline games released thus far – and rank them from the very worst, to the very best. Keep in mind that, for most of these games, you simply had to be there at the time.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (The Worst COD Game)

call of duty modern warfare iii 3 glhf (3) — Activision Blizzard

This game's campaign has a handful of original missions, but it's mostly a bunch of DMZ missions strung together with cutscenes. The classic Zombies mode has also been turned into a knock-off DMZ variation. Even the multiplayer adds the minimal amount of content, and relies on classic maps to prop things up. Developers were crunched to make this, and Activision executives continue to get paid millions per year. The most depressing title in the entire series.

Call of Duty: Ghosts

Call of Duty games are iterative, they’re not all unique and interesting. I know that, you know that. But this is just Modern Warfare 3 in a new coat of paint. Some of the series’ worst maps can be found in Ghosts, and the campaign? Rubbish, honestly. It was so uninspired that the game’s E3 showcase was mostly about how the team had rendered a dog.

Call of Duty: Vanguard

Another historical retread, but somehow more boring than ever, in pretty much every conceivable way.

Call of Duty

Going back, the original Call of Duty is the only one that feels truly distinct when compared to all of the others. That’s partially because it’s old.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III

I have to tell you, I don’t know what’s going on with this one. I looked up the campaign on YouTube and I have no memory of any of it. There’s a scene with a floating ethereal being and a dude gets tied up by a tree. Did I even play this game? If I did, I forgot it.

Call of Duty 2

COD2 was the Xbox 360’s introduction to online COD multiplayer, and we know how that turned out in the end.

Call of Duty: WWII

It’d been a few years since the last COD game set in World War 2, so WWII takes us back there. What more do you need?

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4

Black Ops 4 dropped the campaign entirely and instead gave us one of the biggest multiplayer overhauls we’d ever seen, on top of the Blackout battle royale mode.

Call of Duty 3

COD was quickly becoming a staple of the Xbox 360 line-up, and going back to Call of Duty 3, you’ll see that almost all of the things that made COD4 a success are here, just waiting to be unleashed in a modern setting. Unfortunately, it’s also the third in a series of games that were, at the time, broadly similar.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

cod black ops cold war — Activision Blizzard

The wordiest title in Call of Duty history, Black Ops Cold War brought back the Black Ops subfranchise but lost a lot of the heart. This is a solid campaign and decent multiplayer experience, but nothing to write home about.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

cod advanced warfare — Activision Blizzard

Advanced Warfare was brilliant, with a fatal flaw: rear paddles weren’t common on controllers back then. I’m going to be honest, the default control method for Advanced Warfare on controller feels custom-built to induce RSI. The big gameplay adjustment for this entry is a double-jump and an aerial boost, which allows you to perform some amazing gameplay maneuvers. Enemy behind you? Double jump, dash back, and land to find yourself now behind them. Beautiful, but every boost required clicking in the left stick. This might not have been an issue for everyone, but I have no history of RSI, and yet this? This? Brutal. Amazing gameplay hampered by the controllers of the era.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

cod modern warfare 2019 — Activision Blizzard

The 2019 reboot of the Modern Warfare franchise – you can tell because there’s no “4” in the title – gave COD one of its biggest graphical and mechanical overhauls ever, making everything feel weighty and look more realistic than ever. This has now become the standard for COD titles, and is one of the most striking shooters you can play today.

Call of Duty: World at War

Coming immediately after COD4, this felt like a step back. People were really excited about modern-day settings, and this was not that. Despite that though, it builds upon COD4’s foundations in some pretty brilliant ways, and when the multiplayer was fully functional, it was a real blast.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II

cod modern warfare ii — Activision Blizzard

The most recent COD game (at the time of writing) is actually one of the very best. No, really: Modern Warfare II’s campaign is a rollercoaster, with each level offering a different gameplay option. One mission you’ll be sneaking through Amsterdam’s canals while silently taking out foes, while in another you’ll be hopping between cars as part of a huge convoy of vehicles. It’s exciting stuff, and almost makes up for the fact that the multiplayer and its updates have been… rough.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

cod infinite warfare — Activision Blizzard

Infinite Warfare did something drastically different. No, really: there are optional missions, a space ship you can navigate through space, a star map straight out of Mass Effect – no Call of Duty is quite like this. Players seemed to reject it because it did too much different, and admittedly, the multiplayer isn’t as focused or grounded as previous entries, but it has one of the very best campaigns of the whole series. No, seriously, Infinite Warfare is excellent.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

cod modern warfare 2 — Activision Blizzard

Remember grenade launchers that could kill a whole crowd in a split second? Modern Warfare 2 players remember. Everything that happened in the campaign has been wiped from my brain and replaced by the term “noobtube.”

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Black Ops II was the first time the series went into the future, and it was a resounding success. The campaign felt entirely fresh in a near-future setting, and it carried over to everything else. The weapons, the perks, the equipment – while some of these still had the same uses as in previous game, the new coat of paint made Black Ops II look and feel like something entirely new.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

cod modern warfare 3 — Activision Blizzard

The finale to the original Modern Warfare trilogy also felt like the most refined one. The story came to a climactic end – while not quite hitting the highs of the first game in the series – and the multiplayer shooting was some of the sharpest we’d ever seen in a COD game. It flies under the radar because it wasn’t all that original, but MW3 was a fantastic iteration for the series.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

The Cold War-era setting made the original Black Ops standout among the COD games on the market at the time, and it backed that setting up with one of the best storylines we’d seen in a COD game, some legendary multiplayer maps, and games modes like the iconic Sticks and Stones. This is still a firm-favorite for many COD fans, and for good reason too. Nuketown, anyone?

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (The Best COD Game)

cod 4 modern warfare — Activision Blizzard

The impact that this game had on the gaming landscape cannot be understated, and we are still feeling the ripple effects to this day. A barn-storming campaign of explosions and rocket launches was backed up by one of the best online multiplayer modes we’d ever seen in a console FPS. This changed the game, and it’s still iconic.