favorite call of duty game?

from new to old. what's your favorite cod title to ever release in your opinion?

for me, its black ops 3

For me, it's the demo of whichever one I played years ago that made me think "yeah I hate this and am never playing it again".

I would have to go with Call of Duty. The first one. That one was great, as was the United Offensive expansion pack, followed by Call of Duty 2. Those were just aboslutely amazing games when they came out in the early 2000's. There weren't many realistic shooters around that time, and they really presented you with an experience that brought you into the games. It helped that there was somewhat of a dearth of WWII FPS games on PC for almost a decade after Wolfenstein, so it was great to see some new WWII games, and it really helped that Infinity Ward was founded by people who had previously worked on Medal of Honor on the PS1. For anyone who dismisses COD, I would recommend playing the first two games, because they really are great.

After that, I guess Modern Warfare was okay, but overrated. I haven't played a new Call of Duty since Ghosts, because they completely forgot to make memorable and exciting single player campaigns. The single player campaign in Call of Duty 1 felt short, but it was still a good twelve to fourteen hours, and it was really worth going back and playing through multiple times. Ghosts took around 6 hours to get through the campaign, and it was so ridiculously cliched that I decided I wouldn't pay money for another COD game until they fixed their campaigns. And according to everything I've heard about Modern Warfare 3, they haven't done so.

So for me: Call of Duty > Call of Duty 2 > Call of Duty: World at War > Call of Duty: Modern Warfare > Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 > Call of Duty: Black Ops > Call of Duty: Ghosts > Every other game in the series.

The biggest issue with COD is that Activision, and that loveable scamp Bobby Kotick decided to fire the two heads of Infinity Ward, and lost almost all of IW's employees with them. Which led to them making Treyarch's employees the new Infinity Ward, and Treyarch, while they got better, were never as good as Infinity Ward. COD 3 was the first COD game they spearheaded, and it was terrible. And now the series is basically just a giant lootbox dressed up like a yearly sports game.

Anyway, I apologize, this has been kind of long. I just really loved Call of Duty 1 and 2, and it irritates me that it's become the complete mess that it has.

Probably bo3 as I only care for zombies in call of duty, and bo3 has the best zombies.

My opinion kinda echoes Jello in that I really like the first two (particularly COD 2) followed very closely by World at War.  I'm more of a single player type guy, so that's why I rate those particular games highly.  I also replayed them for the first time in several years, so my opinion is fresh on them.

Really I've only played a handful of games in the series, and stopped playing around Modern Warfare 3 (the original).  I have pretty fond memories of Modern Warfare 2 in particular because I played it online with friends, but Modern Warfare 3 is right about when I lost interest in the series and decided to sell off my 360 around 2012-2013*.

I also replayed the original Modern Warfare recently after last playing it through a Blockbuster rental shortly after it came out.  The early missions have stood the test of time, but the latter half dragged more than I remembered it doing.  I only played a bit of Black Ops 1 so I can't give a strong opinion on it, but I remember being impressed by it at the time.

My (limited) rankings: COD 2 > WAW > COD 1 > MW2 > MW > MW3

*Fun fact: selling my 360 was the transitional period where I returned to PC and started playing Doom again because my computer didn't have the hardware for modern games.  Ironically, I may have COD to thank for leading me (back) to these forums.

The campaigns from Ghosts onward are so fucking bland and forgettable. I got about two hours into the MW reboot and was bored shitless. How do you make an FPS so boring? Damn.

Like @Jello said, the original was definitely the best and it was the only time I was ever really impressed with the series.

I don't think I've played anything past BO1, outside of a couple of minutes of MW2 (2022)'s F2P DMZ mode (although I'll certainly be remedying that once they hit Game Pass - sounds like that'll be in a couple of month's time?) so with that limited experience, probably MW2 (2009). Good dumb rollercoaster campaign and some lovely multiplayer, albeit I was playing on console (I'd probably have a different opinion if I was on PC, since that was the game where mods and dedicated servers were put to the sword, at least for a while)

I think I have a copy of MW3 (2011) on 360 I snatched up out of the pre-owned bin at some point, but I never got around to playing it. One day I'll just do a big tour of the entire franchise in some form or another. I've heard Infinite Warfare is real good, even through the eyes of people who don't like COD at the best of times.

I remember beating COD1 at some point, but not the expansion. Don't remember if I beat COD2, or even really played it that much. One day I'll sit down and give COD3 or the other console-exclusive PS2-era spinoffs a proper whack once a good emulator/M+KB hack combo eventuates. Think I beat COD4? Definitely beat MW2. Only got a couple levels into BO1, then I kind of wasn't in a position to buy the games annually for quite a while. Oh, and I gave the Nintendo DS version of COD4 a quick kick around at some point. I need to explore those weird portable games more. Prooobably not the NGage one though, it's not amazing even in the hallowed category of NGage FPS games. :V

Sorry if you were expecting some cynical, dismissive response like the first reply, I know it's a forum dedicated to old-school FPSes, after all! But I have a little piece of my heart put aside for heavily-scripted hyper-linear rollercoaster-spectacle FPSes as a bit of a sometimes food. Got through most of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (the game most of the founding COD1 team made before splitting from 2015 Inc and forming Infinity Ward) and just put it down on the ground after reaching That Fucking Sniper Town Level. Maybe I should poke at the expansion packs, god knows there were enough of them shits.

None.

World at War.

WaW has the most brutal campaign in the entire series and I appreciate it going for a borderline apocalyptic vibe rather than glorifying war. It's the only CoD that could honestly be considered a horror game. Besides that it has a fun straight-forward multiplayer, split-screen COOP on consoles and player-made content on PC which gives the campaign & zombies mode some replayability.

The one where you are the leader of a squad, but your subordinates stack up on a door and refuse to do anything else while yelling at you (their commanding officer) to breach the next area, followed by an explosion (or roof collapse if you are on top of a building) rendering you unconscious right before your objective.

I always preferred Treyarch entries to be honest.

Black Ops 1, the sequel was aight too but after that it fell off hard for me, World at War was great for the co-op campaign especially but unfortunately the multiplayer was monged to fuck by hackers.

MW3 was janky and kinda shit and I ain't even gonna talk about how wank Ghosts was (literally stopped playing the series because of that one).

I only care about and play zombies btw.

If your counting modding then Black Ops 3.

As its own thing, Black Ops 2. 

Call of Booty 4 Modern Twerkfare but really WaW too. I played the multiplayer extensively and the single player was OK, but it’s obvious that at some point the multiplayer was the only real focus for these games and the SP is just afterthought. Idk why they now are trying to mimic Fortnite and put in Nicki Minaj or some crap, why they’re trying to make war seem appealing by letting you design your character to look like someone who would not be allowed into combat or at the very least not compliant with uniform standards, but whatever, just seems to defeat the whole “call of duty” thing. 

21 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

The campaigns from Ghosts onward are so fucking bland and forgettable. I got about two hours into the MW reboot and was bored shitless. How do you make an FPS so boring? Damn.

 

Like @Jello said, the original was definitely the best and it was the only time I was ever really impressed with the series.

I recently tried replaying Codblops, and that's where I ended up. It was just ridiculously boring, even though it was trying to be a bombastic series of seat of your pants, shit hits the fan moments. But from the very get go, everything is so scripted that it's almost impossible to feel like you're actually playing a game. The first "mission" in Cuba, after leaving the bar, if you move too far ahead you'll get mowed down by people, or run over by a car. But if you move too slowly and take cover, the people you're with will advance too far and you'll fail the mission. 

There was no real agency the entire time, it felt like a rail shooter, and things were going to happen and all I really had to do was keep pace with the NPC's and not get shot to the point that my screen turned to cranberry sauce so that I could see the next floor collapsing, or the next artillery shell, or open the next door for my well-trained comrades who can kill everything they see, but can't open a door. There was no health to manage, which I really did like how COD 1 and 2 had health packs, because it was exciting having to manage my health in dire situations, and there was no ammo to manage either. A few missions into BLOPS I realized I had a Colt Commando with 600 rounds of ammunition with an underbarrel M203 grenade launcher, and a PKM light machinegun with 400 rounds, and I was never in danger of running out of ammunition.

It's hard to be invested in a game where you technically can't die unless you stand out in the open, and if you do die, you just reset back to the last autosave, and you never have to worry about running out of ammunition, health management is non-existent, and you're basically just there to go from setpiece to setpiece. I might as well be watching a movie at that point. 

6 hours ago, Jello said:

There was no real agency the entire time, it felt like a rail shooter, and things were going to happen and all I really had to do was keep pace with the NPC's and not get shot to the point that my screen turned to cranberry sauce so that I could see the next floor collapsing, or the next artillery shell, or open the next door for my well-trained comrades who can kill everything they see, but can't open a door. There was no health to manage, which I really did like how COD 1 and 2 had health packs, because it was exciting having to manage my health in dire situations, and there was no ammo to manage either. A few missions into BLOPS I realized I had a Colt Commando with 600 rounds of ammunition with an underbarrel M203 grenade launcher, and a PKM light machinegun with 400 rounds, and I was never in danger of running out of ammunition.

 

It's hard to be invested in a game where you technically can't die unless you stand out in the open, and if you do die, you just reset back to the last autosave, and you never have to worry about running out of ammunition, health management is non-existent, and you're basically just there to go from setpiece to setpiece. I might as well be watching a movie at that point. 

You made very good points. I have some nostalgia for the OG Modern Warfare trilogy, but the lack of agency and the lack of resource management in singleplayer campaign was evident to me even back then. Didn't bother me back then, but after getting back into the retro fps games, those things stick out pretty badly.

Just bought CoD: MW4. So far so good.

For me I think it'd have to be COD 2, or COD 4, COD 2 has such a good campaign, and fun multiplayer abliet simplistic, with COD 4 being just a generally amazing experience for me, even if it's not for me interms of multiplayer with it's "MLG PRO G3MER Y333555H" competitiveness, and generally toxic and sweat-lord multiplayer community, exasterbated by Promod

Black Ops was my favorite at one point but it like World at War aged freaking horribly in gameplay, with almost no brancing paths like literally every COD game before it, and it either being extremely hard on Veteran, due to obnoxiously good accuracy and TONS of grenades in World at War's case, while Black ops is just "You get killed if you don't do this one part right or this scripted sequence you got almost no warning for, it's just dumb.. also the community is again full of sweat-lords so that's an immediate turn off so hey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Though, Advanced Warfare if modified a bit interms of how it plays in multiplayer, can actually be a good arena shooter, with it's guns, artstyle, variety of weapons and guns, etc.. just take out the lootboxes and the terrible monitization please

Infinite Warfare is also really decent actually, with nice and fun zombies, alongside an amazing campaign! By no means better than COD 2 or 4, but it's such a good campaign that it can even compare with some older titles!

So yeah thats my stuffz

Black Ops. I was a fan of anything related to the Cold War.

I enjoyed Medal of Honor: Underground.

MW2 and BO 1.

I had a decent time with CoD4 on 360 and Black Ops 1 on PS3, but I had a really good time with it CoD4 PC. I had gotten accustomed to the console’s 6v6 matchmaking which made the 24+ player servers on PC all the more “whoa”.

A few years back a friend gave me a Black Ops 4 code to play it on PS4; I enjoyed its hardcore for a few hours but my interest for these games isn’t there anymore. I’m also a “recluse from randoms” these days: I like to play games with my friends or by myself.

Black Ops 1!
World at War is the most underrated one tho, it was perfect and the sounds are unmatched :D

COD 4 Modern Warfare 

black ops 4, black ops 3, and advanced warfare because of the overall aesthetic, BO4, BO3, and AW have that nice sci fi aesthetic i love seeing

Played pretty much every entry from the original all the way up through Advanced Warfare (and a small amount of Black Ops 3) and there are nuggets of value in almost every entry, despite what the evolution of the series has become. The early games championed the camaraderie of GIs in the face of certain, which was gradually whittled away and replaced with thinly-veiled propaganda and money-printing via micro-transactions. The funniest example of the latter probably goes to the monetization of gun weapon skins in multiplayer - previously camouflage in a variety of flavors (urban, woodland, desert, etc) with gold/diamond as a silly capstone for mastery - does the average teen still find this interesting enough, or would they rather spend 99 cents to plaster a a bunch of weed leaves onto it instead?

There's an awkward sense of nostalgia that I feel in regards to Modern Warfare, and particularly its sequel. MW2 was a very broken and funny game from a multiplayer perspective -- it's hard to forget things like akimbo shotguns, Intervention quickscoping, One Man Army grenade launcher abuse, shoving way too many players into Rust and making it completely unplayable, wondering how we ever dealt with the godawful FOV. Perhaps we're just all eternally coping with ridiculous teen memories.

I feel the least qualms about the series from a Zombies perspective. The evolution of the game mode from a secret project that wasn't even advertised as being a part of its origin game at all, to being a sole factor for many people purchasing the series, was fascinating to be a part of in real time. Treyarch's Zombies team did nothing but release hit after hit for two straight games (though Shangri-La has always been a bit contentious due to its return to tighter spatial design and convoluted Easter Egg composition), culminating in Moon, which is the crown jewel of the whole series in my eyes. Unfortunately the ambition behind Moon and its payoff would lead to a simultaneously overly ambitious and painfully lackluster follow-up in Black Ops 2 with TranZit and its narrative sequels (Die Rise, Buried).

The hardest pill that I've had to swallow recently is that Titanfall 2 is actually the best Call of Duty game, both from a singleplayer and multiplayer perspective. It has been more or less impossible for me to take the nostalgia trip through the previous games that I wanted to, because they just.... play so slow, and feel so much worse after Respawn proved that fluid movement is the king of the genre. That is a cop-out answer though, so I guess a more painful answer would be that Black Ops is my favorite from a Zombies perspective, and naming any of the others for singleplayer or multiplayer is too much work to sift out nostalgia-goggled memories from what I think now.

Call of Duty 1, the original. It's the game I grew up with alongside MoH: Allied Assault. I like it because it's so cozy with these early 2000s graphics (which is my favorite era in graphics), and I actually like its arcadiness as opposed to more realistic gameplay of the later games.

I also really like CoD4 and CoDWaW because they're so moody and atmospheric. As a kid I was outright scared of some levels. CoD4's campaign is my second favorite, while WaW has zombies.

As for multiplayer, I was lucky to have played MW2's multiplayer when the game just released. It was so good and just crazy. Absolutely unbalanced, and that's why it was so fun. The biggest fun for me was unlocking all those callcards and emblems. It was a fantastic time, despite the fact that I was a terrible player with K/D ratio of about 1:5, and I was literally crying over being killed many times. Sadly I didn't really manage to play other CoD multiplayers in their heydays, although I did have a lot of fun in CoD2 and WaW as well.

Call of duty on the DS is the only call of duty game I have

1 hour ago, ALilGrayBoi said:

Call of duty on the DS is the only call of duty game I have

Lol

cod4 and waw were the cod games my uncle gave me. cod4 and mw2 were the games that inspired me to go to college for game design, so i guess that would have to be my absolute favorite series. i think i prefer mw2 a bit more because the vehicle sections were always so fun, and they never fail to make me invested, even though i always know how they turn out.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (original, not remaster)