This installation of the franchise could have been named Streamline of Duty because the separate campaigns that structured the previous games were stripped out entirely in order to suture all the different plots together. It’s been years since I’ve played it, but I remember thinking that it was a thin shadow of the game that I had spent months playing beforehand.

I can’t think about this game without summoning up my memories of Medal of Honor: Frontline, a game that appeared on the Playstation 2 a year before Call of Duty was released on any platform. On top of its boring and static qualities, Black Ops might be the most cynical game in the series, featuring a scene where the “protagonist” puts a piece of glass in a prisoner’s mouth and then punches him in the face. The former is largely forgettable outside of a few key moments (shooting a fake Fidel Casto fantasizing about murdering JFK) and the latter steadfastly refused to progress in any way other than in the field of weapon customization. Call of Duty: Black Opsīlack Ops was the moment that the Call of Duty franchise really clicked into cruise control on both the single and multiplayer fronts. Also, you can apparently summon a horde of dogs to kill your enemies in multiplayer, which is a pretty weird design decision. He killed me over and over and over again from every angle and I left ashamed of myself. I thought that I would be able to win, and more than that I thought I could win quickly. I was home from college and a thirteen year old challenged me to a one-on-one deathmatch. I played maybe fifteen minutes of World At War total. What I can say is that this game was certainly a Call of Duty game. We go back and forth about this-him with his strong memories, me with a total lack of them. However, a very good friend of mine claims that we played the game for hours and hours over one weekend when he was on a break from a trip abroad. Here I will confess to believing that I have never played Black Ops II. It is the ultimate vanilla product, and it pushed me into a zone where I thought that I no longer cared about this franchise. I honestly cannot remember a single thing about this game despite finishing it and playing dozens of hours in the multiplayer. Note that I’ve cut out several retellings and side story games because, honestly, who cares? 10. Where does one begin? How does one attempt to be right in the eyes of Call of Duty? With Advanced Warfare out tomorrow, I’ve compiled this handy ranking system for you in order to understand which games are worth playing and why. Some people love the games, some people hate them, and very few of us are caught in between. The Call of Duty franchise exists in a battleground between its eternal champions and its virulent critics.

Call of duty ghost hat