Call Of Duty: Ranking Every Game From Worst To Best

Gamers are just a month away from experiencing the latest chapter in the immensely successful Call of Duty franchise, Advanced Warfare, which from what's been shown off so far suggests one of the series' most original entries in quite some time, boasting truly next-gen visuals and, well, Kevin Spacey. To commemorate that release, let's look back at the 10 main entries into the franchise to date, going all the way back to 2003's original Call of Duty, observing how it's shifted over the years, and deciding which games are the best, and which just don't quite stand the test of time. Though the franchise has earned significant (and fair) criticism over the years for failing to innovate, each subsequent entry (especially from Modern Warfare onwards) has sold by the truckload, so Activision are clearly doing something right, even if pre-order projections for Advanced Warfare suggest that the CoD bubble is slowly deflating (though it's likely always going to be a good seller). As Advanced Warfare's release nears, let's examine the highs and lows of the most popular FPS franchise in existence, from its more noble origins, to the bombastic status it holds today. Here are the 10 core Call of Duty games ranked from worst to best.

10. Call Of Duty 3

Call of Duty 3 earned a lot of skepticism right out of the gate for being the only game in the core franchise that wasn't released for PC, because developers Treyarch had never worked with the platform before. In addition to this, the game was reportedly developed in a shockingly protracted 8 month production schedule, which really shows when looking at the final product. Above all else, CoD3 just didn't appear to have much ambition beyond adding a new lick of shiny paint to the successes of CoD2, though the campaign was infinitely more bland and forgettable. Part of the problem was the generic laundry list of missions players were forced to play through, in addition to the poor AI, shocking abundance of glitches and simple lack of gameplay variety. PC gamers were no doubt smugly satisfied that the first and only major outing without them was, in honesty, something most people played through once and then never revisited.

9. Call Of Duty: Ghosts

There was much fanfare surrounding the release of Call of Duty: Ghosts, given its status as the series' debut on eighth-generation technology, and all the potential that this invited. Depressing it was, then, that Infinity Ward ended up spinning their wheels, delivering a final product that felt anything but next-gen. For starters, the muddy textures looked nothing like something which should belong on PS4 or Xbox One, the campaign was insulting short (around 4 hours for a competent player), and as a whole, the affair just felt largely played out and perfunctory. The campaign merely recycled set-pieces from earlier games, the alien invasion Extinction mode felt like a cheap way to change things up after zombies had become a bit tiresome, and really, it felt like one big step back. Unsurprisingly, Ghosts is also the series' least critically and commercially successful outing since the series first struck it rich with Modern Warfare in 2007, even if Activision unsurprisingly blamed it on next-gen uncertainty.

8. Call Of Duty

It may be an oldie, but it's certainly a goodie as well. Even if 2003's inaugural Call of Duty lacks the sophistication of the later Modern Warfare games, it built the successful foundation which would be expanded and bettered by what would follow. The most revolutionary feature in this ground-breaking FPS is the abandonment of the so-called "lone wolf" gameplay of most other WW2 shooters, in exchange for team-based action which, above all else, just made a lot more sense in the context of a war. This team-based dynamic would ultimately come to define the series (not to mention the war shooter genre), and has made for a successful single-player formula ever since. Even if the campaign is infuriatingly short and the multiplayer mode lacks the depth of the later entries, Call of Duty looked great, sounded great and played great (for the time, anyway), ensuring it scooped up countless Game of the Year awards, an honour it only shares with one other game in the series, Modern Warfare.

7. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

2011's Modern Warfare 3 is the point at which most fans and critics began to turn on the CoD franchise, decrying the lack of originality and a certain complacency on the part of publisher Activision. Even ignoring the relatively forgettable campaign, this is where the series' visual integrity began to wane significantly, as Infinity Ward began to struggle to keep pushing the visuals on dated hardware, with muddy, low-res textures taking precedent. Furthermore, the single player mode clearly took advantage of the controversy surrounding the MW2's infamous No Russian mission, though merely served up a similar scene purely intended to shock, as a family were blown to pieces during a terrorist attack in London. It felt like nothing more than a self-conscious shock tactic, which combined with the distinct lack of memorable maps (aside from Dome, Arkaden and Underground) made MW3 a competent if uninspired entry. On the plus side, you do finally get to kill off series antagonist Makarov, so there's that.

6. Call Of Duty: World At War

After the success of Infinity Ward's contemporary-set shooter Modern Warfare, it felt like nothing less than a giant step back to return to the wildly played-out arena of the World War 2 shooter, but Treyarch simply weren't listening. Though their effort did boast the voice acting prowess of Kiefer Sutherland and Gary Oldman, the campaign was overall one of the series' least-memorable, and the multiplayer, though bravely attempting to introduce vehicles into the mix, just didn't pop with the frenetic surge of the previous game. Perhaps it was the outdated weapons or merely the familiar colours and map designs, but World at War just played as solid yet at the same time uninspired. On the plus hand, though, it did include one of the series most popular elements, in the ludicrously addictive Nazi Zombies mode.

5. Call Of Duty 2

Call of Duty 2 built on the excellent model the first game established, making for a more clinical if also much more intense, challenging, entertaining and artistically competent shooter. For starters, CoD2 introduced the widely-copied if relatively controversial regenerating health mechanic, giving the game a more fluid feel and preventing dull fetch-quests as players had to run around the battlefield searching for health. Even with this intuitive addition, CoD2 is still probably the hardest game in the series, thanks to aggressive, hung-ho AI opponents who aren't afraid to hurl a few pesky grenades your way. In short, this is the last game in the series that managed to serve up a campaign combining fun, difficulty and length (it took around 7 or 8 hours for even seasoned players to blast through) in one consistently brilliant package. Blowing s*** up in a snow-laden Stalingrad has never looked or felt so good.

4. Call Of Duty: Black Ops

After the rather underwhelming World at War, Treyarch returned with a decidedly more ambitious effort in Black Ops, which while still not taking place in the present day, moved events forward to the Cold War of the 1960s, and did so with sure, shocking aplomb. Treyarch clearly put a lot of time into developing a thought-provoking, torn-from-the-headlines story, as throughout the game protagonist Alex Mason ends up interacting with the likes of Fidel Castro, John F. Kennedy and Robert McNamara (and these three, along with Richard Nixon, are also playable characters in the game's Nazi Zombies offering) In addition, there's a clear finger on the pulse of the time and place being depicted: classic tunes such as The Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil and Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son add plenty of mood and atmosphere. Still, the game's most brilliant hand is the chilling twist ending, in which it's implied that Mason himself was behind the assassination of JFK. And then there's the insane multiplayer map, Nuketown: what more could you want?

3. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Some critics were quick to attack Modern Warfare 2 for failing to distinguish itself from Infinity Ward's previous game in the series, though given how strong that foundation was, if it's not broke, why even bother fixing it? While MW2 wasn't a huge overhaul or departure from what came before, it didn't need to be, simply ramping up the insanity in terms of cinematic gameplay and another wildly engrossing multiplayer suite. The single-player campaign is easily best remembered for the controversial No Russian mission, in which the player takes the role of an undercover cop, who assaults a Russian airport in tow with Makarov. Though the player wasn't obligated to shoot a single person throughout the level or even play it at all, it raised some interesting questions about the depiction of violence in video games and our part in it as players. In addition, MW2 boasted one of the best plot twists in the series, as Lt. General Shepherd revealed his true colours, murdering Ghost and Roach, leading to that immensely satisfying moment at the end of the game when Soap hurls a knife through his face. As if that wasn't enough, it featured a number of the series' most memorable and enjoyable maps (Terminal, Rust and High-Rise), as well as the added value of Special Ops, a challenge mode for those who found the campaign a little too short.

2. Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2

Black Ops 2 is about as close to reinvention as the Call of Duty series has gotten since the original Modern Warfare. Treyarch took several bold steps forward by introducing a narrative transpiring in both the mid-1980s and 2025, while also throwing in a branching storyline, which would result in a number of different endings depending on the decisions players made throughout the game (usually involving letting someone live or die). Furthermore, gone were the cartoonish villains of the previous titles: Raul Menendez was instead a complex, ambiguous figure, enhancing the feeling that Treyarch were really up to something a little riskier here. That's not all, though: there's the insane Los Angeles-set action of the end-game, the strategic Strike Force mode, and of course, the unique Pick Ten customisation system, which promoted more freedom than ever before. It admittedly didn't feature the series' best assembly of multiplayer maps, though in honesty, that Nuketown 24/7 playlist was enough for plenty of players by itself.

1. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Though it may not look as great or boast as many features as the later games in the series, no subsequent game has excited and entertained players as much as the original revolutionary, Earth-shatteringly brilliant Modern Warfare. It has a special place in the hearts of almost all CoD players, because it's likely the game that got them hooked on the series in the first place, and with its addictive, crack-like multiplayer suite, changed the landscape of both the genre and gaming as a whole forever. It's surprising that it took a developer so long to take the RPG leveling mechanic and introduce it into the shooter genre, but Infinity Ward finally did it, and the results were glorious, such that pretty much every other online shooter, and numerous other genres (such as racing games) have also adopted this progression model. The superbly cinematic single-player mode wasn't far behind either, helping take the FPS game to new heights, because who can forget the adrenaline rush of wandering aimlessly around the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, and of course, the intense slow-motion finale? It has in many ways been bettered by the games that followed, but no game in the series has quite held players in its grasp like Modern Warfare. How would you rank the Call of Duty franchise? Shout it out in the comments!