Possibly the biggest shooter in gaming, the Call Of Duty (COD) series has had quite a few games over the years. The series has shifted from being a single player campaign game to a multiplayer focused title with a spin-off battle royale game. I remember that my dad owned all of the early CODs but I remember trying Modern Warfare first.
I tried it when I was really young and couldn’t get past the first level. I remember enjoying the old Medal Of Honour titles or other war games more, dismissing COD as something that would fade away quickly.
Then came World At War, bringing in a zombies mode and what I’d vote as the best campaign of any world war 2 game. The guns, the story, the attack on the Reichstag at the end and the introduction of Reznov added up into something truly epic to play through. At some point I played online with friends, all that worked really well too with drivable vehicles on some maps it had generally good gameplay. Once we ended up in lobbies full of hackers who could fly, become invincible and have infinite ammo we started versing each other while messing around in the different maps. I have fond memories of World At War and would pay a reasonable amount for a campaign remaster.
Modern Warfare 2 didn’t interest me, the bad experience with the first combined with the fact that it wasn’t world war 2 put me off. I did get my dad a copy of the remastered version as a birthday present years later.
Mason and Reznov’s journey in Black Ops was quite clever with some thought being put into a story in a little explored era. Black Ops had my favourite online multiplayer as I had a group that played with me and working together, playing to our strengths we managed to be successful as a team for a while. There was also a practice mode for versing AI enemies which was fun for my sister to play in split-screen and if I remember right there was an upgraded Zombie mode in Black Ops. It also brought us the iconic Nuketown multiplayer map that’s always been a fan favourite.
Although my dad kept buying COD games they held little interest for me so the next one I remember is Infinite Warfare, the weird futuristic one. The multiplayer was full of jumping, speedy players that were like a new breed of COD players, it often just felt frustrating to play. Having said that, the campaign was pretty good and would have been better in a game not titled Call Of Duty as it just didn’t fit the brand. The story was emotional, the characters likeable with reasonable gameplay. The Zombies were set in a sort of funfair and was a little engaging for the few times I played it.
WW2 was my next COD to play. I don’t think I bothered with the campaign. I did do the multiplayer but can’t remember much, but the Zombies in this one was a riot of fun. I played a character voiced by the fantastic David Tennant, the game glitched as my character died causing an endless loop of exaggerated Scottish accent swearing. The flood of expletives alongside the chaos of Zombies with explosions and fire everywhere is some of the most fun a COD game ever gave me. It helped that there were proper objectives to make it feel that there was more focus on what to do.
So we get to the latest few games. With Warzone I’ve only dipped into it to try it, I don’t like Battle Royale games, I’m a low skill player that doesn’t find much fun in having join and drop out gameplay as there’s no time to improve. Modern Warfare, Cold War and Vanguard all have challenges in the multiplayer which with no split-screen feature leaves me and my dad occasionally doing a controller swap session to do the challenges we’re each good at. I tried the campaign of Cold War but it didn’t interest me.
I hope whatever comes next for the series changes it for the better and combines the best qualities of all the old games. It may also help to have more focus on the games which would mean not being an annual release with money grabbing micro transactions. Who knows?
I’ve written other things on this site about COD, below are some links:
If I do more with COD games then I could expand on this in future.
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