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CheatCC Ranks the 10 Best Call of Duty Games Ever

CheatCC Ranks the 10 Best Call of Duty Games Ever

We’re coming up on our thirteenth Call of Duty game this year. Fourteen, if you count Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered as a separate entity. It’s an extraordinary feat, and who would have known the series would have blossomed so in the thirteen years since the first game was released in 2003? It’s become a trendsetter. It’s a reliable friend. Call of Duty is a staple, with each entry doing something different and improving the formula. It’s hard to pick favorites, but that’s exactly what we’ve done here today.

Call of Duty

Call of Duty

If you’re going to go over the best Call of Duty games, you have to salute the one that started it all. The first entry not only helped kick off the military FPS genre, but also offered a number of revolutionary elements that changed how we thought about such games. You weren’t in just one army during World War II, you followed America, Great Britain, and Russia. You weren’t facing situations on your own. You had a team of AI allies who had your back and would react to things happening during the campaign. It even added a little extra realism by making players shellshocked after an explosion. In short, it’s great and we owe Infinity Ward quite a debt.

Call of Duty: Ghosts

Call of Duty: Ghosts

Call of Duty: Ghosts shook things up. Perhaps even more so than Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is going to. Its campaign was set in an alternate reality, which was quite a first for the series. But what really made it special was its diversity. You could fight through a collapsing building. It took battles underwater. We went into outer space. There were even times when you could be Michael Myers or Riley the dog! You could even put together an original squad for online matches or destroy areas of the map when playing online. It dared to be different.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

When people think about Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare , they’ll probably always think of the “Press X to pay respects” moment. Still, it feels like this was an installment designed to dazzle folks, and it worked. Kevin Spacey added serious star power to the story mode. Exoskeletons gave us a chance to be supersoldiers with special abilities, our loadouts could include directed energy or laser weapons, and the HUD was replaced with holographic projections. It was futuristic, but not to the point where we suddenly felt like we were in some science fiction epic.

Call of Duty: World at War

Call of Duty: World at War

Call of Duty: World at War changed the series forever. It added a mode that’s now beloved by legions of FPS fans. This was the first installment to offer zombies. Since the game took us back to World War II, it also gave us Nazi Zombies. Everyone works together online to fight waves of zombies. While there are other memorable and wonderful things about this game, like the return to the WWII period and ability to complete missions in multiple ways, it has to be lauded for bringing zombies into our lives.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 gives you so much to do. It’s a Call of Duty packed with all sorts of modes and extras that’ll keep you busy. There’s a solo campaign, which follows multiple soldiers through various acts. It has Special Ops Mission, Special Ops Chaos, and Survival modes. There were 12 standard, eight advanced, six community, three face-off, and five elite playlists. You could even go through Gun Game, Juggernaut, One in the Champer, and Team Juggernaut modes. It’s huge, and you have to admire that.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 goes full-on science fiction. The year is 2065. We have cybernetic soldiers. You can customize your avatar, even choosing a gender. It’s possible to make things realistic, with a system where one shot will kill you. You can even jet around, dashing along walls or sliding along floors, thanks to thrusters. I especially like and recommend the Nightmares campaign, a reward for beating every story mission. It lets you be a Deadkiller cyber soldier who not only hunts down zombies, but demigods too! Best of all, it doesn’t replace the Zombies storyline, which returns with more people facing a zombie plague.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is getting remastered this year, and for good reason. This was the one that pulled the series out of World War II and introduced us to, well, modern warfare! It’s more realistic, thanks to a cover-based system that allows you to be in crouching, prone, and standard stances. The campaign lets you follow multiple soldiers, each one going through their own events at the same time. Multiplayer offered experience points that would let you level up to get new equipment and killstreaks that would reward you with airstrikes for taking out multiple opponents.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 does something daring. It makes your decisions matter. There are five possible outcomes, depending on what you do or don’t do throughout the game. It’s extraordinary, because no other Call of Duty offered that sort of freedom. It also let you select loadouts before story missions, which was pretty huge. That ability to choose carried over to the multiplayer with Pick 10, which let you have 10 allocation slots that could have whatever guns, grenades, attachments, or perks you wanted. It was all about you.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops

The first Call of Duty: Black Ops game was all about the story. We went through an American campaign during the Cold War, one of history’s most interesting time periods (and one not really covered in these sorts of games). Our characters had more defined personalities, speaking during both cutscenes and in battles. There’s more of a sense of identity, especially since friendly NPCs help round out the characters’ personalities.

Perhaps the best additions were found in multiplayer. CODPoints let you “buy” equipment and perks with money earned from leveling up, going through contracts, and playing the game, though you also had to reach various levels. It was also the first game to introduce Playercards, which would let you see your own or others’ stats, as well as Theater information that would show how well things went in a recent game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is perhaps the tightest, most balanced, and best organized entry in the series. It had an incredible campaign with five playable characters that picked up where Modern Warfare left off, with 18 replayable levels with varying difficulty options. It brought in Spec Ops solo or cooperative missions for two players, with 23 more levels. The multiplayer had maps that were just the right size, with perks that could help people of any skill level and both killstreak and deathstreaks to call in special attacks for good or unfortunate performances.

Simply put, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was great. It may not have all of the features present in more current installments, but the diversity, equality, and equipment found here were revolutionary at the time and made for one of the best Call of Duty experiences.

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