Call of Duty (2013-present)

Call of Duty (COD) is a military first person shooter video game franchise by Activision. The series began on Microsoft Windows in 2003, and later expanded to consoles and handhelds. Several spin-off games have been released. The earlier games in the series are set primarily in World War II, including Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, and Call of Duty 3.

Beginning with 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which is set in modern times, the series has shifted focus away from World War II (except for 2008's World at War and 2017's WWII).

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Because of the yearly release schedule, a lot of the games are the same with little innovation aside from new maps, story, and weapons. As an example, a cutscene in Call of Duty: Ghosts is recycled from MW2 (2009).
 * 2) Because the series has been going on for so long it's very apparent that the developers are losing less and less interest in trying to make a meaningful game seeing how the campaigns have fluctuated in terms of quality. This started with Ghosts, but arguably this goes as far back as original 2009's Modern Warfare 2. Case in point. In addition, BO4 has no single-player campaign mode.
 * 3) The series' success contributed to the over-saturation of shooter games in modern gaming.
 * 4) The level design is incredibly linear to the point there is no reason to replay the campaign since most of the games are scripted. There are things like intel that you can find, but you get nothing for collecting them, let alone all of them.
 * 5) Constant recycling and reusing weapon models and animations, the most notable case is the Modern Warfare Trilogy, as well with cinematic scenes as the aforementioned Ghosts cutscene recycled from MW2 (2009). Treyarch doesn't escape from that too, despite they were using their own reloading animations, in BO2 they opted to recycle animations from Infinity Ward games to weapons that already had different animations (examples: FAL, MP5 and Uzi), the reloading sounds for each weapon category are almost the same. Thankfully, that is becoming less frequent from Ghosts (despite its copy-pasted cutscene).
 * 6) The PC versions of all post-World at War games (except for Black Ops III) lack any sort of mod support, which is strange considering that PC games are usually mod-able, including the earlier games. It also should be noted, that it's not uncommon for the PC community to be screwed over. One of the most infamous cases is 2009's MW2 's map Favela, which was removed from open servers due to a manufactured controversy about a picture with a Muslim prayer border being placed in a bathroom, only to be brought back later, but not in the PC version. One of the main games in the series - Call of Duty 3 - never received a PC port.
 * 7) Speaking of most of the post-World at War games, they are all filled with various bugs and technical problems that never get fixed. The worst offenders are Treyarch, who became really infamous in community, due to closing their eyes on most of the problems, from small ones to big ones. The PC versions of their games (starting with the Origins map in Black Ops II) always have the zombies missing various models (mostly heads) although the Xbox One versions have that problem too, albeit not as extreme. Also, there are tons of other bugs that negatively affect aesthetics and gameplay, not to mention patches that give even more problems. One of the worst examples is how they once broke the Easter Egg in Gorod Krovi zombie map in Black Ops III, which made an achievement related to it unobtainable, due to the game crash that happens after the end cut-scene, and it still remains unfixed! The PC version did get a patch, but consoles did not, however, plenty of PC players report that the problem is still present.
 * 8) Many games in the series now tends to have the back cover barely any description, in fact they usually have bunch of screenshots and literally say (Campaign, Multiplayer, Zombies). Shows how lazy they've got with the series to the point they don't even bother with the cover.
 * 9) Since Black Ops 4, the PC versions of the games are only available in Battle.net, so the users can't make reviews for the games no longer. Activision probably made this decision due the bad reviews of former games of the series, just like Infinite Warfare, as well as to keep all profit for themselves and avoid Steam.
 * 10) Most of the games are heavily overpriced with Black Ops II still being $60 despite being released in 2012; and instead of giving the games a price drop, they remove the normal edition from digital stores and keep the special editions with $60 instead.
 * 11) Starting with Advanced Warfare, the games have been hideously monetized to hell and back. These often feature some of the most exploitative and predatory practices in the industry right now, be it microtransactions and loot boxes. Among them is the disgusting monetization of Modern Warfare Remastered, and Black Ops 4's post launch loot boxes.
 * 12) Starting with Modern Warfare (2019), the Call of Duty studios no longer optimize their games in terms of size, with a game like Modern Warfare (2019) itself taking 200 GB to install.
 * 13) A December 2021 patch made Warzone, Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare almost unplayable. One reason was because Raven Software employees went on strike after several QA testers were fired.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Some games in the series are good, especially around its "Golden Age" (2003–2013).
 * 2) The series popularized many things which are now considered standard for first person shooters, such as aiming down the sights, player progression in the multiplayer and regenerating health.
 * 3) Despite using the same game engine slightly modified for each game, Sledgehammer Games uses their own in-home engine for its games (AW and WWII). Infinity Ward is going for the nearly same way starting with Modern Warfare (2019), but keeping some id Tech 3 code used.
 * 4) Not all of them are repetitive.
 * 5) Modern Warfare Remastered and Modern Warfare 2 Remastered, while overpriced, they heavily improved graphics, something remasters didn't do back then.
 * 6) The series has consistently avoided forcing any political messages on the player, despite having scenarios that would make it very easy to do so. This resulted in many gamers who don't normally buy Call of Duty games making a point of buying Black Ops 4 (before the controversy over the game's microtransactions erupted, at least) just to stick it to Electronic Arts over the Battlefield V controversy.
 * 7) The series is notable for being one of the few first person shooter series to still have traditional linear single-player campaigns rather than an open world or be focused entirely around multiplayer, only one game focused entirely around multiplayer (Black Ops 4) and it wasn't well received and ended up being a flop.
 * 8) Despite being a yearly series, they rarely shut down the online servers, in fact the first game is still active despite being released in 2003, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is very active on the PS3 and 360 despite them being legacy consoles and even despite many servers from older games are filled with hacked lobbies and cheaters.
 * 9) Most games in the series have split-screen, in times where most other series have long abandoned it.
 * 10) While most of the collectibles are pointless, the original Modern Warfare (including it's remaster), Modern Warfare 2 Remastered and Black Ops III are the exception since you can unlock cheats in the first two games and the latter are actual items instead of laptops that the game will give you descriptions about and uses them as decorations in your HQ.
 * 11) Advanced Warfare, Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare (2019) are decent entries that at least tried to innovate the series.

Videos
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