Call of Duty Tier List
“All Ghillied Up” from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
It’s Wednesday.
There isn’t a whole lot to talk about.
So I figured I’d spend my day making people mad.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the first game I played seriously that wasn’t a sports game.
After that, I was hooked.
And since I have nothing to write about, and COD is a very popular game series, I decided I’d make my own tier list of my favorite COD games.
Here goes nothing…
Didn’t Play
Like I said, Modern Warfare was the first COD game I seriously played.
Therefore, I can’t rank Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2 or Call of Duty 3 because I didn’t play them.
So there.
E Tier: Unplayable
Black Ops 4 (2018)
Black Ops 4 has no story mode, old recycled maps from the first three Black Ops games and a battle royale mode that might as well look like a slightly upgraded version of PUBG.
I played it one time and thought it was terrible.
D Tier: Did Not Enjoy
Black Ops 3 (2015)
Oh boy. Here we go.
Black Ops 3 is beloved by people, and that’s great. I can respect that.
After all, Black Ops 3 has a great multiplayer and great zombies maps.
But I don’t care about that.
Multiplayer is fun. But multiplayer in Call of Duty has been more or less the same for years and years.
Sure, there might be better maps and stuff but you’re going to need more than better maps for me to truly use multiplayer as a reason to put your game over the top.
As for zombies, I stopped caring about that way back in Black Ops 2 when things became so convoluted and unnecessary.
Throw in a story that A. Isn’t good and B. Has nothing to do with the first two Black Ops games despite being the third in the series and you have a game that is flat out not enjoyable to me.
One of the first missions is a “Train Go Boom” training sequence where you try to stop a train from blowing up. It goes on and on and you try to stop the train only for the game to say “Even if you could go back and time and try to stop it, you still couldn’t!”
I had wasted an extremely long time on this mission that doesn’t even matter whatsoever.
I stopped playing immediately after.
No thanks.
C Tier: Fine
Advanced Warfare (2014)
I actively disliked playing Black Ops 3.
The C tier is for games that I played, didn’t like but also didn’t hate and will probably never play again.
Advanced Warfare had an ok story mode, the same basic multiplayer most Call of Duty’s have and that’s about it.
At one point, I stopped playing and never felt the urge to pick it back up.
Infinite Warfare (2016)
People are going to be PISSED that I listed Infinite Warfare above Black Ops 3 but the fact of the matter is the story was just better.
Much like Advanced Warfare, it has the same multiplayer as all the others and much like Advanced Warfare the story mode was fine.
The difference between these two and Black Ops 3 is the simple fact that these games did not have a “Train Go Boom” mission like Black Ops 3 did.
B Tier: Good, But Flawed
Ghosts (2013)
Ghosts’ story was a very fun concept.
The United States was no longer a global superpower and fighting for their freedom from a South American militia, something that had rarely been done before in war games.
Did they pull it off perfectly? Definitely not, but it was still fun overall and I have to give them credit for thinking outside the box.
Plus, they had a dog.
WWII (2017)
Unlike Ghosts, the WWII story was neither a fun concept or very good.
Call of Duty had made plenty of World War II games before, and the story felt cheesy and sort of like a bad TV movie.
So what makes it B tier?
War.
I said it countless times above, the multiplayer in Call of Duty needs more than just "fun maps” and “quality spawn points” for me to use multiplayer only as an example of praise.
War mode is deserving of praise.
It was unlike the basic multiplayer. Teams faced off in certain scenarios to complete objectives.
Your score did not affect your online profile, meaning you didn’t need to worry about lowering your kill/death ratio which some people care about so much. You could just play and work as a team.
My friends and I would play War mode for hours, and no Call of Duty has continued it since for whatever reason.
Cold War (2020)
Cold War was a good story.
I loved the concept and especially loved the side missions where you needed to piece together clues to make sure you got the best possible outcome of the multiple outcomes there were.
Cold War did it correctly, which is something we’ll get to later.
So why is it in B tier?
I played Cold War multiplayer for multiple hours when it originally came out.
In that time, and all the multiple lobbies I was in, I played on two maps.
One with ships and the other in Miami.
Multiplayer needs something special to make me use it to raise value.
It also needs something so annoying to make me lower it.
Only playing on 2 different maps over 4 hours of playing?
Again, no thanks.
A Tier: Great Games
Modern Warfare 3 (2011)
The completion of the Modern Warfare trilogy.
An iconic game with many incredible stories and great Spec Ops missions.
Unfortunately, it was also the game that made Call of Duty jump the shark and become a bit more “action movie” than “modern warfare video game.”
You still can’t knock it too much.
Black Ops 2 (2012)
Black Ops 2 is beloved by Call of Duty fans, and I completely understand why.
It’s a great follow up to the original Black Ops story wise, including multiple endings where you can work to get the best possible ending, much like Cold War.
But unlike Cold War, Black Ops 2 does it through strike missions.
Strike missions are extremely boring.
I played one, didn’t understand the point of doing it and never did another one.
So I didn’t get the best ending. Whoops.
Black Ops 2 also had great zombies maps, but it was the game where I grew out of playing zombies with how complicated it got.
Fantastic game, but it can’t be top tier for me.
Modern Warfare (2019)
Call of Duty went through some terrible years.
Fans were completely losing interest.
But they came back with a bang thanks to the 2019 edition of Modern Warfare.
The first Modern Warfare came out 12 years earlier, and they brought back classic characters for the new game.
They needed more than just classic characters, however. And they got it.
The story is fantastic and has the difficult moral decisions to make players uncomfortable at times which is how war like this SHOULD feel.
They even brought back Spec Ops! One of my favorite Call of Duty game modes!
So why is it only A tier?
Because these Spec Ops are garbage compared to the original Spec Ops.
They had such a good chance to make a fully fantastic game to get back into good graces with fans, and they came so close.
They just felt a bit too short.
S Tier: Game Changers
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)
The game changers tier are for the games that had it all.
They weren’t perfect. No Call of Duty is.
But they did so much correct and even added something extra to make the games iconic.
COD4 is the one that got it all started.
The modern story is what made Call of Duty the monster it is and officially killed Medal of Honor.
The sniper mission “All Ghillied Up” is widely considered one of the best Call of Duty missions of all time.
After being beaten over the head with World War II games for years and years, Modern Warfare was the perfect game to make Call of Duty the powerhouse it currently is.
World at War (2008)
And immediately after that modern game, COD went right back to World War II!
It was a move that I did not agree with at the time. I wanted them to continue the modern story line (which they would, but we’ll get to that).
But if you’re going to make a WWII game, you better make it as good as World at War.
The story was brutal, much like the real war itself.
But the real reason World at War sits in the top tier is because of Nazi Zombies.
World at War was the first game to include zombies, and it was the perfect addition to the end of a game.
I would spend hours and hours playing with friends and trying to get to the highest round we possibly could.
As I’ve already said, zombies eventually did jump the shark and become completely absurd (much like Call of Duty in general), but the first zombies game was a simpler time.
Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
As I said earlier, Modern Warfare was one of the best COD games to exist.
So how the hell could you follow up something like that?
You make it even better.
The story takes place 5 years after the first Modern Warfare. It includes controversial missions like mass shootings and Americans are now your enemy instead of your ally. It takes the Modern Warfare story, one of the best ones, and somehow improves upon it.
The multiplayer in Modern Warfare 2 was the beginning of what every COD multiplayer was based on after that. It was the Alpha.
Spec Ops were challenging co-op missions you could play to see if you could get all 69 (nice) stars.
Modern Warfare 2 is the pinnacle of Call of Duty (and even this game was full of bad spawn points and noob tubes so stop complaining about it).
Black Ops (2010)
Where Modern Warfare 2 is the sequel to Modern Warfare, Black Ops is the sequel to World at War, and it takes the Cold War era and turns everything to 10.
The main character of the story is brainwashed. He hallucinates. He saves the day, and is also assumed to be the one who actually shot President Kennedy.
The game takes you for every turn in the book. I didn’t even fully understand what was going on until the second to last mission when it all suddenly clicked.
Zombies were back and improved (but still a bit complicated for my liking. I’m a simple man).
But Black Ops added wager matches that have still lasted the test of time.
One in the Chamber, Gun Game, Sticks & Stones. Those were more fun to play than the normal multiplayer was.
The 2007-2010 era of Call of Duty were some of the best four years in gaming, and I’m not sure they can be topped.
What are your favorite COD games? Please let me know.
And even though this is a discussion on Call of Duty, please refrain from saying things about my mother.
Thank you. If you need me I’ll be enjoying some Doritos and Mountain Dew.
