With Modern Warfare ‘22 out on shelves now and dominating the gaming front pages, BSO Gaming thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the better campaigns the series has to offer in a Top Five list. Before we get to the goods, let’s lay down some of the guidelines for our article. It wouldn’t be any fun if we didn’t have some rules. But before we get to the rules, let me first stress that this article will contain plenty of spoilers for campaigns. The goal isn’t to spoil things for people, but the very nature of these columns leads to spoilers so be wary of that moving forward. There will be spoilers!
The biggest thing here is that we’re looking only at the campaigns for these games. You might think a game deserves a higher ranking because of all the cool multiplayer features and whatnot, but no multiplayer aspects are being looked at here, not even the Spec Ops that could kinda be considered story-based narratives that do count. To stress it one last time: campaigns only. The last rule is that this is my list. You could very well hate every game I list, but these are the stories I enjoyed and I’ll do my best to explain why for each.
- Modern Warfare ‘22: The current release comes in as my fifth favorite Call of Duty story. I liked the way it took the foundation of the first game, but moved into a larger space where franchises from past and present are now connected. People might hate it, but this serves as the in-game foundation for the Ghosts team that once commanded their own PlayStation exclusive title, Modern Warfare ‘22 proved that this story is going to be extremely expansive and full of lore by the time they’re done telling it. The game feels like it serves as the calm before the storm that will erupt when Al-Asad, Makarov, Shepard, and Zakaev ultimately combine to form some evil terrorist Voltron that will take on Task Force 141 AKA Ghost Team.
- Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: I promised you there would be a title or two on here that upset some people. I’m going to explain why I liked this game even if nobody else seemed to enjoy it. Nick Reyes serves as a very simple-to-understand and easy-to-like protagonist with Kit Harrington doing what he does best on the other end of things as the game’s antagonist. I actually enjoyed the Jackal mission and playing on PlayStation gave people a chance to use the PSVR, which only made those missions even more fun. But even without the VR, I thought this game was a great example of a good story with a more limited but focused supply of weapons unique to the franchise. I know they did the futuristic thing with Advanced Warfare, Black Ops II, & Black Ops III, but none of those had missions, characters, or weapons that felt as tight as Infinite Warfare.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops — Cold War: This is probably one of my favorite games in the series when taken as a whole. But since we’re here to only talk about campaigns, this one also had one of the better stories for the franchise. The usual players of the Black Ops series take somewhat of a backseat for this game. Mason and Woods pop in and out of the game as the story is mostly focused on Jason Hudson, Russell Adler, and newcomer “Bell.” Not only does this game have one of the coolest endings, with game antagonist Perseus coming out on top and Adler’s team disavowed after being killed along with Mason and Woods. The Cold War setting plus the mission where you have to break out of the Kremlin make this one of my favorite stories to play over and over and over again. I find the Soviet Arcade level to be one of the coolest ideas ever imagined for a video game.
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: This is the game that started the massive craze. Call of Duty had been laying the foundation for their brand for a little bit when they came with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The game had largely served as a historical shooter before this, but Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare completely changed what players expected from their first person shooters. Flush with characters that we still know and love, the game has served as the foundation for everything set in the modern era. This was the first time we met Soap, Gaz, Price, and the gang. It is the events of this game that would set off World War 3 and the Russian invasion of America. Chances are this is the game that made you fall in love with the franchise and made you a life-long player. I mean, you see a nuke go off and kill a bunch of American soldiers.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 2: Without a doubt, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 remains the greatest game in the Call of Duty franchise. The first Black Ops game was already one of the better games within the series, but developer Treyarch absolutely crushed it out of the park with this game. Not only was the story more visceral, real, and gut-wrenching, but the way the story seamlessly moved from the past to the future-present was nothing short of top-notch writing. Michael Rooker gives one of the best performances of anyone to ever grace the franchise, and they’ve had a lot of big names playing different roles. Game antagonist Raul Menendez is without a doubt the most ruthless antagonist around in a franchise that has a different antagonist shoot up an airport full of innocent civilians. Menendez is not to be messed with and having Woods shoot his best friend and partner to death is just one example of how far he will go to prove who is top dog.