Ranking Every Call of Duty Game

In this world, there are few constants. One of them is that every year Activision will be calling us once again for some kind of duty. Since blasting onto desktops in 2003, Call of Duty has defined the modern shooter, for better or worse. With today’s release of Black Ops III, we thought we’d take a look back and determine which games truly live up to the legacy, from mobile phone ports and botched handheld games to the WWII and modern games, and even into the future of warfare.

Here’s our rankings of every Call of Duty game.

1 of 18 18. Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified: This Playstation Vita entry was marred by technical glitches, spotty AI, rough graphics and tons of bugs from the start. If you could look past all that, you were then forced to play the game on the Vita. The analog sticks were not conducive to precise aim, and using the rear touchpad to hold your breath was one of various odd touch-screen uses that didn't need to exist. The multiplayer was also broken from the get-go, leading to a dead-on-arrival launch.

2 of 18 17. Call of Duty: Roads to Victory: Here's another title marred by glitches, AI and graphical issues. It should be clear that Call of Duty has not had a storied history with portable Sony devices. While not nearly the mess that Declassified was, Roads to Victory still suffers from a poor form factor and hardware limitations. Only pick this one up if you enjoy walking through walls and fiddling with annoying control schemes.

3 of 18 16. Call of Duty: Zombies: I'm not a huge fan of the Call of Duty zombie business, let's just air that right now. That being said, even as an adaptation, Zombies and its Black Ops cousin, both made-for-mobile touchscreen versions of popular Zombie maps, are just rough to play. Shooters need clarity on-screen, which you don't get when you're frantically tapping every corner to stop a horde of zombies. It was a shallow adaptation, only for the most hardcore to while some time away. There's literally no reason to play this version over the superior ones in actual Call of Duty games.

4 of 18 15. Call of Duty: Ghosts: Ghosts was a disaster from the outset. Even early on, it was clear that whatever direction the series was going in was a little unclear. That wasn't helped by the paper-thin campaign, whose greatest accomplishment was adding another dog to the "Best Dogs of Gaming" list. [Although it didn't make our dogs list...] Multiplayer was as messy as the campaign, a strange attempt to satisfy both the hardcore and casual crowd. Ghosts also features easily the worst "side game" of any Call of Duty, Extinction, which involved killing annoying alien enemies and guarding drills ad nauseum.

5 of 18 14. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Mobilized: The highest-rated mobile Call of Duty game is, surprisingly, not terrible. While the Sony offerings suffered from a shoddy control scheme and terrible bugs, Modern Warfare Mobilized managed to adapt a first-person shooter scheme to the Nintendo DS pretty decently. It still isn't a technical powerhouse, nor a replacement for the mainstream games, but as a portable version of the Modern Warfare franchise, it's pretty decent, and even offers a companion campaign that fleshes out the Modern Warfare story.

6 of 18 13. Call of Duty: Finest Front: The first console port of Call of Duty, Finest Front managed to aptly adapt the game to the Playstation 2 while building upon its foundation. Finest Front was the first game to feature a companion campaign, a trend that would continue for all Call of Duty adaptations and ports of the "mainstream" titles. It doesn't capture the same excellent campaign or multiplayer of the first title, but it doesn't need to. It proved Call of Duty could work on a platform besides the PC, and that was enough for the time.

7 of 18 12. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: Modern Warfare 3's greatest issue is that it was a sequel to Modern Warfare 2, and consequently, Modern Warfare. It was the first sign that this style of game had grown a little stale, and it didn't help that the campaign was tedious and uninspiring. It often goes out of its way to drag the player back through another desert or area similar to the ones we've seen a million times, and it just drags after a while. The multiplayer is dull, and the side ops aren't that compelling either. It's an overall drab and middling title that pointed out the need for innovation in the series.

8 of 18 11. Call of Duty: United Offensive: While a good expansion, United Offensive didn't really add much to the original base game besides a few multiplayer additions and a new campaign. The multiplayer add-ons were nice but would be comparable to post-launch DLC today, and the new campaign paled a bit in comparison to the base game's. Overall, a nice improvement, but one that seems a little too lackluster in hindsight to beat out some of the entries higher on the list.

9 of 18 10. Call of Duty 3: Another title that floundered under repetition, Call of Duty 3 was nonetheless still a great game. It was the victory lap for the World War II era of Call of Duty, one last romp before the series moved on to something else. It also took some interesting turns in the campaign by letting the player step into the boots of Canadian and Polish soldiers, giving some interesting perspectives on the war. It's also a game that still looks graphically stunning, to this day. A good effort, but at this point in time, World War II was old news.

10 of 18 9. Call of Duty: Black Ops II: Black Ops II just isn't as good as the first Black Ops. The branching storylines in the campaign is an interesting concept, but ends up being extremely convoluted in execution. Half the story changes because I decided to randomly shoot one person in the leg instead of the head? This was also where Zombies started to go off the rails, splitting it into two camps: those who were really into the Zombie game type, and those who couldn't be bothered with all these ARGs and secrets bogging up some undead smashing fun. The multiplayer of Black Ops II is its saving grace, easily some of the best in the series, and a ton of fun options to choose from in your arsenal.