‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ Games, Ranked From Worst to Best

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is the latest entry in the long-running saga, and it’s a very mixed bag. It’s both a sequel to Black Ops II and Black Ops 6, taking place a decade after the former and bringing back many of the characters from that specific story. Despite invoking the legacy of Black Ops II, fails to live up to its highs, hampered by a tonally jarring story with wonky pacing and minimal emotional stakes. Most baffling, the single-player mode is all weighed down by battle royale-like gameplay with guns of different rarities, loot to collect, and bullet sponge enemies. Somehow, it gives Black Ops III a run for its money for the worst campaign in Black Ops history.The multiplayer side is serviceable, but also clearly afraid to make concrete decisions. Modern skill-based matchmaking is optional via a playlist, divisive mechanics like tactical sprint are now a perk, and even the new wall-jump feature feels like a reeled-in version of the wall-running from past games. Treyarch is trying to appeal to fans of every kind of Call of Duty, which results in a game that’s mostly a flavorless hodgepodge. It’s not inherently bad, but there’s nothing enticing enough to push people to play the 22nd Call of Duty game over any other.Zombies has a lot more to offer via a larger map that can be explored with an upgradable truck, giving the player more freedom in an expansive environment. It’s riffing off Tranzit from Black Ops II while still finding a way to justify itself as a new experience, something the rest of the game struggles to achieve.

Black Ops III is a very divisive game. On one hand, it gets props for trying to push the series in a new direction with Specialists and movement advancements like wall-running. It felt incredible to play, even if this was a controversial change and would be relatively short-lived. It was a fresh new take on a series that was being criticized heavily for being too samey year-to-year.However, Black Ops III is held back tremendously by one of the worst campaigns in the series. It’s largely completely disconnected from the rest of the series as it is set in 2065, and follows an entirely new cast of characters. However, the story is totally nonsensical and is trying its best to emulate the mind-blowing twists of its two predecessors, but fails miserably in the process. It’s not as bad as Declassified, but the bar is excessively low and holds Black Ops III back quite a bit.

When it arrived last year, Black Ops 6 was a rather surprising addition to the series, largely thanks to the depth of the campaign. The game was developed jointly by Treyarch and Raven Software, with the latter team focused primarily on the campaign. By allowing one team to focus exclusively on the single-player content, it led to some of the most unique, fleshed-out missions in any Call of Duty game to date. There is an open-world mission with various side quests, one that feels a bit like Doom (2016) as the player rips and tears through Zombies with brutal melee attacks, and others that lean into the espionage side of the Black Ops franchise in a big way. It’s an extremely fulfilling experience and one that reaffirms Raven as an underrated developer when it comes to making high-quality single-player shooters.Treyarch was given an extra year of development, which allowed for some revelatory changes to the Call of Duty formula. Players desired faster, more advanced movement without turning to jet packs. Thus, the omnimovement system was born. Players can have a full 360 degrees of movement, allowing them to roll around on the ground, spin around while diving, and shoot to their sides without breaking any forward momentum. It’s like Max Payne meets Call of Duty, creating some of the most graceful gameplay of any game in the series.

World at War is canonically the first game in the Black Ops franchise, even though it doesn’t share the Black Ops branding. However, it plants seeds for key staples of the franchise, including Zombies and the character of Victor Reznov. Although previous Call of Duty games had a valiant vibe to them, World at War is intentionally haunting, even featuring an eerie main menu with an unnerving score rather than gnarly guitar riffs. This was the darkest and most violent Call of Duty game to date, utilizing gore for the first time and harrowing depictions of warfare. Prior games had mild blood squibs when someone was shot, but World at War demonstrated the full weight of every weapon and made full use of its M-rating by highlighting the savagery of war.The multiplayer is a natural successor to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, implementing perks and limited killstreaks to the World War II era for the first time, but it doesn’t make any massive leaps forward from its predecessor. Instead, the real innovation is found in the game’s co-op offering.Once players beat the campaign, they’ were’re introduced to a secret co-op horde mode called Nazi Zombies, where players fend off waves of undead Nazi soldiers while making full use of the aforementioned gore. It’s extremely simple, but it quickly became one of the most addictive co-op experiences in gaming and a key pillar of the franchise going forward. The mode only grew with downloadable content (DLC) packs, adding not only new maps, but new features such as the signature Pack-a-Punch machine to upgrade your weapons. This addition alone makes World at War one of the most important Call of Duty games ever.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War brought the series back to its roots after a few years in the future. No more robots or jet packs, just some grizzly dudes doing the government’s dirty work with their boots planted firmly on the ground. Familiar faces like Mason, Woods, and Hudson were joined by shady, but intriguing new characters like Russell Adler, a new fan-favorite. With a branching storyline, players could either be the triumphant hero or a dastardly villain that unleashes nuclear devastation, allowing for big swings that hadn’t been seen in a Black Ops game in nearly a decade.The gunplay is also very punchy, the movement smooth, and the map rotation is exquisite, with a mix of remastered maps and original ones taking place in places like Miami and Moscow. It is a decidedly well-balanced Call of Duty that delivered on all fronts.

The game that started it all. Black Ops is still a top-tier Call of Duty game, and it was a strong, but welcome contrast to the ongoing Modern Warfare saga. The game riffs heavily off of Seventies thrillers and war films, fusing paranoia and conspiracy with that bombastic, testosterone-filled action that the series is known for. Not only that, but it has the guts to execute on some absurd ideas, such as heavily implying Alex Mason, the game’s protagonist, killed John F. Kennedy as a direct result of his sleeper agent programming. It’s one of the most ridiculous stories possible for a military shooter, but it’s highly entertaining.The multiplayer took the baton from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which was released the year prior, and ran far with it. Players could now customize their own character with face paint, crude custom emblems, and much more. However, you couldn’t get these items with real money or exclusively by leveling up; you had to earn in-game currency.Black Ops also expanded the Zombies offering last seen in World at War. At launch, there were two new maps, including one set in the Pentagon featuring John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon as playable characters. There was even a hidden top-down twin-stick Zombies shooter known as Dead Ops, which could be found by completing an Easter egg in the main menu. Needless to say, this game is jam-packed with content and helped ensure the Black Ops branding would be a staple of the Call of Duty series for years to come.

Black Ops II is a perfect cocktail of everything that makes Call of Duty one of the most iconic franchises in gaming, with an iconic, jaw-dropping campaign co-written by David S. Goyer (co-writer on Batman Begins), a fast-paced multiplayer mode that was perfectly tuned, and an innovative expansion of the Zombies mode.Black Ops II’s campaign took the series into the future for the first time, in the then-far-off year of 2025. After Black Ops put brainwashing and sleeper agents at the center of its story, Black Ops II focused on the dangers of militarized technology. What happens when the enemies steal the keys to all of the drones and computers meant to protect the world? Combine all of that with an extremist revolutionary who rallies a personal army of everyday citizens via social media, and it results in absolute chaos. For the first time, the franchise also empowered the player to make choices that could dictate the direction of the story, opening the campaign up to a wide array of different endings and mission variations. It added replayability and a remarkably complex amount of layers to a previously restrictive and linear experience.Black Ops II’s multiplayer was a massive highlight as well, thanks to a diverse map roster, individual weapon progression, the introduction of scorestreaks that incentivize playing for more than just kills, and the Pick 10 system. The Pick 10 system forced players to choose just 10 items for their loadout, including guns, perks, attachments, and equipment. You could sacrifice a secondary weapon for extra primary attachments or perks, for instance, pushing players to be more thoughtful with their loadouts.Zombies also got bigger thanks to a massive map known as Tranzit, which featured a bus that would take players to new sections of the map. Although DLC maps lacked the bus mechanic, they were ambitious in other ways by including things like non-zombie NPCs that could assist you, a giant robot, and much more. Ultimately, Black Ops II was the perfect Call of Duty concoction that pushed the series forward at the right pace and had a high level of quality across each of the three modes. Following in the footsteps of the acclaimed Modern Warfare trilogy, Black Ops II was the final game in Call of Duty’s so-called golden age and may very well be the best game in the entire franchise. Whether or not the series can ever return to these heights remains to be seen, but Treyarch set a high bar for itself with this game.