Call of Duty has become such a household name in the gaming industry that it is always expected to be the top-selling game of the year with each main release. Since 2003, there has been a Call of Duty game released every year, and while people may criticize the series for not changing up much, it has come a very far way since its beginning when it was billed as the “Medal of Honor killer.” Have you played every single Call of Duty game? Check out our complete list below and find any titles you may have missed in the past.
Related: The 10 best Call of Duty games, ranked
Every Call of Duty game in release order
Call of Duty
- Release date: October 29, 2003
The first few Call of Duty games focused on World War II, like many shooter games in the early to mid-2000s. This one focused on three different campaigns, American, British, and Soviet. While by today’s standards, it is nothing to write home about, at the time, Call of Duty was a fantastic start for the series. Many former Medal of Honor developers worked on the first game, and it received multiple Game of the Year awards from different outlets.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour
- Release date: November 16, 2004
Finest Hour was mainly an expansion of the first game, but this time developed for home consoles. It did bring with it a new story, focusing on six intertwined stories and battles across the three allied campaigns introduced in the first game. Multiplayer was also added for console players, with online functionality available for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions, and up to 32 people able to play locally on the Xbox port.
Call of Duty 2
- Release date: October 5, 2005
Call of Duty 2 was the first full sequel in the series and a launch title for the popular Xbox 360, putting it once again in the spotlight for Infinity Ward. The campaign featured the story of four different soldiers across the American, British, and Russian armies. For the first time in the series, regenerating health was introduced as well as grenade indicators. The multiplayer was also expanded on from the first game.
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One
- Release date: November 1, 2005
Nearly a month following the release of Call of Duty 2 on the next-generation console, Big Red One from Treyarch acted as another expansion, but for the GameCube, PS2, and Xbox. As opposed to the release on Xbox 360, Big Red One focused on one singular story of the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division, nicknamed for its unit patch colored with a red number one.
Call of Duty 3
- Release date: November 7, 2006
Treyarch’s Call of Duty 3 was a launch title for both the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii while maintaining much of the same elements from the previous games but enhanced for the new generation. The multiplayer allowed up to 24 players on each team. The campaign focused on WWII, with perspectives being taken from American, British, Canadian, and Polish soldiers across its 14 missions.
Call of Duty: Roads to Victory
- Release date: March 13, 2007
Roads to Victory is the only game in the series developed for the PlayStation Portable and featured three campaigns for American, British, and Canadian soldiers in WWII again. A multiplayer mode was also available for local wireless play with up to six people.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
- Release date: November 5, 2007
The first Modern Warfare was a revolutionary game for first-person shooters. It added the iconic killstreak system to multiplayer and has great maps that are routinely still brought up as favorites. In the campaign, some of Call of Duty’s most praised characters were introduced here between Soap MacTavish and Captain Price as they try to bring down Russian terrorist Imran Zekhaev.
Call of Duty: World at War Final Fronts
- Release date: November 10, 2008
Final Fronts is the PS2 version of World at War. While not providing any multiplayer modes, this port brought a new campaign focusing on split perspectives between American and British soldiers.
Call of Duty: World at War
- Release date: November 11, 2008
World at War from Treyarch made a strong impression upon its arrival, despite being another WWII game. Technically, it is also the first game in the Black Ops line in the series and introduced the world to the Call of Duty Zombies mode when you beat the campaign. Like in Modern Warfare, World at War brought in the perk and killstreak system made so famous in the previous game. For the first time in the series, a cooperative multiplayer was introduced.
Related: The best Call of Duty Zombies maps of all time
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Release date: November 10, 2009
Modern Warfare 2 picks up where the former left off as Soap and Price’s story is continued, this time dealing with Zakhaev’s underling Vladimir Makarov, and the betrayal of General Shepherd. Some of the most iconic moments in the Call of Duty franchise happened in this campaign, starting with the controversial mission “No Russian.” The multiplayer also expanded on what the former game introduced with new killstreaks and perks for players to have fun with
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Mobilized
- Release date: November 10, 2009
Mobilized is a companion game released alongside Modern Warfare 2 for the Nintendo DS. It brings in a new story focusing on preventing the launch of a nuclear weapon in the Middle East. An online multiplayer mode was available, allowing a new arcade mode for the campaign, a survival mode, and introduced sabotage, which was brought into later games in the series. While not the best-received game in the series, Mobilized is one of the best-selling games in the Call of Duty franchise.
Call of Duty: Zombies
- Release date: November 16, 2009
Call of Duty: Zombies was the debut of the Call of Duty series on cellular devices. As you would guess from the title, it is based on the Treyarch Zombies mode and focuses on survival in a wave-based system. Being developed for cell phones in the late 2000s, this game is very simplified compared to other titles in the series.
Call of Duty: Black Ops
- Release date: November 9, 2010
The first Black Ops’ campaign focuses on the story of Alex Mason, a CIA operative who has been captured and brainwashed by the Soviets in Vorkuta, Russia. Much of the story is a retelling of the missions he carried out while unknowingly doing the Soviet’s bidding alongside his deceased friend, Viktor Reznov.
The Zombies mode grew upon the success established in World At War, bringing in a connecting story with many new features. The multiplayer was filled with Cold War-era weapons and great killstreaks that made battles some of the best in all of Call of Duty. Throw in iconic maps like Nuketown, and you have one of the best games in the series.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
- Release date: November 8, 2011
The finale of the Modern Warfare trilogy brought Soap and Price’s story to an end while hunting down Makarov as World War III is initiated. By this point, Call of Duty already had made a name for itself for portraying blockbuster quality action sequences, and that was on full display here, with set pieces like the Eiffel Tower being brought down in battle. The accessible multiplayer continued its run of quality maps, perks, and killstreaks that felt great to pull off.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies
- Release date: December 1, 2011
Black Ops Zombies is a sequel to the Zombies game developed for cell phones. Like the former, it is simplified, but with a better control scheme and graphics than the former.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II
- Release date: November 13, 2012
Black Ops 2 takes place in two different time periods. The perspective is routinely swapped between the first game’s protagonist, Alex Mason, in the 1980s, and his son, David Mason in 2025. Both are trying to take down Raul Menendez, a man leading an uprising against the United States.
Multiplayer focused on the near future weapons and gadgetry of the campaign, bringing many new aspects not seen in Call of Duty to this point. As for Zombies, a new group of survivors was introduced, bringing in a more complicated story and connections to the story that had been placed to this point.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified
- Release date: November 13, 2012
Declassified was the first Call of Duty game made for a portable PlayStation console since Roads to Victory. This time, it was made for the Vita. Set between the first and second Black Ops titles, Declassified was heavily criticized for its multitude of bugs, glitches, weak multiplayer, and quite a few other issues. It also introduced the Hostiles mode, which acted similarly to Modern Warfare 3’s Survival mode.
Call of Duty: Strike Team
- Release date: September 5, 2013
Strike Team was the third Call of Duty game developed for mobile phones. Going away from the Zombies games, this title focused on the Black Ops campaign set in 2020. Rather than control one character like in most Call of Duty games, you controlled a squad of soldiers and focused on getting through its campaign. There was no multiplayer mode for this title.
Call of Duty: Ghosts
- Release date: November 5, 2013
Call of Duty: Ghosts takes place in the near future, starting with the takeover of a space weapon called ODIN. It is fired upon the United States, destroying a large chunk of the country, but is self-destructed before it can obliterate the rest. Years later, a group of Ghosts, an elite coalition of U.S. Special Operations units, are working to prevent the construction and firing of a new ODIN station.
The multiplayer in Ghosts did not do much to change the formula from Modern Warfare but did include smaller features like destructible areas of maps. A new survival mode was introduced, called Extinction, where you fought off an alien invasion while eradicating the intruders.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
- Release date: November 4, 2014
Advanced Warfare was the debut of Call of Duty games solely developed by Sledgehammer Games. The game introduced Exosuits that would enhance your movements, and, for the first time outside of the Treyarch games, a Zombies mode was included.
The campaign featured antagonist Jonathon Irons, CEO of the private military Atlas Corporation. After his son died as a part of the Marines, Irons becomes obsessed with power, leading his company to declare war on the world and take down all politicians he sees as the leading cause of the world’s problems.
Call of Duty: Heroes
- Release date: November 26, 2014
Heroes took the Call of Duty phone games into the Real-Time Strategy genre, similar to Clash of Clans.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III
- Release date: November 6, 2015
Black Ops 3 takes place in 2065, 40 years following Black Ops 2, at the beginning of a new Cold War. Following a brush with death, the player character is cybernetically enhanced, but later finds cyborg soldiers are infected with a virus that is obsessively leading them to find the so-called “Forest.”
In Zombies, the original cast is back, but are different versions of themselves from other timelines. In multiplayer, players can choose a specialist that has a special ultimate depending on who you want. At this point, the series had fully embraced the science fiction of the world and included wall-running and a lot of futuristic tech.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
- Release date: November 4, 2016
Infinite Warfare was met with a lot of pushback from the community upon its announcement, to the point that the announcement trailer became the most downvoted YouTube video ever. The game had fully embraced the futuristic setting and featured space battles and vastly had abandoned its roots of down-to-earth militaristic warfare. The campaign featured Kit Harrington (Jon Snow from Game of Thrones) as the antagonist with Connor McGregor making an appearance.
A Zombies mode was brought to this game and focused on a much more lighthearted take on the mode with voices from Seth Green, Jay Pharoah, Paul Reubens, David Hasselhoff, and more. A remaster of the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare also released alongside this game.
Call of Duty: WWII
- Release date: November 3, 2017
At this point, Call of Duty had become more of a sci-fi shooter than a grounded military shooter. That is why WWII attempted to bring the series back to its roots and featured a prominent appearance by Josh Duhamel. It was a welcome return to an area that Call of Duty had not visited in a while, and was much better received than Infinite Warfare. Multiplayer did not do a ton of different things either. It was very focused on classic Call of Duty gameplay, with a couple of new game modes being the most noticeable changes.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
- Release date: October 12, 2018
For the first time in the mainline Call of Duty games, Black Ops 4 did not have a campaign. Instead, it focused that development on its new battle royale mode, Blackout. Its multiplayer returned to a more grounded version but still brought back the Specialists introduced in Black Ops 3. In Zombies, the popular Aether storyline was brought to a close, while a new one named the Chaos storyline was introduced and never left this game.
Call of Duty Mobile
- Release date: October 1, 2019
Call of Duty Mobile is a popular free-to-play phone title that became the most profitable mobile launch in history in 2019. Along with the multiplayer mode that fans love, the game also features Zombies and a battle royale mode for up to 100 players in a match. Many regard this as the best mobile Call of Duty game made yet.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
- Release date: October 25, 2019
Modern Warfare remains the most iconic sub-series in Call of Duty, making sense that it would eventually be brought back by Infinity Ward. This 2019 title rebooted the story as a new version of Captain Price’s team of recruits help to take down rogue Russian General Roman Barkov.
Call of Duty: Warzone
- Release date: March 10, 2020
It was only a matter of time until Call of Duty took a deeper dive into the battle royale genre. Blackout in Black Ops 4 was a good side mode, but Warzone combines elements of multiple Call of Duty games moving forward and includes a bunch of crossovers like Fortnite does.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
- Release date: November 13, 2020
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War continues Treyarch’s most successful and popular contribution to the Call of Duty franchise. The campaign made a return here introducing a few new characters while also bringing back that unnerving psychological warfare the series is known for. Zombies also got a significant update here that started a whole new storyline with a bunch of new features including the game mode Outbreak.
Call of Duty: Vanguard
- Release date: November 5, 2021
Vanguard is another shot at World War II from Sledgehammer Games. The new campaign introduced another group of heroes to learn about and the multiplayer was essentially more of CoD: WWII. For the first time ever, Treyarch made a Zombies mode for another studio’s game — and it was universally panned for moving away from the round-based style it was known for and missing many commonly expected features.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
Release date: ???
As of this writing, the sequel to the Modern Warfare reboot has been confirmed, but not shown off. We will update this article in the future.
Published: May 13, 2022 03:09 am