Call of Duty’s exciting story has backstabbing, betrayals, takeovers, breakaway factions, a determination to succeed no matter what the cost - and that’s just the developers. The series has earned over three billion dollars in seven years, which is more money-for-killing than every hitman in the world. And some of the smaller armies. Lets look over the highs and lows of one the best-selling series in the history of shooting other countries in the face.

We’ll start with a Metacritic roundup of all the games.

You may notice a slight up-down trend. Let’s look closer.

Call of Duty (2003) 91%

For younger gamers: that thing in the lower right is called a “health bar”, and we hated it.

The original and not-best, because that’s the way series should be: starting with a good idea and then getting better instead of running it into the ground. Built on the Quake III engine, the first Call of Duty was a huge success, and you’ll still find people playing CoD servers despite seven games and nine years between then and now. It won Infinity Ward multiple Game of the Year awards, and set the course of the company for the rest of the decade.

Call of Duty: United Offensive (2004) 87%

Now we have textures as well as polygons!

If the popularity of Call of Duty defined Infinity Ward’s approach to making great games, United Offensive defined Activision’s determination to milk it- even if that meant getting someone else to make a less-great game. United Offensive servers are certainly fun, an assortment of extra levels for enemies, multiple, for the shooting of, but by bringing in other companies (Gray Matter Interaction and Pi Studios) Activision proved early on that they cared nothing for IW’s ownership of the series. The reduced score showed the effects, but the continued sales meant Activision didn’t care.

Call of Duty 2 (2005) 86%

A brave soldier, a rifle, and no health bar! Regenerative health will win this war!

Back with Infinity Ward for a true sequel, but Call of Duty 2 was the first to show signs of a major new factor in PC game design: the fact that it was really XBox game design.  CoD2 was a spectacularly successful Xbox launch title, and this early on the console-cannibalization of the series the PC version didn’t suffer. The review scores did, dropping by 5% from the first game, but that’s probably due to World War II fatigue - by now videogamers had spent far longer in that conflict than everyone who actually fought it put together, and as a setting it was becoming played out. A lesson Infinity Ward would learn, but Activision wouldn’t.

Call of Duty 3 (2006) 0%

So how are we meant to aim these things with a thumbstick, sarge?

Treyarch’s first main entry in the series, and one which showed their complete and total contempt for PC gamers. Call of Duty 3 was released for every games console in the world except the PC (that silly machine where the series began, the one with the “mouse” - you know, the best controller for shooting games.) This gives it an effective PC metacritic score of sweet Frag All. Treyarch made the game based on their experience, and that experience was making “Call of Duty 2: Big Red One” for the consoles. AKA “Copying Infinity Ward’s stuff for money because Activision told us to.” Call of Duty 3 showed the same level of innovation, in the same way the Sahara shows the same sea level as the Gobi desert, keeping the series stuck firmly in the mud of the war.

These extras were brought in because Infinity Ward had all these crazy awkward ideas like “You can’t make anything more than a level pack in a year” and “We’d like to release appreciably better games, not the same game for more money.”

Modern Warfare (2007) 94%

What it felt like to be a rival shooter at the time

Back with the real developers and the real series: great success! Call of Duty 4 invigorated the series like three lightning bolts turbocharging an espresso machine, giving the series a fresh setting, an engrossing story, and creating a multiplayer mode that’s as near as possible to an MMOFPS. Modern Warfare servers are still busy, always, and the ModWar mode allows private servers to customize their playstyle.

The closest anyone could come to insulting the game was the idiotic XBox World 360 complaining that it didn’t revolutionize the genre. Which was like complaining that the fountain of youth serves crappy drinks because you still have to drink with your mouth.

World At War (2008) 83%

When a game’s addition is “TANKS!”, that game is good

Let’s be clear: World at War servers are some of the best World War II shooting you’ll find - there are weapons from all the major factions, you get to level up your skills and perks (Treyarch copying from IW’s work example number five hundred), and it’s a lot of fun. But we’re still back in the bloody war, again, despite Infinity Ward demonstrating that everyone loved not being there. One of the few aspects of warfare players share with actual veterans. Treyarch are great programmers, but they’re about as imaginative as vanilla-flavored ice-cream knock-knocking on a chicken crossing the road. The aggregate score fell over ten percent, proving IW right in getting out of the World War business.

Modern Warfare 2 (2009) 85%

The clue is in the title - instead of another innovative upgrade to the series, IW pumped out a sequel to the previous game. One so obvious (and so demanded) that they didn’t even bother with a new name, just sticking a 2 on the end of the title. Which is as close as the authors of a series can come to being sarcastic since they’ve basically called their own game “Call of Duty 4, 2.” They couldn’t be admitting it was any more unoriginal if they found it in Treyarch’s photocopier.

This is where the real problems set in, with Activision basically firing Infinity Ward after making one of the best-selling games in either company’s history so that they wouldn’t have to share the money. For more information on that, please refer to any gaming website ever. For more evidence of the growing problems with the series, note how Modern Warfare 2 doesn’t allow private servers. Which is basically the company saying “Don’t get any ideas about playing this for long - we’ll have another game next year.”

Black Ops (2010) 82%

We’re back with Treyarch, back with dropping scores, and back with treating PC players like foul-smelling hobos. This game featured the the amazing piss-take that was restricted private servers: the ludicrous idea that while you could rent “private” servers, you could only rent them from the one company allowed by Activision. Which proves that as well as photocopies of every scribble the good IW employees made while they were in the building, Activision also have a a radically different dictionary from the rest of the English-speaking world. This company then gives more of your money to Activision, pumping up the price for less than no extra service, and keeping strict controls on what you were allowed to do on “Your” server. It did at least feature Treyarch finally moving on to a new setting, albeit only after Infinity Ward did it. So, standard Treyarch, then.

As if to counter this daring departure from the norm, they kept to their main norm twice as hard. The norm of “releasing a giant paycheck, sorry, ‘game’, every year no matter what the cost.” The cost in this case was game-breaking multiplayer lag on the PC (call us finicky, but if we were going to restrict our entire game to one set of servers we’d at least make sure those servers worked), broken graphics on some PS3-TV combinations, and generally a sense that if the release date had arrived any earlier they’d have sold the game boxes for $60 with an “IOU one game” note inside. The game has been brutalized on user-review sites like amazon, despite scoring 82% on metacritic. But it’s not like a series now built on immense hype and gigantic advertising budgets would ever do anything to affect official reviewers.

Summary

Short form: Call of Duty games good, Infinity Ward ones great, and the best bit is how games stay good as long as people want to play them. From the die-hards on original Call of Duty servers to the series’ apex of Modern Warfare, it’s all still online for you to jump in and play. While we all wait to see what Infinity Ward are legally allowed to make next, and whether the next CoD will even be playable.

Cries of joy substituted for shellfire across the servers last night, as millions of Allied troops celebrated victory in World War II for the three thousand and sixty-fifth time that day.

“It’s been a hard struggle” said Sergeant Martin, who first answered the Call of Duty in 2004 (and again in 2005, 2006, and once more in 2008.)  “Those dirty Huns sure are persistent, and seem to keep reappearing five-to-seventeen seconds after you kill them, but by God we pushed forward and stood on the designated map marker for thirty seconds.  Thereby resolving the entire nightmarish tangle of debts and international pressures which drowned a quarter of the world in blood.”

The Reichstag Falls (127.7 times per hour)

“We fought for this one,” agreed Private Brigs, surveying the streets of dod_avalanche - now silent as combatants rested and checked their kill/death ratios.  “When I think of the millions of deaths in this struggle - several thousand of them my own - I can only hope future generations remember what it is we did here, and why.”

The spirit of Private Jones, reincarnated into a Wolfenstein server by the intensity of the combat (and the dynamic vertex-based anchored animation technology of the  modified Quake III graphics engine) reported confusion over the victory.  “In my day, we just shot them,” he complained.  “I don’t recall ever watching a timer and shooting them three seconds later to do more damage.  Most peculiar.”

Red Orchestra units on the Gazala Line were too busy to comment as a three-man team is required to move each tank effectively, though many gunners were heard to comment on “balancing” of the Allied and Axis units” - removing any incredible technical superiority one side may have had, for example - had helped with the American victory.  Did they say American?  Sorry, they’re sure they meant Allied and no disrespect for the millions of British, Russian, Australian and other nationalities who carried the bulk of the fighting.

“It’s strange, mankind seems to keep fighting these same senseless wars over and over again,” said Martin, visibly tensing for the resumption of hostilities.  “And I don’t mean wars of greed, or fear, or against those who look different.  I mean these exact wars.  I’ve taken part in Market Garden so often I’ve left a furrow, and I’m thinking of bringing a bucket and spade for the next time through the Normandy beaches.  Desperately fighting for survival there is beginning to get a bit samey.”

“We can only hope that future generations will live in peace,” he concluded, hurrying to reload the Thompson which has been rendered by seven different graphics engines in the time he’s used it.  “That they’ll understand the importance of brotherhood, and respect, and basically not calling people you’ve never met stupid noob faggots for no reason.”

The best thing about having your own server is that you can take some of the greatest games ever made, and play them exactly how you want. Some scum won’t stop using rifle grenades on CoD4? Kick him! Want to play Well despite nobody in the world liking that map? Go ahead! And thanks to the hard work of modding community FPSBanana, you can redecorate in ways you never thought possible:

1. The Glorious Francis Heavy Skin

In the best cross-over ever (until the Portal gun turns up in Half Life Episode 3), Left4Dead’s Francis can escape the infected - to a TF2 server. This skin retextures everyone’s favorite weapon-wielding Russian into Mr “I Hate Everything” himself. Install it client-side and only you’ll be able to see it, but if you host a TF2 server you can upload the upgrade for everyone to enjoy!

I hate RED!

Just imagine if Francis could take Natascha to fight the Horde - why, he’d be invincible! For about ten seconds. Then he’d run out of ammo and die, but man, it would be so sweet up till then!

2. That’s Not A Knife, THIS Is A Knife!

It’s a fact that Counter-Strike servers are still the most popular around. It’s also a fact that the most popular skins are all insanely detailed knives and weapons, which would be more worrying except the whole point of the game is “Use knives and weapons.” If you’re the kind of CS server master who can run around eliminating enemies with nothing but a knife, you should definitely make it a nice one. The terrifyingly specific “M9 Probis III” knife is the most popular.

I’m the one holding it and this thing terrifies ME.

3. Tuxedo Sleeves

Slick stunt-style shooter The Specialists may not have a Source upgrade, running off the original Half-Life engine, but it still has class. Modder “Jeffysan” certainly thinks so, tweaking the code for nothing more than giving you trendy tuxedo sleeves as you obliterate the opposition.

On one hand this is wasted effort - it doesn’t affect the game, and you barely see it. On the other hand, it makes you feel that tiny bit more like Bond and is therefore absolutely essential.

4. Band of Brothers on the Day of Defeat

Day of Defeat servers get some pop culture love with a TV-upgrade, swapping out one of the skins for Ronald Speirs. If you just asked “Ronald Who?”, you don’t watch Band of Brothers and can move on to the next item. Fans may wish to have a look at this fun skin:

5. Dead4Left

Technically the easiest mod on the list as it only copies the survivor skins over the infected, but come on, that’s pretty fun looking. It’s also a bit of a cheat on our part - the mod is single-player only, so you can’t run it on your L4D server, but we figured it was more than cool enough to let people know. And you just know that the community are working on a full multiplayer infected/survivor switch.

6. The Most Terrifying Mod Ever

Say goodbye to Silent Hill, because this is the most mentally scarring videogame you’ll ever see. That chick from the Ring could get on BitTorrent and come out of every computer in the country, and it’d only be a welcome break from the screaming. Of course it’s for L4D servers, and we warn you: don’t scroll down if you’re eating:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

How can the Boomer be made so much more terrifying by putting more clothes ON? What horrible inversion of fashion, flesh and mortal sanity makes a spraypainted thong worse than infected nakedness? We don’t know, but we salute Darksider1972 for advancing the frontiers of Lovecraftian insanity to find out.

Game servers sometimes shove you into impossible situations and rate you on your reaction.  Unlike Star Trek, cheating isn’t an admirable response - you’ll either be banned or, worse, NOT be banned and become one of those people who enjoys running around while their computer plays the game for them.  Making this one of the few situations were being caught and punished, or even being killed by a freak lightning strike, is preferable to getting away with it.

But how do you know when you’re in an impossible situation?  What signs warn you that it’s time to switch servers?

Team Fortress 2:  Doctor Doctor

This team could be made invulnerable to damage and still lose.

The worst waste of time in the world is waiting while you’re “Sending Client Info”, only to find a four-sniper team when you connect.  You’d be better off trying to teach a gorilla the trombone, which at least that has potential for the funniest YouTube and the funeral stories ever, depending on the patience of your gorilla.

Logging on to a TF2 server and becoming whatever your team needs is a great way to play, but Medicking a Scout-Sniper-Spy side is just getting in Darwin’s way.  Anyone who prefers a second spy to a medic are better off dead, and when your defenders have more snipers than engies?  They wouldn’t recognise co-operation if Sesame Street hired the A-Team to beat them up.

Correct response: Hit that “Disconnect” option like you found it stealing your wallet and go find an un-idiotic server.

Call of Duty 4:  Crates of Death

Call of Duty server doom-identification is extremely easy: do you see a collection of crates?

Shipment is the antithesis of everything Modern Warfare servers are about, as well as being an excellent commentary on the horrors of war (because even when you win, you lose).  Those who score on Shipment have a tendency to make with the Martyr and fling Frag x 3 as soon as they spawn - in other words, they’re the scum of the server.  You could do the same thing, just like you could win a street fight against a drug addict by losing your job and getting tough by living under bridges and picking fights with hobos for a while.  It’s not worth it!

Correct response: Bring out whatever weapon you haven’t achievement-ed yet and just let rip.  There are no tactics, teamwork or anything resembling justice on this map - you’ll die utterly and only because someone else knows how to work the grenade key - but it’s an excellent reaction test and pretty much free target practice.

Counter-Strike:  Clan-tastic

There are few things more fatal than arriving on a clan-stacked Counter-Strike server, and none the average person can get at.  You’d have to juggle sharks inside an active volcano to die even nearly as fast.  Some clans have been playing since 1.0, and if they decide to be unsporting about it there’s literally nothing you can do - you can’t even take yourself out, because even when you’re actually holding a machine gun and grenades they can still come and kill you quicker and more efficiently than you could do it yourself.

Correct response: While “one brave soul taking on impossible odds” is usually the entire point of a shooter, this is the time to disconnect and find another CS server.  If they’ve decided to open their clan server to the public just to shred all who come in, that’s their problem - real pros engage in clan matches against other pros, or randomly assign themselves mixed teams to practice against each other.  Those who stack a full clan against random pubbies are like pro wrestlers proving they can beat up everyone at a playground - they’re right but they’re tragic.

Video games have come a long way in forty years - the average controller has more buttons than the first computers, and the internet connects you to so many people Nintendo are terrified to let you do anything but press “A”.  But what does the future hold for those of us who live in online game servers?  What do we want from future technology?

1.  A wargame where jumping like a tazed rabbit doesn’t confer a tactical advantage

The Call of Duty series creates an incredibly realistic environment, equips you with authentic weapons, has graphics so advanced that ghillie suits work, and then prances all over that with players leaping like turbo-boosted kangaroos.  The only way a marine could jump that high in full kit is by standing on a claymore, and in real life, a terrorist whose panic reaction to an MP5 is jumping?  He’ll be that soldier’s “funniest confirmed kill I ever had”.

On CoD4 servers you can be killed by expert players who bounce and crouch like fast-forwarded gymnasts.  An amphetamined-Mario couldn’t keep up with them.  You’re pouring machine gun fire right into them, and when they land behind your corpse after a triple inversion somersault you expect them to score 6.0 for Grace, 5.9 Agility, and 0.0 in Realities of War.  Halo servers technically suffer this problem even worse, with ten-tonne armored space marines leaping like they have trampoline-simulators in their futuristic space boots, but the great thing about cyborg soldiers fighting a race of space-mushrooms is that it never claimed to be realistic.

2.  Mice which administer electrical shocks to people who miss five times in a row but still play Sniper

When it was released in 2003, the original Call of Duty won for itself a slew of awards, fans, and critical praise. The staying power of the visceral game play and seamless blending of triggered cut scenes brought cash and recognition to rookie development studio Infinity Ward. Seizing their star power, Infinity Ward went on to create three sequels to the series. The most recent addition, Call of Duty 4, plays on over 18,000 game servers as one of the most popular online shooters today.
But what of the little game that could, the one that started it all? In a turn that shouldn’t surprise anyone reading this site, it was the multiplayer game, and not the much-vaunted single player story, that gave the game a life beyond release. Almost five years later, Call of Duty is still being played online on almost 300 COD servers by players from all over the world. Just today, in fact, I shot a Nazi who then cursed at me in German in the chat box. I’m assuming he was cursing, of course, because, again, he was speaking German.

So why do so many gamers choose to wax nostalgic and play software 4 generations removed from the current product?

The primary reason has simply got to be nostalgia. Playing a game from years ago reminds you of what you were doing back then, the friends you played with and the spectacular headshots and last stands you witnessed.

We all have those games. Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings is one of mine. A friend and I used to play on a direct connection against computer rivals on random maps. This, of course, was back when my computer would pick up the phone and call his computer, and we’d tie up both phone lines for however long it took the French to realize that they didn’t stand a chance.

What’s that you say? Oh, yes, it does smell like the golden days in here.
Call of Duty as a series is still a force in the online world, with CoD2 and the original outperforming newer games like Doom 3 and F.E.A.R.

(Call of Duty 4 and Counter-Strike are not on this graph because they make all the other games feel inadequate)

It isn’t exactly news that older, better multiplayer games can stick around longer than newer games that lack the same magic – the most popular online shooter, after all, is the decade-old Counter-Strike with 42,000 operating servers. All the same, however, it is certainly telling that a single franchise can dominate much of today’s online play the way the Call of Duty series does. If you’re new to the series or just haven’t blown the dust off of the original jewel case in a few years, do yourself a favor: go back to the beginnings. You’ll be glad you did.