Damn you know, this might just be my favorite out of the more recent CODs I've played (so far). The quality of the gameplay really hasn't changed much since AW, however I have to say this was the first campaign in a while that I actually cared about the characters and what was happening to them. I mean, jesus literally about 99% of the cast of Infinity Warfare died in the end and the grand summation of my reaction to that was a resounding "meh". Here I was actually invested in seeing these characters through to the end, and while I have to say I wasn't too affected when Turner ate it (the "commanding officer dying" trope is deader than the officers themselves), I was not prepared to lose Zus as well and was honestly just as relieved as the characters to find him in the end. That's good storytelling.

Also quick note, I remember a bunch of SJW hate piling on this game when it came out about it "sanitizing history" and bunch of PC bullshit......unsurprisingly I have no idea what any of those fucking idiots are talking about. Do they mean the part when you play as a woman in the french resistance? Because on of your allies in COD 3 was a woman in the french resistance, and in Finest Hour for a couple mission you are literally a spotter for a conscripted soviet sniper who is also a woman. So if anything there's actually precedent for that, so I ask again, what was their big issue with this?

Oh my god this game is amazing.

I mean I genuinely did not think that you could improve on the original MW, but just from the first couple of missions I was simply blown away. The best way to sum up my experience playing this game is that in my nostalgia-tinged memories of the original, this is what the game always looked like, however after recent playthroughs I definitely noticed some signs of aging. But with this remaster, almost every small complaint I could lobby against the original has been fixed and improved upon.

Only real con to this game I can think of is that I think it may have actually downgraded my view of the original retroactively. Like why would I ever bother playing that again when I now have this?

You know for how much this game was absolutely shredded before it even came out, after finally getting around to playing 4 years later, it really was overly hated upon.

I mean, arguably this games greatest sin is being just as bland an uninteresting as any other late-entry COD title. I do have to give it points for finally taking the series to space, although it does add a layer of cheese to the whole affair.

The SCAR battle system was great, mainly because it felt less like I was playing COD and had gone over to Star Wars by that point. Honestly, this is far from the worst in the COD series by far, but I understand why the series stepped back afterwards. I'm not sure how much further into the future we can reasonably go without hitting full sci-fi.

Am I even playing COD anymore?

This was a question I legitimately asked at one point while playing this game. Now, this seems like a negative point but I posit the question: is that a bad thing? If a series is able to transform and adapt that isn't inherently a bad thing, in my opinion it's a better alternative compared to stagnating and releasing the same thing year after year. Honestly, I think this game would have fared better as a standalone title, as it's poor attempts to barely tie in to the Black Ops series weigh it down more than anything else in my opinion.

One thing I can't get over is how the game's campaign never actually happened, and the REAL storyline is inside the fast scrawling text at the beginning. Ballsy as fuck, but I'd respect it alot more if the game gave ANY indication that was the truth. They also finally got the idea to do a campaign mode for zombies, but then just have it be the regular campaign with zombified enemies and a voiceover. Lame.

All in all, this game offers some cool mechanics, kind of taking the exo-suits from AW and improving on them, however I fail to see why they needed to tie it to the Black Ops world.

We are officially on the decline.

You know, in retrospect, I have to say that this game isn't actually as bad as I remembered, which either speaks to my changing as a person or to the fact that we like to embellish past experiences to be worse or better than they truly were.

The "exo-suit" is a dumb idea, yes. The inclusion of mechs capable of withstanding a literal space shuttle exhaust only for the last few missions is kinda infuriating, as in reality the invention of such a device would probably render conventional warfare obsolete. I can't remember who said this, but I heard a quote once along the lines "we overestimate how much can be done 10 years, while we underestimate how much can be done in 5". This game is kind of a perfect example of that fallacy. Do I think the technologies depicted in this game will be available in about 30-40 years? Unlikely. The problem with this pandora's box that COD seemed to want to open during this period, "what's the FUTURE of warfare look like?", is that in all likelihood, like everything else in this world, the future of warfare is most likely automation, which doesn't exactly make for a thrilling narrative.

But enough on that, while this world that Sledgehammer has created has it's issues, I personally found less issues with the narrative specifically this time around. The beats are quick, it doesn't drag on like some other campaigns, and the actors and characters are all memorable. And of course, I'll adress the rapist the room by stating that while Spacey gives a classic Spacey-turned-enemy performance, I do have to admit it's a little retroactively undercut by me being worried he's gonna grope my character every time he gets in my face.

ADDENDUM: I don't usually comment on Zombies/side modes, but I just have to point out that Exo-Zombies has Bruce Campell, Jon Bernthal and fucking JOHN MALKOVITCH as playable characters and this standalone side-game has NO business with a cast that stacked

The beginning of the end, as COD begins to show it's first steps of "Halo-ization" as the guns and timelines start to go further and further into the future.

Have to say though, the 1980s storyline with Mason & Woods is fan-fucking-tastic and just as good as the original Black Ops storyline. Menendez is a better villain than Dragovich, but both pale to Makarov and Zakahev.

It's all downhill from here, I fear.

The end of a dynasty. This is all pre-emptive to my replay of BOII but from my memory of the series after this entry, it's all downhill. Just like the past couple entries I'm going to refrain from an essay of compliments that everyone has heard a thousand times before and just say: this is how you end a trilogy. This is how you wrap up every storyline perfectly while leaving yourself open to a million possible storylines as a sequel. While I haven't played the new MW or any of the entries following this one, I honestly can't think of a better conclusion to any storyline in any piece of media available.

Activision continues their string of successes with BO coming just short of the peaks that MW2 reached.

An interesting thought about the series as a whole, and helps to explain why I still rank MW2 above this one, albeit slightly, is that up until the first Modern Warfare, the games played closest to like a war movie, Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, that type of stuff. After Modern Warfare though, the series takes this turn into just straight action flicks, your Heat, Shoot Em Ups, John Wick, just fast paced action. Now while those concepts might not seem entirely separate, they definitely are as you can see Treyarch trying to kind of combine the two concepts with this game and WaW, while Infinity Ward just leans fully into the action tropes. It's a small difference, but it's that commitment that makes those games slightly edge out their other entries.

I didn't want to actually play through this campaign again, mainly because I actually bought this port when it was released, and it was my first introduction to the original Call of Duty before playing the original PC version earlier this year.

This game is literally just the first COD with upgraded graphics and no quick save system. I have played it in completion at least 4-5 times. These are not positive or negative aspects to the game, they are merely factual observations, do with them what you will.

I actually played this one years ago, back when I still had a Wii. Obviously without playing through it again it's all rose-tinted glasses, but I still have to say that this was a solid port of COD4, especially compared to the previous entries for the console.

I mean sure, the graphics look absolutely atrocious. But I mean, Paintball Mode, the addition of the co-op campaign plus being (I'm pretty sure) the first entry for the Wii to have online multiplayer, and a rather balanced and well designed one at that. It's not perfect, but you have to admit IW really worked with the limitations of the Wii rather than against them.