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The stretch from MW, WaW, MW2, BO, MW3 and BO2 was the absolute golden age of cod it is actually impressive they managed all of that in 6 years back to back

Yeah as a Nicaraguan we actually have a rage strong enough to withstand any caliber below 5.56 and 12 gauge. That menendez sequence in black ops 2 is realistic.

The most underrated feature of Black Ops 2 was being able to customize your loadout before each mission. Nothing was more frustrating than finding a good weapon/attachment mix and then losing it when you finished. Being able to go in with a preferred set of gear was a massive factor in my enjoyment.

"Cold War is a short campaign" MW3 2023: hello

I specifically love the Nuke scene in MW1. I love how you don't just immediately cut away to Soap or someone else after the nuke blows up (like you do in MW2 after the Airport massacre) to keep the plot progressing, instead you switch back to Jackson and watch him die helplessly. Really shows how brutal war is and that even the 'Good Guys' aren't immune to loss and suffering

For me, World At War campaign hit the hardest, especially the storming Berlin mission.

WAW should have been closer to the first. It truly showed the horror of war and the meaning of your life meaning almost nothing in the war. Truly scary.

Playing the World at War, Black Ops 1, and Black Ops 2 trilogy back to back is one of the most epic experiences in gaming. You start with WW2 and see a bit of almost every major US war afterwards up until a futuristic Judgement Day.

That street clearing mission in MW1 with the RPGs is actually one of my favorites in the series. No spec ops bs, no sneaky tactics, just US marines and the War Pig plowing through Assad's elite guard.

MW1, WaW, MW2, and Black Ops. That was a GREAT 4 year stretch of awesome campaigns!

Whiskey Hotel from MW2 was something else. I'm not even American but holy shit, easily one of the best campaign missions CoD has ever had. The music, the atmosphere, the combat, the White House, the helicopter ride and EMP from the mission before, pushing your way towards the roof before airstrike hits... I mean Jesus, it still gives me goosebumps after 14 years.

Fun Fact about CoD 2’s training mission: if you either refuse or take too long to complete the tasks, the Commissar will order troopers to kill you for disobeying. One of my friends originally thought it only happened if you kept chucking potatoes at him 😂

Im always surprised so many people hated infinite warfares campaign. The friendly robot was pretty cliche but being able to select your loadout and go on like 20 side missions was the closest thing we had to black ops 2s campaign.

"You are my brother, Ethan". I personally loved the Infinite Warfare campaign. The ending scene when Ethan and our protagonist were alone over the orbit and the suit was leaking. Very touching and emotional scene, I would not expect it from CoD. "I think I am scared, Sir".

Infinite Warfare is soooo underrated and my personal favorite. Being a military guy myself, I really appreciated the military lingo and customs, they NAILED it in this game. Also the way the game seamlessly transitions to each level with no loading screens, awesome story, great campaign missions, zero G fights, custom load outs, and the specialist difficulty changing the whole game entirely. the whole thing was just awesome

"I'm not gonna include the game with the best story, Mark Hamill and the Band of Brothers cast" bruh what ?

Ghosts had a really cool part with the underwater mission where a ship floats over and you have to hide under cover to avoid the sonar pulses and they can actually kill you if you don't. Can't think of any other game that shows how insanely loud an active sonar ping is outside of a sub/ship, shit can pretty much liquefy your insides

Glad to see Call of Duty 2 so high. It honestly deserves it. People don't talk about it much but it is by far the biggest and most open and most repayable of all CoD campaigns

You should have included the spin offs. The story in “Big red one” was up there with modern warfare and black ops, was genuinely like playing through a war movie

This man said IW was one of the few games where you can cook grenades? From what I remember, you can cook grenades since at least COD4.

I think world at war has to the darkest campaign out of all of them. World at war isn't about heros and villains. It's about war. It shows you how dark WW2 is and the atrocities committed from both sides.

Call of Duty in its prime was something else. Every gamer would be playing the campaign/multiplayer at the same time. It was quite the event

30:56 I for one actually loved the MW3 campaign. It has uphill battle against it following from MW1 and MW2 and then WaW ans Black Ops 1 but it did its job. That Soap death scene in Prague is still one of the best and saddest moments in video game history. Really loved those TF141 mission through Africa and India

I'll never forget playing MW3's campaign for the first time. After so many years I still remember almost all the missions. I know advanced warfare wasn't amazing overall but I genuinely liked playing it. Plus the homing grenade pretty much became the most addicting weapon I ever used, I couldn't stop throwing them.

Big Red One will always have a hidden gem of a campaign to me.

The great thing about the 2009 mw2 campaign is that every mission feels so unique from another with a disctinct colour pallete for each level, one minute your fighting in the blue and white snowy missions then a bright colourful favela, then a gloomy orange in D.C really makes you feel likeyour fighting the russians across lots of america

All I can think about is that Big Red One is missing from this list. I still remember the advertising commercials at the time, back in an era where most of us still watched TV - literally a month or two before UKposts was born. the dude saying "big red one, call of duty 2 - big red one" is burned into my mind

So many missions from black ops 1 and 2 stand out for me. Vorkuta. Kowloon. Rebirth Island. Karma and The luxury casino. The aircraft carrier. Panama. I still get chills remembering them. Also, if starfield’s combat is anything like IW I’ll be very happy. Such an underrated game.

Infinite Warfare is actually my favorite CoD campaign. The end credits where you could hear little messages from the people that died really hit me.

I've always liked WaW's campaign. I like it being split between the Eastern Front and the Pacific.

Infinite Warfare, is honestly probably up there with mw2 and bo2 (my favs) with the way you singlehandedly turn the tide of a war, and the sacrifice at the end, by far one of my all time favorite CoD games.

Ghost will always have a special place in my heart because i used to have a German shepherd named Riley so when i played through the campaign for the first time it was an awesome surprise to see the dog’s name.

Playing as a regular soldier in MW1, MW2 and MW2019 were my favourite parts. Large scale battles, tanks, artillery, nukes, and the player right in the middle of it. It's like back when we played 'soldier' as kids. Also: Ramirez! Do everything!

Too bad Big Red One isn't getting ranked with the rest; it actually had an excellent campaign. The cast was excellent and really grew on you as the story and war progressed. One of the best CODs imo

As an older brother, I can confirm that threatening our younger siblings will turn us into death machines. Ok, but seriously that sequence was probably the most in sync I’ve ever felt with a character in a video game.

4:38 This is not the protagonist having a PTSD episode, this is actually the BO3 protagonists death. They did not survive the brutal injuries from the first mission, they passed away from complications while testing the DNI. The rest of the game from this point forward is memories from the perspective of Taylor, hence why the player refer to themselves as him in the very last scene of the campaign. There's a whole layer of the BO3 campaign you didn't dive into

Infinite Warfare has got to be one of my (guilty) favorite campaigns. It's just so unique in the way it's put together and the characters are pretty memorable for the small roles they were given. The tactical language and liveliness of the environments made space CoD feel believable, and the scenery was just something to marvel at. So many interesting aspects like the space combat and jackal combat, as well as the hacking mechanic being used in the finale was the icing on the cake. The overall plot wasn't the most special but it was enough to lead the player through the fantastic set pieces. Also, I got far enough to unlock Specialist mode and it's actually a blast. Manually healing using stims, realistic body damage, and replacing your helmet so you don't die to headshots and space. Getting your fucking GUN shot out of your HANDS and having to pick it up midair or when it drops to the ground has got to be one of the best ways to integrate a "quick time event". Nothing like "realistic" from BO3 and I actually was thinking of strats and managing my equipment. It's so worth doing, and was far more interesting/less bullshit compared to veteran mode in most CoDs since they scale down the AI of the enemies to hardened difficulty.

I still remember playing a demo of Call of Duty 2 on an Xbox 360 kiosk back in 2005 and my grandfather was absolutely blown away by how realistic it looked (his older brothers had fought in WWII and even landed in Normandy on D-Day). Looking back it really was revolutionary for the time and it was cool being able to experience it with him, he even really liked that King Kong game too.

Ghosts was underrated and I’m still waiting for a sequel 🥲

It's a shame you didn't rate Big Red One, as it had one of the best campaigns in the series. I understand why though, but it's definitely worth a look at in the future, maybe one day you could do a review of Finest Hour, the WaW PS2 version that had a completely different campaign and Big Red 1.

Something about the way COD2 looks i absolutely love, so sharp and clean, a big leap ahead of the first game but before heaps of post processing came along and started making things feel heavy and blurry, it gave them the room to push texture detail and the density of particle effects, loved it.

yo dude, just want to thank you for doing this video. the campaigns in this series are so underrated. so appreciate you taking the time to talk about them and hopefully inspire more people to finish them.

CoD2 will forever be one of my favorite games. A young kid who loved WW2 was able to experience a “closer” look. Seeing what cod became was crazy, but after playing all those games, cod 2 just played better. Could be hard nostalgia but it’s not just a story it’s history

Great video, and I wouldn’t argue much on the ranking. Also, you’re hilarious, I’m still laughing at the Devito cut away, “I just started blasting!”😂🤣

Long live classic Call of Duty. COD2's reagan Point Du Hoc speech moves me to tears every time, and there's something still unmatched by Call of Duty 4's cold, indifferent vibe.

I replayed cod 2 campaign recently and i was very surprised at how fun it was. Enjoyed how there wasn’t any flashy or over dramatic missions, it felt like you were and actual soldier just doing their mission

MW2 - best missions Bo1 - best written/story Cod4 - All ghillied up That’s the top 3

The first modern warfare will always be my favorite. That game really took the franchise to a new level and I’ll never forget doing play throughs of the campaign with my dad.

When it comes to Advanced Warfare, the phrase "to each thier own." comes into play here. Cause I personally loved it. The cutscenes were some of the most beautifully made I've seen in a CoD game, even up to this day I think they hold up really well. Not to mention in terms of gameplay, the ability to cycle grenade types was something that was also fun to mess around with. Is just my personal opinion though, and I can legit see why people don't like the campaign much. I'm not gonna pretend it was a picture perfect story, just because I love it doesn't mean I'm gonna fanboi defend it from top to bottom lol.

Thank you for this video, it made me realize that I was missing some great campaigns.

The first CoD I played was CoD 2 and I was around 6 or 7 when I tried it. I remember when my dad played it and I just sat next to him watching what he was doing. It is still my favorite part of the series.

So glad you've given praise to infinite warfare's campaign. It was one of my favorite cod campaigns on just how unique it felt (for me at least) On a side note, waiting for that metal slug series ranking, you've done it with house of the dead, time crisis. So I'm hoping metal slug will be given some.much needed love.

You know its deadly serious when Gman casually uploads 1 hour video, perfect to sit back, relax and grab some snacks

My first ever was COD 3. I had it on the Nintendo WII. So you can imagine the silly manual tasks to do combat and plant bombs. Felt like a full workout. My personal favourite regardless

I understand not rating Big Red One, but it holds a special place in my heart because my grandfather bought it for me on PS2 and it’s the first call of duty I ever played. I even played through the story with him as a kid. It really is a special memory

Playing the Cold War campaign in one sitting, on realism in the early morning is one of my favourite gaming memories

COD4s main menu theme will always live in my head rent free. Few games that i always have fond memories of. The unofficial modded servers made my childhood. Also the early iterations of montage plays. The Remington man...

With MW1 and 2 we got the introduction and proper usage of object based audio versus the old channel based standard. If you watch the Dolby Atmos renderer while playing either game there’s arguably some of the most object intensive scenes which sound incredible on a 7.2.4 setup and even better on a 9.2.6 although the wides and top middles are just matrixing audio as there’s no native audio being sent to either of those channel sets. They’re largely one of the best gaming usages of a native Dolby Atmos track to this date. I spent 8 years in the 82nd 1st/504th and 3 years with Triple Canopy and at reference level both games have a commendable level of the sensory overload that is a small unit gunfight.

"If you gaze long enough into the abyss the abyss will gaze back into you" Friedrich Nietzsche

Really wanted to see Call of Duty 2: Big Red One, even though it wasnt made by one of the main CoD developers or publishers, it's still a very memorable campaign to me. That mission where you are in a bomber fending it off from BF-109s and FW-190s was one of the coolest and most unique CoD missions ever

It’s been a couple months so it’s time to binge watch gman videos

Oh man, I remember vividly coming back home from school trip in 2008 to hear my older bro saying he got MW installed on our desktop, one of my favorite gaming memory really.. That first mission felt so damn cool being set in a modern day after COD 1 and COD 2, modern guns and attachments and the story too. So good man, still, to this day.

Should have included the United Offensive campaign along with the COD 1 entry, would have been interesting.

My favouritte campaign was CoD 2. It was one of the few campaigns that allowed you to go on your own pace. Plus as a huge history buff, it's so fun training in Russia just to then get assaulted by an entire Werhmacht division. A mission i'll never forget is that mission in France where you have to clear a bunch of houses while avoiding a Tiger I tank, absolutely awesome

You might need to update this video with the recent release of mw3...

Thank you for tha video, this was exceptionally made and I can tell you have a real passion for this franchise. Black Ops 1/2 are my favorites

honestly i've been playing cod since 2003 and i feel like there is one Cod that not many remember and i do feel like it does deserve to be on a list or get some credit is United Offensive

I want to see Gman rank every Halo campaign from Worst to Best.

As a kid, the D-Day mission was so cool. The whole aspect was awesome and made for an epic setting. Then a few years ago I found my old copy of Call of Duty 2 and went back to play it. It was so fun and brought back nostalgia. But as I played the missions and got to the D-Day one, I got emotional by the end of that section. I understood that war wasn't some action movie or something cool, but awful. You always see the photos of the victories and the celebration, but when you think about the men that had to do it, it hits hard.

Amazing video. The danger zone and Liam Neeson jump cut jokes were great

From what I remember hearing is that BO3 was supposed to be an open world campaign, but because of time constraints they had to scrap that idea last minute and create the campaign we got. Also the story is confusing, but once you realize that you the main character are dying after the first mission and are reliving John Taylor’s memories about chasing down Dylan Stone it becomes a little bit better, but it’s still not a good campaign.

Unpopular opinion I know but I throughly enjoyed ghosts. The story was like any other Cod but got to bring some new characters that you got to play with and learn the opinions. Plus there was some pretty heart wrenching moments as well as one of the largest cliffhangers in any Cod. Hope they make a sequel to it and make the gameplay itself a little more exciting and wrap up the loose ends. Unlikely that’ll happen tho

47:12 don't forget as well that Ice Cube was also apart of the game as well as one or the fellow SOG Marines in the late game you got to play along side with, which him alone was already badass

I really appreciate you taking time to make this. I first started playing CoD when World At War came out, and absolutely loved it. The Modern Warfare games are still my favorite in the franchise. I haven't been keeping up with the newer ones because it seems all the hype and reviews are on the various multiplayer aspects, and almost nothing on campaign, which is what I play these for. I'm probably gonna get Infinite Warfare now that I know what its story is. One thing about Ghosts though is like...I feel like the overall plot was never explained well to begin with in the game, and to me, it seems like that was the start of the franchise falling off a bit with respect to ideas. It felt like yes, I gotta kill the bad guys, but...why exactly?

Largely agree with that list, although I personally think that the excellent single player expansion for Call of Duty - United Offensive, deserves it's own entry place, because it instantly elevated the already solid formula from the original main game.

For me. Infinite Warfare campaign will always be the most underrated Call of Duty campaign of all time, I was genuinely surprised and amazed on how awesome it was and how fucking amazing it was having Ethan being a mixture of a bro and comedian. The multiplayer deserved its hate but the campaign deserved nothing but love, it was incredible.

IW campaign remains criminally underrated. I would definitely put it over the newer modern warfares, and Cold War

This list hurts me man. Ghosts at 2nd to worst is crazy. The story was great and the stealth/water missions were so fun to me. The characters were also great, don’t really see how they were forgettable to you haha. To each their own I guess.

Call of Duty 2's Defend the Pointe has to be the most intense experience I've ever had in a COD campaign on Veteran. If you don't camp the bunker, good luck.

The only thing I had against the Cold War campaign was that it was so damn short!

don't judge a game by it's multiplayer, judge it by it's campaign!

I never have played Vanguard, but your description makes it sound super dope, not gonna lie

Finest Hour and especially Big Red One are actually fantastic despite their hardware limitations. BRO especially is one of my favorite CoD campaigns. I see it as most comparable to CoD 3, and of the two, I actually like Big Red one better

The Call of Duty 2 campaign is the reason why I fell in love with the franchise, and it still occupies a special place in my heart. To be honest, the campaigns are the main reason why I play CoD games to this day. It's also nice to see how solid the core gameplay of the Call of Duty franchise is. Most CoD campaigns have aged really well.

Make a list ranking all the spin-off games(Finest Hour, Roads to Victory, Big Red One, Declassified, the DS Games)

With Vanguard, don't forget they scrubbed almost all mentions of the new zealand soldiers except for one dude having a Tā Moko on his arm

I feel fortunate to experience this entire series as each entry come out. The original CoD introducing ADS and being one of the staple games on TechTV’s esports competition show (of which I’m forgetting the name), my first ever esports viewing experience. CoD 2 had what were at the time nearly unparalleled graphics and immersion. I loved how each tank had its own name, and the smoke grenades were such a novelty. I remember being amazed that they actually worked in a video game. It also had some of my all time favorite multiplayer. Modern Warfare bringing back Price is one of my favorite fan service moments and Modern Warfare signaled a paradigm shift in gaming, I’ll never forget seeing the E3 trailer for it and losing my mind. I was in military training when MW2 came out and I am hundreds of other trainees on base walked through a literal hurricane on launch day to go to the NEX to pick a copy up. ‘No Russian’ was unreal, experiencing that mission on launch day with no spoilers hit especially hard. All in all as gamers we are truly lucky to have this franchise. I fell off after BO2 until just very recently and I stand by the belief that if any of these games were their own unique IP and we were able to look at them with no preconceived notions each entry would have a loyal following. They may not always get it right but even the worst mainline games in the series are at least well above average. Thanks for bringing back a lot of great memories with this one.

Amazing retrospective mate. Loved every minute and agree with the ranking entirely. Thanks for making it!

Ive just finished repaying the MW campaigns on veteran, this video has made me want to play most of them again

Will you ever get around to reviewing Big Red One or did you cover that in this video?

I'm happy you gave a lot of love for Cold War's campaign. While I'm not too much of a fan of the multiplayer, I loved the campaign quite a lot

The Polish character last name in CoD3 is Bohater which literally means Hero or Protagonist in Polish 😂

I’ll need to try out more of these games. I don’t know why, but I kinda left the series behind after Black Ops 2. This amazing video just renewed my interest!

1:05:40 easily one of my favorite cod’s of all time because of three reason: 1 Hans zimmer being a legend with the soundtracks. 2: Makarov and price exchanged dialogue in my favorite mission “enemy of my enemy” And seeing those two exchange dialogue on that mission was the best. And 3: How could I forget the last mission. We killed Shepherd on rust. We saved price. And although we lost quite a bit, We still won.

You forgot to add Goldeneye Reloaded lol

Now that you've done this, I'd love to see a video focusing specifically on the oddball console spinoffs. I have fond memories of Big Red One.

Black Ops 1 has the best campain. The setting was amazing, The voice actors went beyond, The story was damn god tier And I never ever saw that twist coming. It was my first cod after all the ww2 ones. I never thought cod could improve and develop in such a good direction.

My brother and I started with COD2 Big Red One on PS2 (alongside COD3 from our Uncle), and I remember being hooked with the Bomber mission

MWIII (not to be totally confused with MW3) is here to claim it's throne as the WORST campaign ever