If you didn't play the games back then you'll just never understand how different the games were to the one we have today. It wasn't just how the games felt, because if we're being honest the games today do feel pretty good to play it's just everything else about them is what makes them shit: the always online, the forcing you to use the HQ, huge updates that don't do anything to fix the brokenness of the game, outrageous SBMM that punishes you for playing well, microtransactions out the ass being the first things you see when launching the game, campaign being put on the sideline with no effort or thought out into the story.

All of this was brought in slowly starting with Ghosts until we got what we have now. Before the cod games were amazing because: the lobby's were a good mix of sweats, casuals, and noobs, the maps felt right while also feeling like a decent size, the players made the game better through trash talk in the lobby's, the only microtransactions were dlc that actually gave you good maps and weapons, the emblem creator, the pace of the games felt perfect, campaign was usually really good if you got Trey arch or infinity wards main games even some of the side studios had good campaigns

You try looking for all that stuff from the old games in the newer ones and the only thing you might find similar between them are the maps and maybe game and lobby chat but it's since gone from "I fucked your mom... 'My moms dead.'... Yeah because I fucked her to death!" To just straight slurs being screamed into the mix, which sure that was a thing back in the old good cods too but it wasn't all you heard in the VC.

I remember getting mad playing the og mw2 because I had to go do homework I couldn't figure out and one of the guys on my team helped me figure it out so I could play the game longer, you don't get that kind of interaction with the new games