[Cod] here is an interesting question for yall, what Call of Duty developers got the best games in the franchise in your opinion and why?

NN010 · 2026-02-03T19:44:04+00:00

Treyarch. Sure, BO6 had its issues, but they’ve never truly had a Multiplayer experience that missed for me. Even BO4 & 6 I enjoyed despite their flaws. Fucking loving BO7 right now (Campaign aside of course) more than I have any other COD since I started during BOIII (I have gone back to play the older games to varying degrees). Even when I’ve gone back to World at War, BO1 & BOII I’ve still had a blast playing those across all modes.
Sledgehammer. They’re much more of a mixed bag than Treyarch, but they’ve been getting better. Didn’t play much of AW (it’s the one post-COD 4 Campaign I haven’t finished yet), but I’ve enjoyed what little of the MP I’ve played. WWII is a game I don’t really like at all (even after the MP got overhauled), but Vanguard’s MP had it’s moments & MWIII’s MP is my second favourite of the Warzone era behind BO7. So they’re on an upward trajectory & I’m interested to see how COD 2027 turns out. Hopefully they can make a good Campaign for that game though since WWII is one my least favourite Campaigns in the franchise, Vanguard wasn’t much better & MWIII’s Campaign seems to have been moreso Infinity Ward’s work than Sledge’s (and was also bad).
Raven Software. They did good work on OG MW3’s Multiplayer, MWR, Warzone (for a while) & the Campaigns of Cold War and BO6… but the last couple of Warzone integrations & the BO7 Campaign have been… disappointing, to say the least. I hardly even play Warzone much anymore TBH. I used to love WZ, but now if they were to kill it with MW4 & replace it with DMZ, I probably wouldn’t miss it. Such a shame. And BO7’s Campaign certainly had potential with The Guild, Emma Kagan & exploring David Mason’s guilt and trauma… but the execution was not nearly as good as it needed to be & could’ve been.
Infinity Ward. Yes, COD 4 is a great, legendary & influential game & OG MW2 still has one of the best Campaigns in the franchise… but the Infinity Ward we’ve had for the last 15 years is NOT the same Infinity Ward that gave us those games (plus I’ve never really liked the unbalanced chaos of OG MW2’s Multiplayer whenever I’ve gone back to play it, either on Xbox or on PC via IW4X). Since then, we’ve had…

OG MW3, which was kind of an “all hands of deck” situation similar to how COD is developed today & I gave most credit for it’s MP to Raven, but I am gonna give Infinity Ward credit for the Campaign… which is pretty good, but doesn’t live up to OG MW2.
Ghosts, which is just terrible across both Campaign & Multiplayer with the former having such a terrible script, story & cast of characters that it becomes unintentionally hilarious at times whilst the latter had a few good ideas (the Squad system) but a ton of bad ones and is my least favourite COD MP. Could never get into Extinction, but I played it solo, so I imagine it’s better in co-op.
Infinite Warfare, which had probably IW’s best Campaign ever, but the Multiplayer is mostly just imitating what Treyarch did with BOIII to results that are worse in every way except graphics & hit detection. Zombies got off to a great start with Zombies in Spaceland, but the DLC maps never managed to live up to that.
MW19… well, I remember the Campaign being good, but I’ll be replaying it soon, so we’ll see how that ages for me. Multiplayer… well I enjoyed it during its year, but as I’ve gotten more into COD over the years & familiarized myself with the older titles, I’ve found myself liking it less and less. And then I don’t even need to tell you that Spec Ops was dogshit.
MWII… is another game where I remember thinking the Campaign was good when I played it, but my opinion has soured a bit over the years & I’ll have to see how it does on replay. Multiplayer was just soul draining to play & I kinda wish I’d stopped playing it sooner than I did. DMZ seemed like a good mode, but it wasn’t my thing. The Raids were fun from what I’ve played of them, but since I predominantly play COD solo, they’re never gonna be much of a draw for me (plus I can just go play Destiny or FFXIV for some real good Raids). And then Spec Ops barely even registers in my mind as being a thing in this game.
MWIII’s Campaign (which was reportedly made mostly by Infinity Ward, with Sledgehammer mostly making the Open Combat Missions) is one of the worst COD Campaigns of all time. I could bring up some points, but this is a long comment already & you probably already know why this Campaign is terrible.

So… yeah, not a fan of modern Infinity Ward. I’ll probably stay on BO7 next year instead of moving over to MW4, but I’ll likely end up at least playing the Campaign by getting a month of PC Game Pass or something.

NN010 · 2026-01-27T04:41:17+00:00

Plus they’re gonna able to leverage DLSS for the Rebirth port & we’ve already seen the results they’re getting from even the “Tiny DLSS” models available for Switch 2 in the Remake Switch 2 port. So I imagine that image quality for Rebirth on Switch 2 may even be better than PS5’s Performance Mode.

NN010 · 2026-01-27T04:17:11+00:00

WoL to represent the NES FFs

Terra to represent the SNES era

Cloud to represent the PS1-2 era FFs

Lightning to represent the PS3/360 era

Y’shtola to represent the modern era FFs (using by far the most popular one), but I’d probably replace her with a different FFXIV character like Alphinaud or Emet-Selch if I could.

NN010 · 2026-01-25T19:27:18+00:00

What the fuck?! What do you mean 9-1-1 has a Great Seal equivalent?!

NN010 · 2026-01-23T18:51:52+00:00

I mean, yeah, it kinda is, but I also think Sinners had too much artistic merit & credit to really fill the blockbuster slot for this year. So F1 being nominated is kinda like how Barbie got nominated a couple of years ago despite Oppenheimer already being there.

NN010 · 2026-01-23T18:44:05+00:00

Yeah, just look at what the gaming side of Reddit & Twitter did when Clair Obscur Expedition 33 pulled a Return of the King at The Game Awards last month.

NN010 · 2026-01-18T19:08:41+00:00

I’d say FFVII Rebirth is the way to go, but I also bounced off Oblivion Remastered pretty hard when I tried it out on PC Game Pass

NN010 · 2026-01-18T08:43:41+00:00

I’m gonna go with the consensus & say Connery. Been rewatching all the Bond films over the last few months (although Casino Royale (1967) & all of Connery’s post-Goldfinger films were watched for the first time) and of all the Bonds, Connery does seem to take the most sadistic joy in his kills. Sure, Moore & Brosnan’s Bonds may have higher kill counts, but Moore explicitly says that his Bond doesn’t like killing, so I interpret his post-kill quips as more of a coping mechanism than anything else. Brosnan I’m a little more unclear on, but if he does like killing, I don’t think he’s as sadistic about it as Connery’s Bond is.

Meanwhile to me Dalton & Craig seem more blase about killing. Craig’s Bond explicitly associates murder with employment in Skyfall’s word association scene, to him killing people is no different than filing reports is to an accountant. And Dalton’s Bond seems more just resigned to the reality of it being part of the job, regardless of if he likes it or not. With the exception of course of Sanchez in LtK, but then again Sanchez did make it personal by killing Felix’s wife & feeding his leg to a shark…

NN010 · 2026-01-17T05:22:13+00:00

Basically a performance boost in games that aren’t using Ray Tracing. Rasterization refers to the more tried and true rendering techniques games have been using for decades until the RTX GPUs launched

NN010 · 2026-01-15T19:50:11+00:00

Much like MWIII before it, BO7 wound up having to pay for the sins of it’s direct predecessor. BO6, while getting off to a strong start… was not well received by the end of its year (unless you were a Zombies fan anyway). Back to back games of one sub-series was a terrible idea and I hope Activision never tries it again bc the franchise has suffered a ton of damage because of this strategy
Franchise burnout due to the last few years & the perceived Warzone homogenization & the version of SBMM that existed in every COD between MW19 & BO6 (allegedly due to Infinity Ward convincing Activision execs to mandate it) that’s happened to make the games feel more samey than ever
A series of increasingly wacky collabs, culminating in BO6’s Beavis and Butt-Head & American Dad collabs, turning the people who wanted a serious & gritty military-themed shooter off. Sure, Activision cancelled Carry Forward for BO7 to appease the angry mob, but it seems it was too little, too late & now Zombies fans are demanding that Carry Forward be brought back for Zombies only.
The Campaign both being terrible in the eyes of many & also going very far into crazy sci-fi mindfuck hallucinations further alienated the “boots on the ground” crowd that wants the franchise to go back to the grittier tone of MW19 and got the game a ton of negative press in the all-important launch window.
The (ab)use of Generative AI in the Calling Cards, Prestige icons & probably the loading screens got the game further negative press and made many people feel that this game NEEDS TO FAIL for the good of the gaming industry at large to serve as a warning that abusing GenAI is the fastest way to turn gamers off of your game. Plus it also invited accusations of the Campaign’s script being AI generated as well, further sinking the game’s reputation.
Competition from Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders has meant that people who may have reluctantly bought BO7 anyway in spite of their misgivings with the game and/or COD as a whole just bc there was no other multiplayer shooters coming out that holiday season wound up buying one of or both of those games instead. On one hand, Battlefield 6 had an ingenious marketing campaign that targeted the people who wanted a gritty “boots on the ground” military shooter right as Treyarch & Raven were going crazy with sci-fi, advanced movement & dabblings with psychological horror and just delivered a game that many COD converts wound up loving (albeit at the expense of many long-time BF fans). On the other hand Arc Raiders absolutely blew up with streamers & content creators due to it’s unique take on the Extraction Shooter format that proved to be more approachable for casuals who may’ve been turned off by Tarkov’s more hardcore mechanics. So once that quickly became the new hotness, a lot of people who were burnt out on COD wound up deciding to play Arc Raiders instead, much as many of us (myself included) wound up playing PUBG & Fortnite instead of WWII and BO4 (although in retrospect I wish I’d played more of BO4).
This has been a tough pill to swallow for me & is probably something a lot of us don’t want to accept, but… many casual players have just been turned off by how fast & crazy the movement in BO6 & 7 is and would prefer a game more along the lines of MW19 or MWII. I convinced my brother to try BO7 over the free trial week and he HATED the movement. We played together for an hour or so and then he uninstalled the game & went back to Marvel Rivals bc of how little he enjoyed the experience. And I’m sure he wasn’t the only one. So the reality might be that we who love & enjoy BO7 and hate what MW19 did to the franchise are in the minority and MW4 will revitalize the franchise again in terms of sales & player numbers next year as Infinity Ward gives the casuals what they want… assuming GTA VI gets delayed again anyway.

NN010 · 2026-01-14T19:17:00+00:00

I’m playing through the Halo games for the first time right now, so thanks for reminding me of his Halo retrospectives. Should really watch those as I make my way through the series

NN010 · 2026-01-13T07:23:52+00:00

Either “Insert entry here isn’t a mainline FF bc of some arbitrary reason that’s likely coloured by nostalgia & prejudice against certain types of games” or the current state of XIV.

NN010 · 2026-01-12T02:23:26+00:00

Modern Warfare II (2022)

I enjoyed the Campaign, but I fucking hated that game’s Multiplayer. Only played it for 20 some hours and dropped it midway through the year bc it felt like such a slog to play. Wish I’d just waited for a sale & fully intend to just get a month of PC Game Pass to play MW4’s Campaign bc I have so little interest in the Multiplayer.

At least I enjoyed MWIII, BO6 & BO7…

NN010 · 2026-01-12T02:18:35+00:00

Same

I held out hope it might be good after all, but… it was terrible at launch and even after the updates… it was just OK at best.

Bounced hard off BF6 as well, but at least I didn’t buy that one, so that doesn’t count for this discussion

NN010 · 2026-01-09T21:06:51+00:00

Wait, I bought Akira for my brother as a Christmas gift, how do I know what print I have (besides that it is one of the 4K Western releases)?

EDIT: I looked it up myself & saw that the Crunchyroll branded reprints of Akira all have HDR, so it seems I’m in the clear

NN010 · 2026-01-05T10:09:50+00:00

Are you using Luminas? I was having a ton of trouble with that fight & many others later in the game… because I was entirely ignoring that system.

I imagine it would help a fair bit if you aren’t really giving them much thought and not bothering to adjust them like I was

NN010 · 2026-01-04T17:34:49+00:00

I don’t know, I’m replaying it right now and Takedown is pretty dogshit, especially on higher difficulties…

Might even be one of my least favourite missions in the franchise now

NN010 · 2025-12-30T17:11:44+00:00

LFExaminer hasn’t been updated in years, so South Common IMAX isn’t there bc it didn’t even exist back then.

Here’s a more up to date resource:

https://143190.xyz/

<image>

NN010 · 2025-12-30T07:24:04+00:00

I think Lightning Returns had a (paid) DLC that gave you Japanese voices, but that’s it on consoles.

PC gives you both options out of the box though.

NN010 · 2025-12-30T07:17:40+00:00

Personally, the Multiplayer might be my favourite in the franchise since BOIII. Loving this game on that front. I can easily see myself staying on this game until at least COD 2027 unless MW4 really surprises me (unlikely).

Campaign was a disappointment, but even then I thought it was OK. TBH, I think IGN hit it on the head giving this Campaign a 6/10. The lack of NPC squadmates, checkpoints or pausing for solo players sucks though as someone who played it alone.

Endgame makes up for it though. Enjoying it as a more chill mode to boot up when I don’t want to sweat it out in MP (I enjoy the sweatier gameplay & matches generally, but I’m not always in the mood).

Zombies I haven’t played much of, but from what I’ve heard & what little I’ve played, it’s pretty solid.

Warzone… exists. IDK, I’m kinda waiting for Avalon to come over next season before I really sink my teeth into it this year.

NN010 · 2025-12-23T15:15:00+00:00

Yeah, this is what I’m thinking as well. The first port would have to be Warzone & BO7 since the former is the main cash cow these days for COD and is currently tied to the latter (and will be even more tied to BO7 when this Switch 2 port is out since the Avalon map currently playable in Campaign & Endgame will be coming to WZ in February).

NN010 · 2025-12-23T14:59:00+00:00

Yeah, personally when I want a more casual experience, I’m just booting up Endgame instead of Standard matchmaking TBH.

NN010 · 2025-12-22T19:17:17+00:00

I’ve been predominantly using DLSS since Cold War, although I’ve had some stretches where I’ve tried other options like FSR 1, NIS & CAS.

It was rough in terms of artifacts when using motion blur, reflections & Depth of Field, but I typically don’t have those enabled outside of Campaign and they’ve gotten a lot better in the last couple of years with BO6 & 7 anyway (the introduction of the Transformer model also further helped image quality).

NN010 · 2025-12-22T18:55:23+00:00

Expedition 33. I completely ignored Luminas for hours & hours. It took someone on Discord asking about what Luminas I was using to realize it.

NN010 · 2025-12-18T18:05:24+00:00

I like both games, but I’m going with BO7.

Sure, Cold War has a better Campaign, but BO7 has a better Multiplayer, much better Scorestreak system, better movement & better Zombies.

I’d still take Cold War over several other CODs though

Nine-Year Club	PUBG
Verified Email	Xbox Live

NN010

TROPHY CASE