4. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
If I was a Captain in the SAS, one stipulation I'd have is that under no circumstances am I to be forced to recruit a man named after a cleaning product - particularly if he's Scotsman and especially if he has a mohican. Surprisingly, it seems British SAS Captain John Price doesn't share my Paolo DiCanio-esk love of bizarre rules, and instead bases his selection process on merit (I know, right?). Cue the introduction of Sergeant 'Soap' MacTavish, the playable character we embodied for the full 20-minute campaign. I apologise, Infinity Ward. Despite the fact that if you blinked a few too many times during the story mode you probably missed most of it, Call Of Duty 4 had us glued to our consoles for days and days on end - and how? One word: Loctite. Err ... I mean: Online. Yes, for a whole year after it's release in 2007, COD 4 provided some of the best online action around (unless you had a annual subscription to RedTube). Was there anything more satisfying then lining up a headshot from one end of the Crossfire Map to the other, knowing that the poor naive fool in your crosshair was one R1 flick away from providing you with the ever-so sweet 'Ping!" of bullet-on-metal. The spot, the shot, the hit, and the gratification - if war is Hell, then simulated war is Heaven. Modern Warfare opened a casual gamers' eyes to the possibilities of the first-person shooter on 7th generation consoles, and since then we have been spoiled by yearly updates to the COD franchise. Recent offerings have made minor improvements to the formula, but if there's one thing that's more difficult than creating genius, it's building upon it - and so Call Of Duty 4 will always be the best of the bunch.