7 Popular Video Games That Ruined Everything

6. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare (2007)

As strange as it'll sound to younger readers, there was a time without Call of Duty.

Even before Modern Warfare when the IP was going up against Medal of Honor across the early 2000s, it wasn't "Call of Duty" as we now know it.

That changed with 2007's Modern Warfare, a title that after three main instalments prior, shifted its setting to the modern day, twinned it with one of the best FPS models ever made, and completely overhauled the industry.

Call of Duty wasn't just an overnight sensation. It fundamentally upended the way we control first-person shooters; the way we think about unlocks in an online space; the very pace of play that stood it in direct opposition to the more experimental and overblown likes of Halo.

With such a meteoric success crossing over into the 2010s, we've seen Activision force another Call of Duty every single year since 2007. COD: Ghosts was a notably flat release, and as the series lost key creatives Vince Zampella and Jason West to Titanfall, still the IP survived.

Everyone remembers the terribly received combo of Black Ops III and Infinite Warfare, but as developer schedules became even messier, teams were ditched and deadlines prioritised as Black Ops 4 ditched its campaign entirely.

2019 saw a complete lap of the franchise. Modern Warfare's soft reboot became the crown jewel yet again, but thanks to the annual model of release, Black Ops following a year later barely caught on, thoroughly cannibalised sales-wise as Activision insist on competing with themselves.