Call Of Duty: Ranking Every Game From Worst To Best

4. Call Of Duty: Black Ops

After the rather underwhelming World at War, Treyarch returned with a decidedly more ambitious effort in Black Ops, which while still not taking place in the present day, moved events forward to the Cold War of the 1960s, and did so with sure, shocking aplomb. Treyarch clearly put a lot of time into developing a thought-provoking, torn-from-the-headlines story, as throughout the game protagonist Alex Mason ends up interacting with the likes of Fidel Castro, John F. Kennedy and Robert McNamara (and these three, along with Richard Nixon, are also playable characters in the game's Nazi Zombies offering) In addition, there's a clear finger on the pulse of the time and place being depicted: classic tunes such as The Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil and Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son add plenty of mood and atmosphere. Still, the game's most brilliant hand is the chilling twist ending, in which it's implied that Mason himself was behind the assassination of JFK. And then there's the insane multiplayer map, Nuketown: what more could you want?