As its final act of stupidity before being acquired by Microsoft, Activision decided to stain the legacy of Call of Duty in a way that we simply have not seen before. According to internal reports, Activision negated a proposed sequel to Advanced Warfare, and had Sledgehammer turn around a new campaign for Modern Warfare 3 in just 16 months, a project that many were originally told was just an expansion for the previous years’ game, but it was turned into a “full” $70 offering later.
Now that the multiplayer has joined the single player in the live game, review scores are coming in. The result? Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the lowest scored game in the entire history of the series. Not just that, it’s the lowest by a huge amount.
I’ve compiled the list of every Call of Duty game and its associated Metascore below so you can see just how much of a gap this is. In reverse chronological order:
- Modern Warfare III – 53
- Modern Warfare II – 75
- Vanguard – 73
- Black Ops Cold War – 76
- Modern Warfare – 80
- Black Ops 4 – 83
- WWII – 79
- Infinite Warfare – 77
- Black Ops III – 81
- Advanced Warfare – 81
- Ghosts – 78
- Black Ops II – 81
- Modern Warfare 3 – 88
- Black Ops – 87
- Modern Warfare 2 – 94
- World at War – 84
- Modern Warfare – 94
- Call of Duty 3 – 82
- Call of Duty 2 – 89
- Call of Duty – 91
Even if sure, Call of Duty has seen its scores decline over the last few years, and it’s never gotten close to its MW1-MW2 glory days, this is a 22 point drop from last year’s Modern Warfare 2, and still 20 points below the previous lowest, Vanguard. These scores make it the 195th best reviewed PS5 game of 2023 out of 199 total. The games below it are the likes of Quantum Error and the horrific Gollum game. It’s under big 2023 misses like Redfall (56) and Forspoken (64).
This really has to be a five alarm fire for Microsoft, who needs to get a handle on this IP and get away from this insane Activision crunch schedule for pumping out increasingly terrible yearly installments just for something, anything to sell during the holiday. Scores slowly sliding into the 70s is one thing. A 53 with a 1.4/10 user score is almost criminal, and whoever greenlit this over at Activision should be gone and replaced as soon as possible. Was it Bobby? It was probably Bobby.
Call of Duty cannot die, but this is certainly a critical injury that will need to be corrected in time, even if that means breaking this annual cycle which really at this point needs to happen. They cannot do this again.
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