All the Call of Duty games in order – complete series list

By Joe Julians

Published: Thursday, 13 October 2022 at 12:00 am

In just one year, the Call of Duty franchise will be celebrating its 20th birthday – the first game in the series was released back in 2003 and sequels have been coming thick and fast ever since – with a new version of Modern Warfare 2 just around the corner.

As the games span an impressive 20 years of releases, it’s hard to remember which game came when. Fortunately for you, we’ve created this guide for you. We’ve got all the games in release date order and their story-based order (which is a little more complicated).

Of course, some Call of Duty games are still in progress, with the new CoD Modern Warfare 2 coming soon and Warzone 2 coming just a couple of weeks later, not to mention all the follow-up titles that are probably in progress behind the scenes as well.

If you want to play through all the existing CoD games in order, here is a guide for how to do it. It’ll take you a serious amount of time to work through them all across several different platforms. For those who do, we salute you.

How to play the Call of Duty games in release order

Of course, the story-following timeline order isn’t the only way in which you could play through the Call of Duty games in order. If you want to play the CoD games in the order they came out, this is the order you’ll want to follow:

How to play the Call of Duty games in timeline order

If you want to play the Call of Duty games in an order that makes some kind of sense, the most coherent timeline to follow is that of real-life history. This isn’t a perfect science, because some games span more than one era, but it’s still a great way to play through the franchise. With that in mind, check out our recommended Call of Duty timeline order below.

Call of Duty: WW2

The first game in timeline order is WW2, which was released relatively recently in 2017. When we mentioned that some of these could be shuffled about, well the first entry is a good example of that as the game starts in 1940 – the earliest date in the COD timeline – but then moves on and takes place around 1944 – 1945.

So while we have chosen to place it here, you can place it after World at War without it making a huge amount of difference. One advantage of starting here is that you can play zombie mode and wipe out Nazi zombies, which is every bit as fun as it sounds.

Call of Duty: Finest Hour

This is another game that jumps about in the timeline, but going by its earliest point it’s here that we have chosen to place it. American, British, and Soviet soldiers all take centre stage in this one, which gives us three different campaigns in one game. Also, as a fun fact, this was the first game in the series to be made for consoles and it got a release on the original Xbox and the PlayStation 2.

Call of Duty: World at War

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Kiefer Sutherland leads the voice cast in this World War 2 based entry, which remains one of the highlights of the franchise even all these years on. This one is set in Pacific Theatre against the Imperial Japanese, and it is an epic campaign that still holds up to play today.

Also, this was the first game to give us zombie mode, a reason in itself to name check this game as one of the Call of Duty greats.

Call of Duty 2

Again, we’ll go by the earliest date shown in the game to decide its placing, which is 1942. The sequel to the original game, Call of Duty 2 upped the ante and gave us four different lead characters of different nationalities, all with an eye on freeing the world from the evil Nazi regime.

Call of Duty

Now we go right back to the beginning with the original Call of Duty game that was first released in 2003. You get three different campaigns in this one, with British, Russian and American soldiers leading each one.

The stories run from 1942 to 1944, but as with every other game we are going with the earliest date, so 1942 puts it here on our list – just after the game that followed it to keep us all on our toes.

Call of Duty 3

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Yet another game set in World War 2, this one at least makes it easier to place as it does not span multiple years. So we can pop it here with no asides complicating things. Call of Duty 3 takes place around the events of Operation Cobra, which involved the Allies battling their way out of Normandy.

Call of Duty: Big Red One

Taking place around 1944, this is a must-play game for fans of the hit mini-series Band of Brothers (if you haven’t watched that, do yourself a favour and do so right now) as it features several members of the cast in its voice line up – including Michael Cudlitz and Richard Speight Jr.

A real-life Army Infantry Division was called the Big Red One, if you were wondering where the game got its name from.

Call of Duty: Vanguard

Set in 1945, the latest Call of Duty’s game description reads: “The four playable characters overcome the desperation and chaos of war, captured by the Axis powers, each rising from the trenches to become one of the original Operatives; the prototype for the modern special forces soldier as they fight for victory in tide-turning battles across the globe.”