The franchise has slipped from its lofty perch in recent years, but there was a time when the launch of a new Call of Duty game was a huge event. The anticipation was never quite on the level of Grand Theft Auto 6, but the series reliably mattered in a way that many other games did not. When Microsoft purchased Activision, some of us assumed we wouldn’t have to wait long before being able to play all of those classic games on Xbox Game Pass.
Why else would Microsoft drop that kind of money on the company, if not to leverage its library of classics? But Call of Duty has made only a weak showing on the subscription service since then, with many of its most iconic games still available only for purchase. With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launching Oct. 23, here are eight Call of Duty games somehow still missing from Game Pass.
We’d love to see them get added soon. After Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, it was unclear how the franchise might top itself. Then came Call of Duty: Black Ops, with an energetic campaign that included outrageous moments such as an attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.
Some of the most memorable characters in the franchise experienced a thrilling campaign, and that was just for starters. Without Black Ops, we never would have been introduced to the Nuketown map so many of us know and love from multiplayer deathmatch. The game’s absence from Game Pass is an injustice.
World at War once again told a compelling story set in World War 2, like most of the franchise entries up to that point, but that’s not why most players remember it fondly. Rather, they recall the zombies mode, which developer Treyarch introduced to the overall franchise with sufficient success that it quickly became a standard component in future titles. Players worked to cooperate against increasingly powerful waves of invading zombies, rushing from one site to another and struggling to survive against the endless horde.
If you love fighting zombies in Call of Duty, you owe that mode to this one great game, which is sadly missing from Game Pass. And if you want more World War 2 action of a more recent vintage, there’s always 2017’s Call of Duty: WW2. There’s a popular meme you might have seen: “Press F to pay respects.” The familiar line comes from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
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