Image via Activision
Call of Duty, one of the biggest franchises ever in video games, is famous for its multiplayer, campaigns, and so much more. Holding the highest selling positions for video games every year and just kicking off its biggest launch in history with Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty is just that big. And one of its most famous game modes is zombies.
Call of Duty often provides an arcade-like style zombie shooter mode where players can go solo or in a team, take down hordes of zombies and other terrible creatures, and have the living daylights scared out of them from all directions.
Not every Call of Duty has a zombies mode, but this list compiles all the ones that do ranked from least to greatest.
10. Call of Duty: Vanguard
Despite being the most recent Call of Duty to have a zombies mode, Call of Duty Vanguard didn’t really match up to the previous releases on this list.
The core of zombies usually includes buying new areas slowly and progressing through the map. However, in Vanguard, that wasn’t the case anymore. Instead, players would have to get teleported to areas from a hub world and fight a pretty small amount of zombies.
Zombies typically includes some stress, fear, and suspense, but that wasn’t really a thing anymore with Vanguard. Plus, the zombies were nerfed pretty hard, so it really ruined the fun that Call of Duty’s zombies had in previous titles.
9. Call of Duty: World War II
Call of Duty WWII zombies were pretty safe. They looked like Nazis and it seemed like they were actually pretty terrifying. However, the problem with WWII is that it didn’t bring anything new to the zombies table. Instead, it relied too heavily on trying to recreate what Black Ops did, but didn’t do that even so well.
FYI, the devs who worked on Call of Duty Vanguard worked on Call of Duty WWII, and worked on the zombies modes (Sledgehammer Games). It doesn’t really look like Sledgehammer gets the zombies flow, unfortunately.
8. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare tried to innovate a lot with its zombies, especially with the more military sci-fi setting. However, the new movement system didn’t really function so well with zombies. New zombies had to be made to make up for this, but it wasn’t really that fun to play.
Plus, the Infection map was just bad.
7. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 was a pretty controversial title and didn’t even have a campaign. Still, it did have a decently okay zombies mode to play. There was some innovation being attempted with Black Ops 4’s zombies, like two game modes.
It did have some good gameplay and didn’t go too crazy with its style, so it’s a good option to play through at the end of the day.
6. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Sure, Infinite Warfare overall was pretty controversial and highly hated by the Call of Duty community, but bringing zombies to space was pretty neat to see.
Zombies in Spaceland was a wild way to look at zombies and came with neat Easter Eggs and a massive theme park map. It was bright, wacky, and didn’t try to innovate too much but still gave a fresh experience.
5. Call of Duty: World at War
Call of Duty World at War was the first to introduce the zombies mode in gameplay. After beating the campaign, you get told that you unlocked the Nazi Zombies mode. It set the mechanical foundations for every zombies mode to come, including boarding up windows, earning money to unlock weapons, and more.
People loved Nazi Zombies a ton and the map Nact der Untoten (night of the living dead) is still the most popular from the game. Nacht der Untoten was actually remastered for the Hardened and Prestige Editions of Call of Duty Black Ops.
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty Black Ops really did good with its zombies mode. With some funny comedy involved, and a cutscene with JFK and more, Black Ops really made zombies a forefront in the Black Ops series.
The maps were well structured and the gameplay was great, making Black Ops one of the best for zombies.
3. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is pretty underrated, especially since it has one of the best zombies modes in the series. With new maps, great graphics, and awesome weapons, Black Ops Cold War could appeal to both new and old Call of Duty players alike.
Although Black Ops Cold War was regarded as being a weaker entry to the franchise, its zombies mode still did a lot for it.
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Call of Duty Black Ops 3 has one of the best zombies modes in the franchise with improvements and unique maps. There’s a certain vibe about Black Ops 3 that’s really special and it’s a genuinely good zombies mode.
1. Call of Duty: Black Ops II
The highest selling Call of Duty title of all time, Call of Duty Black Ops 2 really set the standard for what makes a perfect zombies mode and a perfect multiplayer as well. Black Ops 2 provided improvements upon zombies from Black Ops and gave us memorable maps like Tranzit.
I can recall several times trying to play through zombies myself and being absolutely terrified, so Black Ops 2 got the fear-factor down for sure.
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
