Want to play all the Black Ops games in order but don't know where to start? Well, we don't blame you. The Call of Duty franchise is vast and inevitably uneven, and the same applies to the Black Ops series, which has survived all sorts of transformations and soft reboots. If you're more of a Modern Warfare fan or skipped some entries in the past and want to catch up before jumping into Black Ops 7, here's how to play every game in the Black Ops timeline.
A huge issue with the Black Ops subfranchise is its nomenclature, which started to not make a lot of sense after the third game. Black Ops 4 actually happened before Black Ops 3 in the canon, and no one noticed anyway because it was a strictly multiplayer installment (and not a very good one to boot). After Modern Warfare was rebooted, so was Black Ops. Cold War (2020) wasn't a numbered entry, and you'll soon learn why, but in 2024, Activision and Xbox decided to bring the numbers (Mason!) back because that makes these games a lot easier to sell, apparently.
