This is a somewhat of a big subject in the CoD community, and I think for good reason. Mainly because the community is split on the current direction of this franchise. So I'm going to give my thoughts on this subject, now I'm not going to say what I think they should do, because I don't want to turn this into a whishlist. All I'm going to do is bring up certain things in the games that have met drastic changes, and what I feel about it. So let's get into this.
#1 The Maps[]
So this might be met with some controversy, but this does need to be mentioned. Now the map on top is Invasion from Modern Warfare 2, and the bottom is Grind from Black Ops II. Notice how Invasion looks and feels much more like an authentic battleground compared to Grind, and that's because it's much more dark and griddy, mainly do to it's color pallet, and destroyed environment. Whereas Grind feels very goofy and just doesn't feel like a real place in combat in-general. The main reason for that is because it's set in a skate park, it's much more colorful compared to Invasion, and Grind doesn't have a destroyed environment like Invasion does. What I'm trying to get here is that the maps in the old games felt much more like a realistic place of conflict compared to the maps of the modern games. I prefer the way the maps were in the older games, because it fits the military shooter setting, and because it was easier to take serious. The maps of today's CoDs feel like a child's playground in my opinion, and that's not a good thing.
#2 The Campaigns[]
The campaigns have also changed. In my opinion the campaigns are getting cheesy, a lot of it it is because the sequences are getting silly, and the plots are getting terrible with each new game. When you compare CoD4's campaign to Ghosts' campaign you can see what I mean. CoD4 may have not have had the most realstic sequences, but they were not silly like Ghosts'. For example, in CoD4 the scene where you're on the chopper and the nuke goes off crahing the chopper causing your character to crwal to his death. That was much better than the scene in Ghosts where you're just fighting in space against the Federation, mainly because it was more realistic, and serious. Black Ops 3's campaign in my opinion was the cheesiest campaign I've played, whereas Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) had the best campaign I've ever played, and yes MW2's campaign wasn't super realistic, but it was much more grittier compared to Black Ops 3's.
#3 The Feel[]
In my opinion the Call of Duty franchise feels very silly and kid friendly compared to what it was back then. One of the reasons are things like the taunts and gestures for the "Specialists", or the silly gun camos, such as the "Rubber Ducky Camo". Today's Call of Duties are more lighthearted compared to older games, play an older CoD like CoD4 or MW2, and then play a newer one like AW or BO3, then you'll see what I mean.
#4 Zombies[]
Okay so before I begin this, I want to say I'm not against the Zombies mode period. It's just I feel the direction it went was the start of this problem. If you play an older level like Verrückt, and then you play Shadows of Evil. You begin to understand the horror factor has been removed completely. The older levels were much more darker compared to the new ones. Like in Shi No Numa you remember how the map felt eerie, and then skip to Buried it's just cheesy one-liners flying everywhere with the addition of a big hillbilly you have to interact with to open vital locations. The current direction of the mode is a good example of some of the problems the series is facing right now.
To sum it all up[]
So to sum it all up the CoD franchise right now is going into a very goofy direction that I'm not in favor of. If you have any thoughts then leave them in the comment section down below. Thanks for Reading.