I've played CoD.
I feel very comfortable making fun of it, because it's terrible even by FPS standards.
Though I don't like FPS games in the first place, so I think they're all terrible. I'm not the best judge for it.
My first COD game was Black Ops, one of the later ones. Whenever I visited my dad's friend, who was a COD fan, he kept encouraging me to play it. So I bought a copy myself, and I had to admit, I was addicted. Zombie Mode and Online Multiplayer drew me in.
But as I tried to play the next two installments, I immediately began to see the true side of why COD gets bashing; they're
terrible at trying to reinvigorate their gameplay as barely anything changes. It's the same game, as many say. I give credit to Black Ops 2 for trying bring something new to the table, but it was still the same game to me. And so I quickly grew bored and stopped caring for COD.
It's not that the gameplay was terrible, (from an analytical standpoint, it's great.) It's the innovation and lack of change that gives it all the flack. So it grows boring. The same the NSMB series was, although it's probably less frustrating to enjoy.
I don't even know why consumers refuse to drop it.
It's like they've never seen another video game before.