Call Of Duty fans agree series has become a 'bloated mess'

The Call of Duty series has been around for the best part of 20 years since its inception back in 2003 on PC and for better or worse, the series has gotten a lot bigger in more ways than one.

As the Call of Duty series has evolved so too has its demands on your poor storage space whether you play on PC or consoles. Depending on which recent game you play, you could be looking at 100GB minimum (if you’re lucky) and up to 200GB depending on which content you have installed. Put it this way, if you played on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X with no hard drive expansion, and had no other games installed, you might be able to install three Call of Duty games with a little room to spare.

Check out our interview with the Modern Warfare III developers below!

The most recent release is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, a reimagining of the 2011 game and to say that it’s received a mixed reception from fans, would be an understatement. One of the main complaints of the game is its very short and uninspired single-player campaign. Granted, its multiplayer offering might not be perfect and is perhaps getting a little stale, but I still enjoy it for what it is.

In my review of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III single-player campaign, I said: “Call of Duty deserved much better than this churned-out disappointment. If you’re desperate for a bit of CoD this year, then you’ve probably already picked this game up. Otherwise, give this game a miss or at least hold out for patches to fix some issues.”

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is the culprit that can easily take over 200GB of storage space, but if you think that its predecessor, 2022’s Modern Warfare II would be any better, think again.

“Holy cow, where do I start? So last year I got CoD MWII after a 10-year hiatus from CoD games. I played the game for a few months and haven't touched it since,” said Redditor Sansnom99 kicking off the discussion on the thread. “I decided to download the game again. First off, 143GB? Wtf?”

They continued: “Then once the game is finally downloaded I am greeted with an unskippable cutscene promoting the newest game. Followed by four or five different Battle Pass/advertisement screens, and three game restarts.”

“Right when I was about to give up, I finally got to the main menu where I had to scroll down to find MWII buried somewhere in the bloat. And had to restart the game a fourth time. What the hell? Why do I have to deal with all of this crap to play a game I paid $90 for?” they concluded. “I have honestly never seen anything like this. Do people think this is acceptable? All of this unwanted bloat and advertisements to play a game they paid full price?”

Essentially, what was once used to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has now become a bloated HUB for recent entries and it’s fair to say that its User Interface isn't the most pleasant to navigate regardless of whether you want to play single-player, multiplayer or just to tweak your loadout. “The UI is the ugliest thing I've seen in quite a while,” replied Crater_Animator.

“It’s like they wanted to copy Halo: TMCC but hired the Snapchat developers to handle the UX,” exclaimed ohlookahipster. “It’s an absolute cluster of useless information. I have no idea what titles I actually own or how to modify anything by title. Where’s my rank? Who knows?”

“There were numerous times I tried to play during the free play weekend and every time I tried to play I had to update, restart, (or both), or my game crashed trying to open certain menus,” said a frustrated LocustUprising. “I finally got it open and working today… after the free weekend ended.”

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is out now on PC, PlayStation and Xbox.