Yeah I dug the flamethrower when I wasn't being spammed by the grenades.

the old ones are better, the new ones are too casual and designed for consols

Been on a WW2 binge recently watching documentaries like World at War and Battlefield, movies, playing games...

Played CoD 1 and it was pretty good. Playing 2 now with the Merciless Matador Mod which is cool because it removes the bs health regen and adds a bunch of cool stuff like nazis with flamethrowers and a lot of extra gore.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/merciless-mod/downloads/merciless-matador-cod2-single-player-mod

But yea, also not a fan of the modern stuff and settings and all the mp nonsense.

Another great and horribly overlooked WW2 shooter is Hidden & Dangerous 2.

A shame GoG doesn't have that, Mafia 1 and Vietcong.

I've only played shortly some of the earlier COD games (also on PS2, which were different from PC versions)... and then Black Ops 2 one or two years ago.

Maybe BO2 isn't a bad game, but it felt quite formulaic, feeling like they tried their best to be on the safe side when making the game. It did hold my interest enough for me to finish the game, but very rarely I was very excited to play it.

I guess the point of the game is trying to make you feel like you are in a middle of a big war movie, explosions all over you etc., but that gets old quite fast. Of the more modern shooters I've played, Spec Ops: The Line actually conveyed that kind of feeling of being in a middle of an intense war or combat the best, IMHO. Better than e.g. Black Ops 2. Maybe it was partly because Spec Ops was a 3rd person shooter, so you could see your character as well as he was hiding from fire etc.

Also, the intentionally silly ending in Black Ops 2 was just... silly. Did they really have to do that? Do I e.g. want to see a grim Star Wars movie or whatever, where everything is suddenly turned into a big joke at the very end? Think of Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi singing and step-dancing at the end of the Star Wars Ep 4 movie, that kind of "silly".

What a gritty star wars film where the spotty spoilt brat of a teenager "bad" guy who apparently has had years of training get beaten up by a scrawny girl with no training sort of silly?

SpecOps: The Line is probably one of the most underrated SP experience when it comes to shooters. Black Ops 1/2 are still better than Ghosts/MW2/MW3/AW. :)

Same here. That is why I accidentally bought two overlapping Medal of Honor retail collections quite close to each other. I thought the collection I already had at home was for Call of Duty, while the one I was buying was for Medal of Honor. Oh well.

Also those PS2 versions I've been playing (remembering parts of them here and there), I can't really remember without checking which was a MoH game and which was a CoD game. They have so similar feeling.

Might be useful for you: The Call of Duty series ranked

COD2 and/or COD4. You aren't really missing anything by skipping any other games in the series.

IF ya ask me go with this:
1. Pre- Modern Warfare 3 Infinity Ward CoD games (MW2 was ok)
2. All Treyarch CoD Games. They are fucking good.
3. Sledgehammer Games (Even though there is just Advanced Warface, it's actually good if ya ask me but avoid MW3)

But overall play CoD 1,CoD 2, Modern Warfare 1, World at War and Black Ops 1 and 2..

My favorite was CoD: United Offensive because you were accompanied by squadmates at all times.

This is what I played, and this what I recommend:
Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_4:_Modern_Warfare]Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare[/url], [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Modern_Warfare_2]Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2[/url].
For me, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has the best campaign. As for the multiplayer, I can't really say, I only played it LAN twice.

I had good time with CoD 1 and 2, though I remember the second time I played through CoD2 held my interest very little.

CoD 4 was fun and felt like they simply had packaged all the mission types and tropes from previous games on a single campaign, visiting each one just enough times so that it didn't become boring.

I did play through CoD6's capaign (modern warfare 2) with a cousin on his PC and had fun as well.

Overall I think the campaigns in these games are like modern action movies. They do the job of entertaining you and you even fell like genuinely watching/playing them from time to time, but they never feel substantial enough to be memorable everlasting experiences.

I sometimes feel like jumping on the train and getting Black Ops 3 or Advanced Warfare just for the cyberpunkishness of them, but they're too expensive for my tastes.

For story, an old one, For multiplayer, a new one. :P