At the weekend I dutifully paid my annual Call of Duty tax for the latest instalment of the game which is one of the most successful franchises of any video game so far.

I realised it is around 20 years since I bought my first gaming console. I remember being quite impressed when I first played Medal of Honor: Frontline (please note the American spelling) and being so impressed with the graphics and the whole gaming experience.

Imagine storming the Normandy beaches and scrabbling around for health packs to keep yourself going to complete the mission.

Needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed the game and bought that console which, if you are remotely interested, was an original Xbox. Apparently the guys who worked on the Medal of Honor games decided to break away and form a new company to develop what eventually became the behemoth that we now know as Call of Duty or CoD.

I remember being suitably impressed when I played Call of Duty: Finest Hour in 2004 when you saw hoards of Russians storming into Stalingrad and I have to admit the attention to historical accuracy was fairly good and well researched. Having said that I never could get past the Tractor Factory mission.

I had more success with the next edition which was Call of Duty 2: The Big Red One and Call of Duty 3 which were both on the Playstation 2 platform. I need to add by this time I was living with Mrs D (aka my wife Karen) and we had a conversation and she decided that maybe we should continue with her preferred platform of the Sony Playstation 2 might be the way forward to which I agreed.

Having said that I have no regrets in making that decision as I have since acquired a total of four consoles since then including the PS3, the PS4 and the PS5 but I am struggling to find an adapter which will accommodate the PS2 console leads so they will connect with the HDMI connector.

Fast forward a couple of years and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was literally a game changer as it moved the franchise from a WWII setting to the modern day. The graphics and gameplay had taken leaps and bounds on the PS3 when compared to previous offerings.

It was very real and presented authentic battle situations. And it was the first game which presented a seemingly impossible mission which was always quite depressing but I eventually overcame the obstacle (apart from the bloody Tractor Factory obvs).

In my opinion the franchise lost its direction when it went all futuristic a few years back but it got back on track with a return to WWII.

I quite enjoyed the original Modern Warfare trilogy and it was a perfect example of a great story in the main campaign and good characters. And I must introduce you to Captain John Price who I reckon must be one of the most iconic characters created in the history of gaming.

Price is with the SAS and was first introduced in Modern Warfare. I was totally invested in him because I had followed his progress through the first three games. But then he was reimagined in the reboot in 2019.

This weekend saw the culmination of the latest reboot of the Modern Warfare trilogy and I have to admit I really enjoyed it.

After enduring the eternal download times for extra data (I mean why don’t they include it on the disc) I finally got to play the game. I mean it took most of Saturday and Sunday to download and install.

So when I finally got to play the game it was very good. It was a convincing story and an enjoyable game to play. For the record tonight I helped to defuse the bomb and saved London.

I was pleased when I sold a spare PS3 console to my old mucker Ellis Butcher that he bought a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops as that is my most replayed game alongside Medal of Honor: Tier 1.

I really enjoyed Black Ops. I was back in ‘Nam man! If you don’t remember you weren’t there man!