Call of Duty games are "pretty easy" to get into, according to former Counter-Strike pro Fredrik "roeJ" Røj Jorgensen. The eSports veteran shared his thoughts on Call of Duty as part of a recent interview that also saw him compare it to other popular competitive shooters, ranging from Counter-Strike and Apex Legends to Rainbow Six Siege and Overwatch.
Jorgensen, born in 1993, is a retired Counter-Strike professional who played for more than half a dozen teams, including Fnatic and Copenhagen Flames. Specializing as a rifler, he competed from 2017 until retiring in the first half of 2025. His career earnings are estimated to exceed $325,000.
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Classic Call of Duty Games Are Among the Easiest Shooters to Play, Former CS Pro Says
In a recent interview ahead of the Thunderpick World Championship 2025, Jorgensen shared his thoughts on how modern PvP shooters compare to one another in terms of difficulty. While he didn't attempt to list arbitrary rankings, he offered insights into things like mechanical complexity, meta-gaming elements, and learning curves. As part of this overview, he labeled classical Call of Duty titles like Modern Warfare 2 as being extremely accessible, more so than most modern offerings. While getting actual kills obviously requires skill, the game's fundamental design is "pretty easy" to internalize, the Dane opined.
Jorgensen labeled the classic Call of Duty Team Deathmatch modes as the epitome of this accessibility. "You just basically have to kill, and you respawn and repeat," he explained. Although he views Call of Duty as easier than Counter-Strike, the retired pro opined that Counter-Strike isn't a particularly difficult shooter either. Like most competitive FPS games, Counter-Strike has an incredibly high skill ceiling, but also a straightforward learning curve that makes it easy to start playing even as a complete beginner, Jorgensen said.
Looking at some other currently popular shooters, the former pro labeled Valorant as "a bit more kid-friendly" than Counter-Strike, but while noting that it's mechanically more complex, thus having a steeper learning curve. Jorgensen also said that while he doesn't have a lot of hands-on experience with Overwatch, he finds Blizzard's hero shooter to be "definitely more complicated" than Counter-Strike.
Fredrik ‘roeJ’ Jorgensen's Views on Modern Competitive Shooters' Difficulty
- Call of Duty: A classic CoD title like MW2 is "one of the easiest games you can play"
- Counter-Strike: Straightforward learning curve, "definitely easier" than Valorant and Rainbow Six Siege
- Valorant: More "kid-friendly" and therefore potentially more accessible than Counter-Strike, but with ultimately more complex mechanics
- Overwatch: "Definitely more complicated" than Counter-Strike, "probably one of the hardest"
- Apex Legends: Steep learning curve for beginners, battle royale format adds an extra difficulty layer
- Rainbow Six Siege: roeJ has no first-hand experience with it but says it "looks super complicated"
- Fortnite: accessible but with an immense skill ceiling due to the building aspect, which makes it "probably one of the hardest games of all"
The retired Counter-Strike pro labeled modern battle royale games like Apex Legends and Fortnite as some of the overall most difficult shooters from this bunch. "I played Fortnite when it came out, and I was actually very good at it, but then people started to be very good at building," he recalled. These days, pros are pulling "absolutely crazy" feats with the game's building mechanics, adding an extra dimension of difficulty to an already challenging multiplayer experience, Jorgensen opined, concluding that Fortnite is thus "probably one of the hardest games of all."
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 83 /100 Critics Rec: 91%
- Released
- October 25, 2024
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Suggestive Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
- Developer(s)
- Treyarch, Raven Software
- Publisher(s)
- Activision
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- IW 9.0
- Genre(s)
- FPS
