Many elements go into making a good or bad Call of Duty title. Besides the game's visuals, every Call of Duty entry needs to add new options without breaking the balance of the sandbox. This is much tougher to do than it sounds, but some games have done this much better than others.
As most would expect, nearly every Call of Duty has weapon that are either too good or truly awful. Reaching back to the first title, there have been some weapons in the franchise that are nearly unusable due to how lackluster they are.
16 Call Of Duty: M1 Garand
One of Call of Duty's most iconic guns was sadly one of the first game's weakest weapons. The M1 Garand from the original Call of Duty wasn't bad on paper, featuring solid damage per shot with a good fire rate. The issue is this weapon's recoil, accuracy, iron sights, and overall feel. No scope variant exists to fix this weapon's issues either.
15 Call Of Duty 2: Grease Gun
Call of Duty 2's Grease Gun is an objectively worse MP40. Only available in multiplayer, the Grease Gun is a fully-automatic submachine gun featuring a 32 round magazine. These benefits are burdened by this weapon's sights and damage profile.
14 Call Of Duty 3: Browning M1919A6
Light machine guns have rarely been the best weapons in most Call of Duty games, and Call of Duty 3 is no exception. Allied Support players will spawn with the Browning M1919A6, one of the worst LMGs in Call of Duty history. Horrible hip-fire accuracy and bulky sights are made worse by the weapon forcing the player to go prone whenever they aim down sights. The German's MG34 is a better weapon.
13 Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: Mini-Uzi
Submachine guns were generally good in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare except for the Mini-Uzi and Scorpion. While the Scorpion is accurate and has an incredibly fast time-to-kill, the Mini-Uzi suffers from a horrible recoil pattern and one of the worst muzzle flash effects out of any Call of Duty weapon.
A Silencer fixes the muzzle flash at the cost of damage, something the Mini-Uzi already lacks. Factor in most players using Juggernaut and it's easy to see why this weapon saw little use.
12 Call Of Duty: World At War: M1897 Trench Gun
Not even Hardcore mode can save World at War's Trench Gun shotgun. High base damage should have made this weapon a powerhouse yet the pitiful range of this gun meant one-taps were a rare sight, especially with the prevalence of Juggernaut MP40 players. Even when players didn't use Juggernaut, so few maps in World at War were small enough to let the Trench Gun truly shine.
11 Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2: F2000
Modern Warfare 2 is no stranger to some of the strongest weapons, perks, and killstreaks in franchise history. That said, even MW2 suffered from some rather lackluster weapons in its sandbox. The best example of this is the F2000, a rapid-fire assault rifle that had horrid iron sights.
Red Dot Sights were mandatory to make this weapon usable. Even then, this weapon's damage profile couldn't match the likes of the ACR or even the UMP45 submachine gun.
10 Call Of Duty Black Ops: Uzi
Black Ops' Uzi might be the worst weapon in Call of Duty history. Typical contributors to a bad CoD weapon such as low base damage and iron sights are to be expected at this point, but what truly makes the Uzi so terrible is the gun's recoil pattern. Vertical recoil is off the charts while every shot also causes the Uzi to sway horizontally somewhat, meaning aiming down sights with this gun isn't a viable option. As a result, the Grip attachment is mandatory to make this gun remotely usable.
9 Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3: Dragunov
Semi-automatic sniper rifles get the short end of the stick in most Call of Duty multiplayer sandboxes. Modern Warfare 3's Dragunov is the best example of this, going from a solid gun in Modern Warfare 2 to a peashooter. This is because MW3 made this gun only one-tap to the head and the removal of Stopping Power. Infinity Ward tried to make up for this by letting the Dragunov use an ACOG Scope as an attachment. It just wasn't enough to compensate for the major damage nerf.
8 Call Of Duty Black Ops 2: Crossbow
Treyarch nailed the balance of Black Ops 2's weapons for the most part. Nearly every gun had a place in the sandbox excluding the Crossbow. It is an upgrade from the original Black Ops, now with a three-round magazine and faster reload times.
Despite the buffs, Black Ops 2's lethality is much faster than the first game in the series. Delayed kills with the explosive bolts weren't as large of an issue in the first game as they are in the sequel.
7 Call Of Duty Ghosts: MP-443 Grach
Pistols are commonly accepted as bad weapons in the Call of Duty franchise but the MP-443 Grach from Call of Duty: Ghosts needs a special mention. It can kill targets in as few as two shots—so long as the player is within two meters of the target.
That doesn't happen often. In practice, this gun typically takes three to five shots to kill someone. This is horrid when players consider just how powerful some of Ghost's weapons were.