So I figured Black Ops has been out long enough for people to make a judgement. What is your favorite of the COD franchise? Feel free to explain why.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare without a doubt. The singleplayer is awesome, and the multiplayer was pretty sweet! It's a shame Infinity Ward made a mess of MW2's campaign... Call of Duty 2 comes in second, but I haven't played Black Ops, and I have a feeling that it might take that place once I get around to it.

Indeed. For me CoD4 > Black Ops > others. Black Ops, however, gets credit for having my favorite multiplayer in the franchise. It just doesn't match the shock of CoD4's campaign for me.

Still, the balance online, and the presence of bots for local play, makes it an instant multiplayer favorite for me.

CoD2. Crashing on the beaches and climbing that cliff is arguably the most disturbing moment in gaming considering THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. *shutters*

For now: Black Ops

Call of duty 4! I've spent hundreds of hours playing online with friends and it was very fun. There were mods and dedicated servers (I even had my own server). MW2 was very annoying and my connection was terrible, comes last on my list. Cod WaW comes second because of the zombie mode.
Maybe I'll get Black Ops because of its dedicated servers on the PC version and because of the zombies! I hope I'm wrong and BO is better than COD 4.

Well I haven't played Black Ops online yet, but it definitely has the 2nd best SP after CoD 4, though quite a way behind CoD 4 as that was just so so good

Im gonna go with COD4. Black ops is awesome and has a lot of content for the price you pay. But I gotta go with (in my opinion) the game that started this all and thats Call of Duty 4. The core of the game is awesome and the kill streaks are nice and balance. That may be my issue with the following games. Killstreaks (in my opinion) should aid a team but not be the focus of the game. That was MW2 problem..the killstreaks became the focus. Black ops improves where MW2 messed up which is awesome but COD 4 was simple and efficient. COD:4 only problem is the lack of content after the games release..only one map pack kinda sucked. But still the game is awesome. In the end, I own COD 4 on the ds, 360 and the Wii....i really enjoyed the game.

Other: Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood because it's about Confederate gunslingers and revenge, which is awesome in itself. Plus it has such great voice acting that I don't even care that it's not technically a Call of Duty game (or even remotely one, but the name is kind of close!).

That's more like it.