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| Copyright: Activision/Sledgehammer Games |
Ah the Call of Duty franchise, where adults and
children alike can noob tube, camp, quick scope and rage quit all for the sake
of unlocking that sweet, sweet camo on a gun you won’t ever use again,
immediately after unlocking said camo.
I have been a fan of the COD series
going back to COD: World at War.
Meaning, I have spent my hard-earned money on nearly every iteration of these
games since November 2008. As of this writing that makes nearly a decade of
getting panic knife’d, wall bang’d, or some other such bullshit.
And you know what, every time I say “Never
again COD, you crossed the line. I’m out.” The very next year, almost without
exception*Ɨ I find myself eagerly
waiting to download the newest head-glitching, spawn-trapping maps, and what is
usually a solid campaign mode.
About now you are probably asking
yourself; “Geesh David, jump on the COD hate-bandwagon, go ahead it’s what all
the cool kids are doing.” That’s not what I mean to do here, because really, I love
the games, most of them anyway. I really do! In fact, I have been revisiting
COD WWII and playing the latest update, along with The War Machine
DLC, and have been enjoying it.
From camping as a noob in BO1 with
the Olympia, to going on a 30-0 run on BO3 in TDM. Both memories but a smile on
my face, though obviously for different reasons.
However, it seems we have reached a
point where COD has lost its luster for a lot of reasons. And rather than hate
on a franchise I love, I think I’d like to try and explain why.
1)
Increased In-Game Competition
For starters, no one likes a game
they aren’t good at. If you are horrible at something the odds of you sticking
with it without some measurable sense of improvement isn’t very likely. Winning
and doing well (whatever your definition of that might be) is a big piece of
what makes any game enjoyable.
Basically, if I am new to COD, and spawn
in only to repeatedly become cannon-fodder for more experienced players, that
probably isn’t going to fit my definition of fun. Because the casual players
have been recently/consistently migrating to other titles, the only ones that
left are those that have a higher skill level. Meaning, us COD fans have been thinning
the herd when it comes to noobs each and every year.
Couple this with the fact that as a
longtime COD player what once was a “good” game for me back in the WAW days,
would prompt me to Meh myself back to
playing Far Cry 5 by today's standards. A 15-8 TDM might not
be awful, but it doesn’t give me that endorphin rush of dropping 20 answered
kills before unleashing all my score streaks (or killstreaks) on the
unsuspecting opposition.
Simply put, the bar is higher now.
If I feel like my last game wasn’t as good as a previous one- or even compared
to a previous COD title- I might wrongly correlate that to the game straying
too far from its original formula, a futuristic setting, or whatever excuse I come
up with.
2)
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition
You
know who I feel sorry for is all those fan boys who buy Madden every year. I
mean $60 for a roster update…Oh ya, I’m a
COD fan, what’s your point?
Land, air, water, nighttime,
daytime, snow, rain, 2 lanes, 3 lanes, 5 lanes, sniper towers, secret passages
for flankers, tiny maps, big maps. There’s only so much you can do. In a lot of
ways every year COD gives us basically a dozen or so maps each year and they
splice in different guns, character abilities or what have you, and by and
large that’s fine to hold some people over and have them invest in the game for
another year. But if you are like me and you are honest with yourself, running
wild on the other team just doesn’t have the same feeling it did back in let’s
say MW2.
3)
The Impossibility of Giving Consumers What They “Want”
The first guy that tasted Coca-Cola
had no idea that he wanted a cola. In fact he didn’t know what the hell cola
was because it was a brand new beverage!
Realistically most of us don’t know
what we want until we’ve already tried it.
To further this notion, most of us
think we want something until we get what we asked for and it falls short of
our expectations. For years Activision gave us the same rinse, repeat formula,
until people starting complaining it was getting stale. Activision tried to
deliver something new, in the form of Advanced Warfare (and later Infinite
Warfare) and most of the COD community responded by taking a big ole’ creamy
dump on their efforts.
The fact is no one knows what the
next big thing in gaming is until it’s already here.
It is these three (interrelated) things
that I believe have given rise to other games like Fortnight, Overwatch, PUBG etc.
It is simply the more casual fans wanting something new and different. Not because
COD “sucks” or as the haters love to chant “COD is dead”.
The War Machine Itself
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| Copyright Sledgehammer Games |
On the bright side, concerning the titular
DLC/update for COD WWII, I believe Sledgehammer Games has definitely moved in
the right direction, the pace of the game has increased; the new maps don’t
seem as hopeless if you are not a rusher with a PPSH, and the changes to the
divisions offer a greater variety of customization in accordance with your play
style. Overall, the multiplayer feels much more fluid and “easier” than it did
previously.
If you haven’t jumped on in awhile, I
highly recommend you give it another try. Especially, if you are a noob, because
I really need to get my K/D up.
* I rented COD: Ghosts from a Redbox, played it for a day and returned it. Moved
slower than my bowels after a week on a low fiber diet.
Ɨ My brother hooked me up with a beta
access code for Infinite Warfare. The game play was so frenetic I was diagnosed
with ADHD after playing 3 matches of TDM.
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