Jimquisition: Defending Call of Duty

[kroldok]

Let me counter your arguments.

1:COD is artsy!!!!!11111
Counter: No. No at all. It does not need to be art either. Let's remember what happens when people don't understand how to mindfuck properly. I.E. THE MATRIX's later sequels. COD is a game that is not art.

Without providing a definition of the word 'Art' this statement makes very little sense.

Wikipedia:
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items (often with symbolic significance) in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect.

In this sense, videogames as a whole are definetly art, including CoD.

From Dictionary.com:
art [ahrt]
?noun
1. The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
2. The class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection.
3. A field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.
This one is a bit tricky since there is no included definition of 'aesthetic principles', however i would argue that the word appealing can easily be applied to videogames, and not just from a 'games are fun' perspective, but also as constructs of beauty with regards to visual and audio components.

Lastly, where exactly does he say "CoD is artsy"? The only time i hear him use the word is when he states that "..There's even quite a bit of commentary on the nature of war hidden underneath, for those artsy types who need a story with a message"
What he says is that if you go looking for drama while playing the game, you might actually find it, but this in no way means that you cannot enjoy the game as a straightforward, i-don't-care-about-drama-let-me-kill-something FPS.
The word 'Artsy' isn't even used about the game, and certainly not the CoD series as a whole.

 

[Gralian]

Excellent points. I understand the power fantasy angle, as I'm not exempt from that. I just get more power fantasy jolly from shooting lighting out of my hands than wielding an AK-47 with an attached grenade launcher.

Ah, but the fundamental difference is that you are exerting your power - dominance - over others. While you could say the same for the splicers in Bioshock, it often feels like the splicers are the one with the upper hand. They're everywhere, they're powerful in their own right, and every single one of them is out to get you. They are omnipresent, omniscient (if you count Ryan among Team Splicer) and arguably omnipotent as they have access to a lot of the powers and weapons you do, even some that you do not. (teleport) But that's not the focus of my point. Simply put: online. They say the biggest aspect of COD is the multiplayer, and all that comes down to the simple fact people want to try and be the alpha male and exert their dominance over everyone else. The game even facilitates this with the killcam. It's quite literally teabagging you for your death at someone else's hand.

Now, Bioshock 2 had a multiplayer, but it bombed. No-one enjoyed it. Setting aside the "it wasn't made well" points, compare it to COD. Everyone is 'powerful', has their own super powers and guns. But because of the nature of the combat - that is to say, you would shoot each other for a good minute or two before somebody drops - it was not quite the power play that COD is. COD is about immediate reflexes and quick responses to situations as well as catching people with their pants down rather than who has the biggest life bar. COD is played aggressively while Bioshock 2 is played defensively. It also brings into play my earlier points about inconsistency which i will continue below.

What bugs me the most about MW2 is that the gameplay was realistic, but the story and cutscenes were not. My suspension of disbelief was hurt when I thought, "No snowmobile, or snowmobile rider for that matter, could make a jump like that unscathed."

I didn't have this problem with World at War's campaign, which I enjoyed thoroughly. And as a history nerd, going through the campaign thinking to myself, "These are things that people ACTUALLY experienced..." was a mind-trip.

I concur with you here. The wacky plot did remove my immersion at times as well. Personally my favourite COD is the second one, simply because there were no outrageous "Oh snap!" moments. It was about WW2, the battle for Stalingrad, the battle in Africa, and the battles in France. It really hit home with me because as a lad i learnt all about the campaigns in WW2 in history class. It was relatable and the player never did anything outlandish. Anything you did was mostly in line with what the AI friendly soldiers were doing and it kept the world immersive and consistent.

I suppose that I place a lot of value in consistency of setting, whether realistic or unrealistic. You called Bioshock "inconsistent," and while I would agree that it is inconsistent with reality, I'd argue that it is very consistent in terms of its own fiction. It takes multiple shotgun blasts to the face to kill a mutant splicer, yes, but it also takes multiple shotgun blasts to the face to kill you, because, well, you are also a mutant splicer. Mutant splicers can survive attacks that would kill a normal human. Consistency.

Here is the crunch, the reason why i take issue with the consistency of Bioshock over the oddball moments of something like COD. Consistency of setting is not paramount to the immersion of the player. It's consistency of gameplay and to a lesser extent, consistency with how you expect a situation to change or react if it were in a real life scenario. None of us can shoot fire from our fingertips, but we would expect a certain outcome because of our knowledge of fire. Using the above example of multiplayer, it felt inconsistent because two players shooting grenades, rockets, shotgun shells, swarms of bees and fireballs don't know when either of them are going to die first. It's an "everything but the kitchen sink" method of combat that can make the player feel isolated from his or her own input. There is no real feedback. You could kill one guy in one shot, then have to dump everything into the next guy simply because of a difference in health. As a direct result, the combat is not as fluid as COD, where you know exactly what the score is. Everyone has a sliver of life and everyone will go down in one or two shots. This branches onto my main gripe about the inconsistencies with Bioshock's campaign. Yes you expect mutant splicers to take a payload to the face, but where the world is inconsistent is how in one 'level' or area it only takes a few pistol shots to drop a splicer, but in the next it takes several shotgun blasts to drop one or maybe more. I understand it's an arbitrary method of increasing the difficulty, but it makes the gameplay feel inconsistent, like the rules have suddenly been changed. This can frustrate the player. Going back to your earlier point about consistency of setting, what about games with diverse environments? You could be playing something like Bulletstorm where one minute you're in a space ship and the next you're outside in a lavish jungle, and then after that you're in a disco nightclub. The setting is far from inconsistent, but if anything, it's likely more pleasing to the player than having the same old thing thrown at them. Yet it's the gameplay that remains consistent. You know what the leash is going to do, you know how much damage your weapons will do, you know what enemy is cannon fodder and what requires more firepower. This keeps the game more consistent than Bioshock where the enemies for some inexplicable reason suddenly gain in power, meaning they require double the amount of shotgun blasts by the face while the player does not.

I definitely take your point about what is and isn't important being subjective. Narrative and gameplay hold different values of importance to different people, just like how some people play Mass Effect for the lore and the story and some people play it because it's a functional third person shooter. The environmental and gameplay mechanic inconsistencies may not bug people as much so long as it has a functional and consistent story.

Finally i would argue that, despite its more outlandish moments, COD's story was consistent. Perhaps not with reality, but it knew what it was and it stuck to its guns. The whole way through (MW, MW2, Black Ops) it was viciously self-aware of its heavily action based B-movie conspiracy plot complete with Jack Bauer moments and it played on that. It didn't try to be serious. (Being able to draw 'serious' messages about the nature of warefare is incidental) The fact it kept this wacky tone throughout means that it was consistent with itself, plotwise. Even if it did go for realism in gameplay and fantasy in story.

 

[Anthony Salkeld-Blears]

I gave up on COD single player after COD 4. I hate the endless enemy respawn until you reach a certain point and trigger the next cut scene. After 5 mins hanging back with a sniper rifle I realised I wasn't achieving anything, so I started running towards the enemy at all times - cue them predictably falling back. It's just a dumb gameplay mechanic that ruins the experience.

 

[Jawz 014]

You're defending CoD on the Escapist, one of the most sequel-phobic, anti-mainstream, "popular is bad (Unless it's Valve)", indie-snobby sites on the internet... that takes balls.

Anyway, the defenses have been pretty good. It's not the best defense, but it's good. And I do not like the whole "CoD players are dicks" mentalities.

I was wondering if I was the only one who thought that this was the wrong website audience for this topic...

 

[danhere]

You got better Jim. Good job.

Clips of games make it more entertaining too than just watching you at a podium.

 

[jovack22]

Episodes have been improving.
I enjoyed this one.

 

[Jopoho]

My problem with Call of Duty is that there is no way to distance yourself from the bulk of the killing and still be effective. I know that sounds like a retarded complaint for a shooter, but that's the reason I don't like many shooters. Even in objective based missions, you are only effective if you are killing and avoiding death. I have felt that halo does a slightly better job with the inclusion of vehicles, but even those end up being used mostly for killing. I would much prefer CoD if there was some way to hang back and provide support for my team that doesn't involve the use of a gun.

I know why this isn't ever used, but I still think it'd be cool if some players opted to be outside the field and were seriously just at a computer screen and designated the targets and activation of kill streak bonuses that the fighters earned. Everyone would hate it because they feel that they earned the kill streak and should get to pick targets and when to use it, but that's what I think would be awesome.

 

[Ap0ca1ypse]

I'm happy that there is someone defending COD, but I disagree with a few points.
Singleplayer is one thing. COD 4 excellently showed that a narrative could be great in a COD game, but MW2 and Black ops are lacking. I just think that the 2 games moved too fast and didn't really develop one area. There are two major areas throughout COD 4, Russian countryside and Arabic town (plus a few exceptions) and I never got bored of it. But in MW2 you spend, at most, 2 levels per area and in Black ops, only one level. For instance, the Kowloon level was awesome but went by too quickly for me to truly enjoy it. It could have been longer or been done in a second level.
Also, when it comes to multiplayer, COD 4 is great and Black Ops is pretty good, but I can't stand MW2 multiplayer. And yes, I know it's been said a million times before, but I think MW2 multiplayer is unbalanced. And yes one big reason is the noobtube. It's just too powerful and too easy to use. I understand it helps new people be integrated into the game, but people seem to only use that when I played and it was hard to counter, since it was pretty accurate, could kill you instantly in a pretty generous range, and could be reloaded infinitely. And past that there are more inbalances too, like some other overpowered weapons and fucked up killstreaks.

 

[instantbenz]

was there a cheese reference ... i'm not poking fun at anything weight related ... but eating cheese doesn't put you in the 'degenerate' slot of society ... at least not right now ... maybe soon

it doesn't matter what hobbies or pass times anyone is interested in and to be dissed on for enjoying one game in comparison to another is silly, but it's silly to the point of common sense ... pointless vid? maybe, but then comes the whole 'you're buying the same damn game 6 years in a row ... were you held back?' reason to be made fun of and i find it justified

especially justified if a gamer purchases every madden year after year ... there couldn't be a dlc to change rosters and playbooks could there? nope, milk that cow dry while you can ea ... while you can

 

[Aprilgold]

Thanks for this video, its a refreshing mouthwash from the shit sandwich that was "gun myth" over at extra credits. COD still sucks though... Battlefield 3 for life!!!! (It's a gameplay/mechanic thing) you understand.

I have to ask, why does everyone hate on Extra Credits for being Un-Professional, or Not fun, or for any other shit reason I can't think of, whats so bad about them, their informing, and doing it well. Then people go on to defend Jim as a hardcore critic, but truly is acting like a 19 year old, who thinks they know everything, anytime and anywhere.

Well when one says "everyone" that implies that well "every single person" hates on Extra Credits... and to fully answer your question I must explain that I have been watching Yahtzee and Movie Bob since they came to the escapist, and as such only recently branched out to the other video series offered here (I followed them to the escapist).

To give this some context, having of watched all the Extra Credit videos I will state that for the most part I found them informing, and insightful, as you have said. Mind you, my professional interest in video games has been in retail (brief stent at Gamestop middle/upper management). As a hobby a moddest modder with simulation (typically) being what I play... although I have owned (I think) every video game system that has ever been commercially available. As far as programming, my only working experience (as a programmer/designer) is the guidance systems for military equipment (hard and soft design) which is well, very similar to game design. Beyond that I hold several federal licenses concerning the construction and maintenance of civil and military equipment.

Specifically my issue is the EC video "myth of the gun", which too me, was the worst type of video I would normally relegate to the YouTube amateur hour, and for a couple of reasons. My experience with the subject matter concerning military equipment and military service, as well as, "Japanization" go far beyond what EC (green shirt guy) has credible experience with. I did not want to pre-judge anything in the video. However, there were just to many correlation's presented that do not stand up to inspection or utility of correlation, and just as you said about Jim, EC this time around, and in this video, were on the slippery slope of opinion being presented as fact.

In Jim's defense (and I have only watched 2 of his video's, this one being 1 of the 2) he states several times that this is "his opinion", and that gives him some wiggle room in the realm of subjectivity. Thats the beauty of being a critic on the front end. The only limited defense I would afford Jim is that he strikes me as looking for his "voice", as an actor or mass communications /drama major/professional. To say 'thats really Jim' would be somewhat missing the mark I would think. As a professional "hard core" critic? No, I am not obliged to agree with that statement. A good game critic is like a Foodie on Iron Chef, they must know a LOT about the subject matter, and perhaps cook, to properly act or be accepted as peer review... this is often missing from reviews and review sites, beyond that is simply taste and learning if a critic has the same taste as yourself. Try to bear in mind that 'knowing a lot' and 'being a know it all' are two very different things.

Much of the information presented in the EC video was either 'tag line' non sequitur or factually inaccurate. This was unfortunate, simply due to the fact that EC is generally, pretty good at what they do. It was to me an F performance (and I am not the only one that pointed this out), from a series that before that video had not done worse than a C+ / B- before. I suspect that the reason for this was that James was not involved with the video, and green shirt kid, was left holding the bag and needed to meet a deadline. Baring that my next argument is that he (green shirt) does not have a very good grasp of the information that is in front of him, and rather than doing any real research scrambled for some 'wiki links' to cover his ass, and it came off very white bread middle class weeaboo to me (urban slang) or Oriental-ism considering the context of the video, though to be fair, falls somewhere in between.

If the next EC video is that poor, I won't be watching it anymore in the future, so it won't be my problem. As far as Jim is concerned, I don't see myself going out of my way to watch him yet, not in the same way that I drink afternoon coffee with the excitement of watching Yahtzee every Wednesday, and too a slightly lessor extent Bob. I am obviously not in high school so high school opinion does not carry the weight that it perhaps does with others... its a matter of target audience, and EC missed it with me.

Now, look again at my comment, I said mouthwash...

Do you keep mouthwash in your mouth all day? Do you drink it?

No, no...

What it was, (this video), was decent, and honest, honestly refreshing coming off EC's dribble, and in many ways far superior to the other video I have watched of his. It's still mouthwash, hardly a good wine but it's getting there, the kid has some talent.

Thanks, I will definetly implement correct changes not to sound like an ass on this community, so thank you very much, you've been very informitive.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Excellent points. I understand the power fantasy angle, as I'm not exempt from that. I just get more power fantasy jolly from shooting lighting out of my hands than wielding an AK-47 with an attached grenade launcher.

Ah, but the fundamental difference is that (with the AK-47) you are exerting your power - dominance - over others. ... They say the biggest aspect of COD is the multiplayer, and all that comes down to the simple fact people want to try and be the alpha male and exert their dominance over everyone else. The game even facilitates this with the killcam. It's quite literally teabagging you for your death at someone else's hand.

You got me there. I'm not a particularly competitive person. Most of the time, I'd rather drop into a power fantasy that is about me vs. the world (single player) or me and my friends vs. the world (co-op). I can definitely get into a serious competitive multiplayer session every once in a while (I particularly enjoyed the multiplayer in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood) but all in all, the competitive multiplayer aspect doesn't have the same draw for me as it does (apparently) so many others.

Here is the crunch, the reason why i take issue with the consistency of Bioshock over the oddball moments of something like COD. Consistency of setting is not paramount to the immersion of the player. It's consistency of gameplay and to a lesser extent, consistency with how you expect a situation to change or react if it were in a real life scenario. None of us can shoot fire from our fingertips, but we would expect a certain outcome because of our knowledge of fire. Using the above example of multiplayer, it felt inconsistent because two players shooting grenades, rockets, shotgun shells, swarms of bees and fireballs don't know when either of them are going to die first. It's an "everything but the kitchen sink" method of combat that can make the player feel isolated from his or her own input. There is no real feedback. You could kill one guy in one shot, then have to dump everything into the next guy simply because of a difference in health. As a direct result, the combat is not as fluid as COD, where you know exactly what the score is. Everyone has a sliver of life and everyone will go down in one or two shots. This branches onto my main gripe about the inconsistencies with Bioshock's campaign. Yes you expect mutant splicers to take a payload to the face, but where the world is inconsistent is how in one 'level' or area it only takes a few pistol shots to drop a splicer, but in the next it takes several shotgun blasts to drop one or maybe more. I understand it's an arbitrary method of increasing the difficulty, but it makes the gameplay feel inconsistent, like the rules have suddenly been changed. This can frustrate the player. Going back to your earlier point about consistency of setting, what about games with diverse environments? You could be playing something like Bulletstorm where one minute you're in a space ship and the next you're outside in a lavish jungle, and then after that you're in a disco nightclub. The setting is far from inconsistent, but if anything, it's likely more pleasing to the player than having the same old thing thrown at them. Yet it's the gameplay that remains consistent. You know what the leash is going to do, you know how much damage your weapons will do, you know what enemy is cannon fodder and what requires more firepower. This keeps the game more consistent than Bioshock where the enemies for some inexplicable reason suddenly gain in power, meaning they require double the amount of shotgun blasts by the face while the player does not.

I definitely take your point about what is and isn't important being subjective. Narrative and gameplay hold different values of importance to different people, just like how some people play Mass Effect for the lore and the story and some people play it because it's a functional third person shooter. The environmental and gameplay mechanic inconsistencies may not bug people as much so long as it has a functional and consistent story.

Finally i would argue that, despite its more outlandish moments, COD's story was consistent. Perhaps not with reality, but it knew what it was and it stuck to its guns. The whole way through (MW, MW2, Black Ops) it was viciously self-aware of its heavily action based B-movie conspiracy plot complete with Jack Bauer moments and it played on that. It didn't try to be serious. (Being able to draw 'serious' messages about the nature of warefare is incidental) The fact it kept this wacky tone throughout means that it was consistent with itself, plotwise. Even if it did go for realism in gameplay and fantasy in story.

In regards to the "ramping up" of enemies as you move through the game, it didn't really strike me as so inconsistent. You make a really good point, but I just assumed that since modifying yourself with Adam gradually made you stronger, the splicers could grow stronger too, and it makes sense that Ryan would keep the stronger ones closer to his sanctum.

Yeah... I know it seems like I'm grasping at straws, and it really comes down to the age-old "RPG problem" wherein it really doesn't make to much sense that by taking an "endgame" character back to a starting area you are effectively a god. But, with the Adam as a plot device, I think Bioshock gets around this problem better than most games with RPG-style character power growth.

In terms of the Bioshock vs. MW2 scenario we keep revisiting, they both have their challenges in terms of immersion and maintaining suspension of disbelief:

-MW2 tells me that two well-aimed pistol shots mean death but a ridiculous snowmobile jump will leave me, my friend, and my vehicle sitting pretty. This makes no sense.

-Bioshock tells me that certain "people" can take multiple shotgun blasts before they die and these "people" become even more resilient as I get deeper into the city. If I ask "Why?" it expects me to accept a "Ryan made it happen" or "it's because of the Adam" plot device as a sufficient answer.

I find the latter to be less immersion-breaking because I value the consistency of how the rules that govern my character in terms of story also govern my character in terms of gameplay, and vice-versa. Like you said, it really comes down to subjective importance. In a game that prominently features a story, I place a lot of emphasis (maybe too much) on the narrative quality of the game and I believe that the rules of the narrative should govern the gameplay. As such, I'm more willing to accept gameplay/plot devices like "Adam makes it work" than I am willing to accept gritty realistic gameplay back-to-back with over-the-top unrealistic narrative.

Hmm, this just now makes me realize that World at War may be the one of the most overall consistent games I've ever played, and even though I didn't realize it at the time, it was arguably one of the most immersing gaming experiences I've had.

 

[Aprilgold]

I find it funny to this date, this far in. People who don't like him and don't like his videos, continue to watch so they can come onto a thread and tell us of how "horrible" he is.

I only come for the comments. I hate the dude, but usually only comment after reading all the comments at the time and see the gist of the episode through the comments.
I recall one of the previous comments [a older videos of his] coming from a bunch of people was that they only also came for the comments, but every time they click the proper place to see the comments, it counts as a video view, not a page view.

 

[Nekuia]

You're right a lot of things, Jim. CoD is a great game. The multi mood was fun for a time, but yeah, some people are swearing teens, who needs a good slay; they ruin it for me. There is nothing worse then being called names by some kid who got the worse K/D and is the highest level only because he played a lot.

The newest CoD is a drain. The money plus level to get your weapons, is annoying; and really took me away form the game. I would of rather payed for it with a higher cost depending at level or powers it had.

On that topic, I found CoD to be a big grind. Alot of the newer shooters are though... It's painful. Give me the older Class based with no changing gear any day~

Frankly CoD has become a little over baring and samey. I enjoyed the way CoD 3's online played and the style MW had, but now it's just the same thing with new or more weapons and on a new map.


Those are my complaints to the CoD style of game play. I'm by now someone has posted something like this, in their own way. No matter~ I'm to lazy to read the 16 some pages.

 

[The Rockerfly]

Jim, I have to give it to you that took balls to make a video about. On The Escapist we are known for the levels of art snobbery and elitism that saying the most popular gaming franchise is good is going to cause some nerds on here to rage.

I love the COD series, they are fun and I am so sick of the idiots here saying I should be punished for liking the series.

 

[AngryBritishAce]

The only time I hate CoD is when a new one is released and the next 6 months afterwards.
This is me and my friends BEFORE BlOps was released:

Me: "Hey, want to go on Red Dead?"
Friends: "Yeah! I love that game!"

M: "Bungie just added a new game type to REACH. Let's check it out!"
F: "Awesome!"

M: "Got anytime for some GTA?"
F: "Yes it's soo fun to mess about on their!!!"

Then...

M: "Hey, want to go on Red Dead?"
F: "pfft, CoDs so much better buy that"

M: "Hey, what happened to Halo?"
F: "God, that's the worst game ever, totally wripped off from CoD (which baffles me, as it's NOT)"

M: "Anything but CoD... Please?"
F: "What do you have in mind?"
M: "...uhhh... How about GTA?"
F: "It is not CoD, so no"

Everytime a new CoD is released, my Xbox Live becomes incredibly lonely. Yes, playing it is alright. I would play it too if I hadn't of had other games I wanted to play in my spare time, but really? My friends on weekends get up at 7:00am, and Play CoD until 9:00pm. Only now are about 50% of my friends playing something else, but with MW3 round the corner, I feel like I'm about to lose them again.

Thankfully 3 people said they don't want MW3, so I'll at least have th... oh, no wait.

 

[jamesmax]

thats all i got to say

 

[quhouv vhqwiufv qwiu]

"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a game which defined what a modern multiplayer shooter could be".

Wrong, that would be Team Fortress 2.

Jim is doing a great job of embarrassing himself. He didn't acknowledge any od the main reasons people tend to dislike COD.

Boring environments.
No innovative mechanics.
No teamwork

etc...

There's no reason that the game that you apparently prefer couldn't also define what a modern multiplayer shooter could be (since it isn't just one thing that defines what a modern multiplayer shooter is), although that doesn't make jim wrong.

However stating your own opinion as fact is actually quite wrong.
According to my own taste the only thing team fortress did right was it's colour palette.

Don't quote something from the first page.

 

[GlorySeeker]

Eh. I agree with it to a degree, though I dont like the fact that I do. I personally am not a big fan of Call of Duty. I thought Cod4 was very good. But MW2 didnt really do it for me. Not my cup of tea. But he is right(reluctantly) about some people bashing it, just cause its popular.

And I dont agree with his saying that MoH copied CoD. MoH was around before CoD, am I right? Or is he talking about the most recent installment, which I have not played.