Jimquisition: Defending Call of Duty

Taerdin

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Being popular doesn't necessarily make something bad, but it certainly is a strong indicator.

If something has reached the level of generic-ness and mass appeal required to become the top seller in a medium, that often means it doesn't speak strongly enough to someone for it to be the best or most meaningful experience for a specific group or person.

For instance, imagine having to order a single pizza to share with 8 people. Some people like anchovies, some people like peppers, etc. But for a pizza to appeal to everyone it might have to be just cheese, because every person has their own specific tastes that come into conflict with each other. But just because they are all willing to eat that cheese pizza doesn't make it the 'best' pizza, just the one that has the common denominator between all of the people.

In fact I love food analogies when it comes to popularity and the quality of the product. You may find people who will argue until the end of time that Justin Bieber is the height of artistic meaning and achievement in music, but few will say that McDonalds sells the most hamburgers because they are made of top quality ingredients.

GundamSentinel said:
People will always be hating on what's popular, because that's what the 'cool kids' do
I hate when people put on that whole 'people hate what's popular because it's cool' nonsense. It's not cool to be critical of what's popular. What's cool is to like the same thing everyone else likes, to be in with the popular crowd.

Having standards is the loneliest thing a person can do, and it's practically never out of choice. I would love to think that the media which surrounds me is truly meaningful and entertaining. I wish I could go back to only listening to songs on the radio, only watching big dumb blockbuster flicks, and only playing the games everyone else around me plays, but once I saw that there was more to life than what was placed directly in front of my nose it became impossible to go back.

I wish more people were critical, and more willing to admit the faults even in things they enjoy. But instead we have a strange kind of world where it seems like you either love something to the point of ignorance and blindness of any even somewhat critical views of it, or you're a hater who just disses the things people likes to be 'cool'. When really it's far more likely that neither of these things are true, and people just have a really hard time truly expressing their feelings and views on things in general.

I could ramble forever, and I tend to have my point missed completely no matter how much I type... so I'll just stop now.
 

Sach

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I hope they get rid of this terrible show soon. Seriously, it's like he can't figure out if he wants to be more like Yahtzee, MovieBob, or an angsty 12 year old, so he tries too hard to be all 3.
 

Mauso88

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Feb 3, 2011
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CoD exists, love it or hate it. Cast opinions across the internet at people about it.

Just remember, no-one puts a gun to your head to play it and above all things it's just a game, something you play to enjoy and experience.

It's fun, challenging and refining your game-play and MP create a class is something a perfectionist like me enjoys to no end.

I just think they should bolster the SP for MW3. I think if you make the SP more engaging, more players would look favourably on it. Rather than burning through or plain disregarding it in favour of the MP.

One question I have is, if more people dislike CoD because of the SP and how many for the MP and would improvement in those areas, make them look more favourably on the series?
 

Harbinger_

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Scrumpmonkey said:
Mr. Omega said:
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.
Or maybe jim is doing what he always does and is being a despirate troll.

Exactly. Also way to be a complete and total asshole (Not you but Jim) and insult soldiers everywhere and what they fight for.
 

Trig0n

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Does anybody know the name of the song playing during the intro and credits? I didn't see its name mentioned anywhere.

On Topic though: I don't have a problem with COD as a game. But I just don't play live much because of those very vocal children, wich makes the game really not worth buying considering how the campaign isn't worth 60 dollars alone. I don't want anti-sematic drivel spouted at me every time I stab a guy.

Though I do have friends who are completely lovely people and play COD, though they agree with me about the screaming children.
 

hitheremynameisbob

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subtlefuge said:
Frozen Donkey Wheel2 said:
subtlefuge said:
People went back and captured Osama? That's news.
....Not really, it happened several weeks ago. Also, "killed", not "captured".
But Jim said captured like 5 times. I trust him implicitly.

Can't keep it up. You really thought I was being serious. Really?
Yeah, I had a good chuckle at that, too. Jim must be responsible for his capture, because he's the ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS HE'S STILL ALIVE! What other explanation could there be?
 

Henry_spartan

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BlacklightVirus said:
"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...
Wrong, that would be Team Fortress 2.


All Team fortress has introduced to this generation of shooters is providing lots of little transactions for things which don't enhance the game in a plausible way. If Team fortress was as influential as CoD, wouldn't every FPS game be a Cartoon-ish teamwork oriented affair with lots of silly hats? I'm not hating on team fortress, it would be nice if more games conformed to its ideals but im nt sure thats the case right now
 

Mallefunction

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This video and your last are definitely much better than your first 3 submissions. I like the more serious attitude that you've developed (still light-hearted, but it's not all over the place like before). Also, I enjoy that it's not a copy of EC (because they describe games from the point of a designer while you capture more of what the players see) but you still manage to show off your knowledge while not being a prat like Yahtzee.
 

Oisin XD

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Oct 15, 2009
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Jimquisition got a lot better in a hurry. I was originally of the opinion that Jim should have done a weekly column or something instead, staying in the written media, but this proves me wrong. Good stuff.

Also, I agree with the general sentiment that it's not automatically shit because it's popular. Same goes for film and music, why not games?
 

Jonny49

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Srdjan Tanaskovic said:
Also here are some arguments COD have for hating it and thinking it ruined FPS

Linearity
Rechargeable health
More time spent on making the Multiplayer then Singeplayer
Makings games to brown and gloom
Limit weapons
Linearity in FPS games existed way, WAY before COD came along.
Halo
Quake, Medal of Honour, Counter-Strike, Doom, The original Team Fortress ect...
Halo.

OT: It's good to see someone defend CoD for a change. As long as it's good, I'll keep buying it.
 
Jan 27, 2011
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Why do you hide all the GOOD arguments in the second half of the video Jim? I almost closed the episode halfway through and would have missed them!

So in the end some very good arguments were made which made me think a bit deeper about my distaste for CoD.

But I still dislike it.

1) The gameplay just doesn't appeal to me. I like the perk system, but I don't like the whole "you die in 2.5 hits" thing. To me, it feels like "whoever sees the other player first automatically wins".

2) I also don't like the whole modern warfare setting. It just....doesn't appeal to me. I like "out there" kinds of settings. Like TF2, or borderlands, or Mass Effect, or Vanquish or what-have-you. Those feel way more interesting to me. Not to mention I find real weaponry to be boring as well. I like my weapons to have something cool to them, rather than just being pieces of metal that go bang and kill things. Take Borderlands again for a sec. While technically, my "static law" is a magnum that shoots and kills things like a normal gun, it also makes giant lightning explosions. I find that automatically more cool than just plain old bullets.

And...That's all I can think of right now. Might be back later to add more.
 

-Samurai-

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tomany2 said:
Unfortunatly, Call Of Duty didn't start the "Unlocks with levels", that would be battlefield 2's doing. So i guess you could call Activision the copy cats.
Not even close. Hell, CoD:UO(the expansion to the first game. I know. Shockingly the series didn't start at CoD4) had mortars that you unlocked when you got 40 kills, reaching a certain rank. That was their first dive into rank based rewards.
CoD:UO came out in 2004, and BF2 came out in 2005.

I'm not at all saying that CoD started the rewards and what not, but they certainly didn't copy it from Battlefield 2.
 

sergnb

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I agree 100% with this video. It's a shame that I have to hide among my PC gaming friends that I play CoD on a regular basis on my PS3.

CoD is not ONLY populated by kids, it's just they they are THE LOUDEST of the users, so obviously, the first (and sometimes the only ones) you notice.

Hey, guys? Here's a solution. It's called muting mic. And in extreme cases of butthurt, there's this thing called blacklist (not sure about 360 there tho) where you can throw away usernames... and voila! all of their incoming PM's get automatically discarded!

Seriously, stop acting like you are better, you are not.
 

sumanoskae

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As a game, I don't think CoD is bad at all, it's just overrated. The problem I see with CoD is that it's approaching monopoly status. At this point, the release date of a game can literally be dominated by weather or not CoD is releasing a sequel that year.

CoD is like a sports franchise, and because of it, FPS's dominate the market. They've become the easiest and most profitable games to make, thus publishers and producers are more reluctant to back games outside of that genre.

A similar issue arises with Gears of War, there are loads of games that seem to default to 3rd person cover shooting in place of an original gameplay model.

Take Kane and Lynch or Army of Two for instance, two games that appear to have barely one original though under their belt, but were both released presumably on the grounds that they were kinda like GoW, meanwhile, talented people with great ides for games are stumped because they've never had dinner with Cliff B.
 

JasonBurnout16

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Have to agree with this episode, he brings up good points and actually talks some sense for once.

And yes I enjoy COD. And I'm not a 12 year old kid (Which is a stupid stereotype anyway since the invention of party chat - your lucky to have 1 person on the mic in public games anymore)
 

MonkeyPunch

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One thing I will agree on is that too many people automatically look down on CoD players. You constantly read stuff like "CoD is only for bro-gamers" etc.

On the other hand if you dislike CoD you often just get shoe-horned into the 'haters' category.

I really enjoyed MW but I stopped buying CoD games after they ruined MW2's multiplayer with IWNET and started re-hashing scenes from MW for the single player. But really it's the multiplayer aspect that ruined everything for me.

Another reason I didn't buy BLOPS was because I started seeing how Activision is starting down the whole DLC/micro transaction route which is not something I want to help nurture.
In fact I wish less people would mindlessly buy the games and then after the purchase complain about DLC prices etc.

If you like the game and don't mind what Activision is doing with DLC and MP then fine, go ahead and spend you dough on it, though.