Jimquisition: Defending Call of Duty

Baresark

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He is right. CoD doesn't suck. Blops sucks. CoD has been fun since the very first one I played all those years ago, and Modern Warfare was the perfect iteration of it. It would be nice if the CoD games themselves could move on in a good way, and I don't mean by not having dedicated server support. I don't usually like the Jimquisition, but I really enjoyed this episode because what he said makes perfect sense.
 

weker

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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.

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.
you seem to misunderstand escapist opinions they seem open to all plays.. hell loads like halo.
 

V8 Ninja

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It's nice to see Jim Sterling is getting back on track with these Jimquisitions. Most of the recent ones, specifically starting around the time the first Escapist episode of the show was unveiled, felt like Jim was just showing off that he could say whatever he wanted with or without justification (although he did usually have good enough justification).

As for the actual topic, I never really got into the COD-style multiplayer mostly because I found old-school multiplayer more fun and also because the whole leveling-up scheme just seems like a ploy on the developer's part to make you play the game more. In my opinion, how many hours you rake up in a game's multiplayer should not be because of how much time you put into trying to unlock that explosive crossbow.
 

ProjectTrinity

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Alright, now *actually* argue the valid points instead of the easy to debate points. Someone else on Escapist does that; I'd rather not see another. ' -'
 

getofish

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I guess ill put my two cents into this because iv ben playing cod for a while and have had a good if not shaky relathinship.

I started cod 2 on my xbox when i was like 12 and it was my first real online fps i started playing, needless to say it kicked as and i loved it and when i get a headset after my voice dropped thanks to puberty i found myself enjoying the people. It also introduced me to a hard as hell campaign if you put it on vertern. ( Yes halo was hard but if it was on legendary and you put it on 2p it become alot easier)

Then along came cod 3, it was diffrent, very diffrent. but i gave it a try while it was not as good as 2 i thought it was very enjoyable buit i sort of relized i had pumped 120 bucks into this game franchise and at 13 years old thats alot of money for me. so thinking on that and trying to get as into cod 3 as i did cod 2 i relized that it was growing a tad bit stale and i thought if this stayed the same for cod 4 i was going to have to bow out of the cod serious

AND DAMN WAS I WRONG

cod 4 came along, this is when was first in highschool or finishing middle school (i forget) but alot of my freinds were hooked into based of how cool it looked in all the trailers. So being a cod fan for the last three years or so i went out and got my hands on it, and it blew my mind. it was incredble diffrent and i fell inlove with call of duty all over again. it had hooked me back in with how the online mode worked and i couldnt get enough of it. (but like all things it does get stale.)

bring in waw (DIDNT GET RIGHT AWAY)

Instead i played alot of mw1 and when mw2 came out i got my hands on that and played it....alot......way to much...as to the point it was getting really boring.....REALLY FUCKING BORING......uggggghhhh iv put over 50 hours into the online mode and i allready finisehd the campain mode.

so i went and got waw

i was not impressed so much so i didnt play to much. it was getting old i was growing tired of the formula

then black ops......uggghhh. i played it for maybe 12 hours...i was so fucking bored... but my brothers wanted to play it all the time because they were really getting into cod when black ops rolled around..... and i had to play it with them..... and now im so tired of the cod franchise...

while yes some of you may look at the post and say thats only a few years between how could you grow stale on that... please remeber im trying to compact about 6 years of cod history and easily over 1000 put into the cod franchise for online play.

Now we are getting to mw3. I will stay hopeful, i will grab it but in all honesty it might just be for my brothers... it infinty ward can make a revolution to it like they did for cod 3 to mw1 i will fall back in love.... if not i think iv just grown tired of the franchise.


story time for mw2- i got mw2 on christmass.. we were moveing the next day. m room had nothing in it but a tv and an xbox. i stayed up[ all night playing it till i beat it. one of the coolest nights of my life.



So yeah thats how i feel, just growing very stale with me (if you want the summary)
 

KFalcon

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hawkeye52 said:
Completely agree here.

The game isn't fantastic, but at the time of CoD4, it did have a particular unique game style while introducing a fairly new number of concepts, this was then undone by the same formula being used over and over and OVER again in every flaming place in the sequels (e.g. sprawling about in slo-mo happens so often in Black Ops it becomes tedious, the once or twice this happend in CoD4 it was actually a WTF moment and well placed).

Multiplayer has gone further down the drain since MW as outlined by hawk, moving to P2P was the worst idea. The introduction of paying for DLC, the piss poor map design's and the console ports style games, (MW2/Black Ops), have been so poorly optimized they might as well give up on the pc market. They've just proceeded to cripple the series further and have fallen far away from the pinnacle in my eyes.

One hopes that they can actually be kinda UNIQUE again by introducing some new ideas and concepts in MW3 but i doubt it. Here's to hoping BF3 is actually like BF2 and has the original Battlefield Spin on things.
 

Warforger

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OniaPL said:
Don't know why I'm still awake but this was a pleasant surprise.

And also nice to see someone defend this franchise for a while. Black Ops was my first COD- game and I clocked a total of 150 hours. It was a simply good game.

And I'm not a hardcore online shooter fan.
Erm no, the thing he didn't seem to address was the series, yes Cod4 was a good game, no one seems to be disputing that at all, the problem was that every game after was just the same thing with a new campaign and multiplayer updates and they still charge you full price for a new game and they keep getting away with it, MW2 for example just ruined alot, a shorter more outrageous campaign with a ridiculous story, an attempt to garner coverage with the airport level etc. etc., then they added in Zombies because they ran out of idea's on top of a new WW2 shooter, then they just made one about the Cold War conflicts with Zombies still. They've ran out of idea's and they're just milking the franchise at this point, it's not like CoD4's multiplayer server's are down they're still filled, the only reason people are buying the new games are because their friends are getting it and they want to play with their friends.
 

fooddood3

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Zhukov said:
*sigh*

Y'know... when this guy is making points and arguing his case he actually comes across as intelligent, reasonable and articulate.

But then he goes and peppers it with that juvenile strawman crap. It's like a kid in a playground going "nyah nyah nyah". He is not helping his case. Because now when I think of CoD fans, I'm not going to be thinking of swearing 12 year olds, I'm going to be thinking of this guy in his flower hat saying, "Ohhh, all games have to comment on the human condition" in a stupid voice. Which is hardly an improvement.

And yes, I am aware that he does it on purpose and it's not meant to be taken entirely seriously. But at the end of the day, intentionally juvenile and annoying is still juvenile and annoying.

...

PS. Black Ops has a well paced narrative? That's the funniest thing I've heard in quite some time. CoD:MW? Sure. MW2? Eh... pushing it. Blops? Ha!
That's a good thing, right? Personally, I giggle when I think of that image. Also, BlOps had a decent story IMO, miles above MW2.
 

Deadman Walkin

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Here are some legitimate arguments. Look at MW2 for PC. No dedicated servers, no modding, 18 player max, lag issues due to no dedicated servers. It was a joke on the PC. To make it worse there was wide spread hacking in the first 3-4 months of its release, approx 1/2 games I got into there was a hacker shooting me in the head from across the map.

What other reason do I need to never buy another CoD game? I loved CoD 2 and CoD 4 so much. However after MW2 I won't ever buy one again. Yes I did try Black Ops, no I did not like it.
 

bushwhacker2k

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Sylocat said:
*sigh* Is his solution to each complaint about his overacting just to overact even more? Is he deliberately trying to try way too hard to be funny? Is his intention to come off as desperate "ironically?"
This is why I don't understand this show overall, it'd be fine if this was a show someone does on youtube, but why is this on the escapist? After watching zero punctuation, unskippable and extra credit, it's neither that funny nor does it really have any new, interesting points that haven't been considered before.

---

He's complaining about people shallowly writing off games and retaliates by shallowly writing off the arguments of people who dislike games he likes. -_-

I'm going to say it again, I don't understand why the jimquisition exists, he isn't saying anything that hasn't been said before.

The video pretty much says "I like Modern Warfare" and that's fine! but the sweeping statements aren't exactly intellectually-stimulating.

---

Maybe I'm being too harsh, I suppose he is just responding to unreasonable people with unconstructive arguments. But then this is something that someone would make a forum thread about, not a video that is hosted on the Escapist... I just don't get it.
 

kroldok

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Textblock incoming:
Raiyan 1.0 said:
kroldok said:
While CoD may not need defending, it's players (some of them at least) certainly do.
Every time the "kiddies" and "fratties" scream "WIN" and spew bile over all non-CoD players, everyone else screams "FAIL" and spew bile over all CoD players ("an army of millions of frat boys and 13 year old tards" as i belive they are here represented).

This is the core point of this video, that you simply cannot judge other people based on something as arbitrary as their prefered choice of entertainment, and what it mostly comes down to is a generalisation of a large group of people.
But by saying that all those people who dislike CoD are (as he puts rather derogatorily) 'artsy fartsy types' or ' just going with the trend', isn't he making broad generalized stereotypes himself? For example, as I already mentioned, I believe CoD doesn't deserve to be the best-selling game on the PC as the last 2 sequels were very poor unoptimized ports. How do I fall into any of his preset camps?

Fact is, Jim's just trolling back.
First of all, just went through the video twice in a row and he doesn't actually say either of those things, at least not as straight quotes.
The 'Artsy fartsy' character he portrays states:
"What on earth are you talking about? I understand that videogames are supposed to be art, and Call of Duty could never be art.
Where is the tutorial that tells you the complete opposite of what your'e supposed to do to blow your mind. Where's the commentary on the stark nature of the human condition that all videogames should have, this is not good"
Basically, this character makes a broad generalization about CoD players, nowhere is it insinuated that Jim himself hates 'artsy gamers' or people who hate CoD, he does however hate the people who hate him for enjoying CoD, and there is a big difference.

Towards the end of the video he sums it up quite nicely:
"Somebodys intellect is not reflected in the games they like, there are some who play CoD and only Cod, and there are plenty of others who enjoy the games as part of a balanced diet of software. Call of Duty isn't perfect, Activision may soon be running the series into the ground if rumors of spinoffs are true and $15 mappacks can go f*** themselves. But at the heart of the series there are good games to be had, and theyr'e enjoyed by more than just mindless fragheads. And if you have a legitimate argument against the series and it's players other than simply 'Derp, it's stupid' i'm more than willing to listen"

Trolling? oh yes he is.
However i think this is a good thing, it's easy to enjoy Zero Punctuation because the target is developers, and it's easy to enjoy extra credits because the provide in-depth look into the industry, the problem is neither of them properly adress the in-house culture of the gamers themselves, and the 'inbreeding' that tends to come along when tight enough groups form, Jims trolling is directed at us the players, and i like that idea, it provokes thought, at least for me, even though alot of what he says have been said before (most notably the sexism episode), he does put a spin on it that i quite enjoy.
 

GooBeyond

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Nov 12, 2009
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this guy is just trying too hard to prove hes "Different" .

EDIT - im hoping for a debate between this guy and yahtzee ...
 

AyreonMaiden

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Swifteye said:
I'm really digging this guy he's real escapist material I mean look how much he gets under people's skin with his. Everything. Just like Yathzee and moviebob. James will be our nice guy. Movie bob will be the nerd. Yathzee the Cynic. and now Jim our narcissist. They are the archetypes of the escapist. Kneel before them.
Don't know that I'd kneel, but I totally agree with this take. I never really thought Yahtzee was narcissistic and trollish like Jim, just overly critical and cynical.

At any rate, great episode as always. I've never played Call of Duty, but I'm always for appreciating games for what they are and not setting my expectations way outside reality.

Also, seeing the "Truth, Pride, Garme Jurnalizm!" slogan made me happier this week than the previous ones thanks to Fox News attacking the NEA for classifying games as art. I read Kotaku and The Escapist's articles on it and it's hilarious to me how these "journalists" can't hold their indignation in when writing about it. It's always been a pet peeve of mine to see opinions bleed into "news" items. That's what editorial columns are for. When articles like that show up it always serves to remind me that no, blog columnists are NOT journalists.
 

Agayek

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Oct 23, 2008
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Some valid points, but also some invalid points. Or rather, valid counter-arguments to ridiculously overblown original statements.

Call of Duty, the series, is quite good from a mechanical perspective. The gameplay is excellent, and anyone who says the multiplayer experience is anything less than near perfect from an execution standpoint needs to remove themselves from the gene pool.

That said, Call of Duty has had some terrible, terrible problems in just about everything else. Modern Warfare/COD4 is one of the greatest shooters ever made. Period. Everything about it was excellent. I honestly can't think of any valid complaints about any of it.

Every game since then, though, has suffered from a single problem that is expressed in a number of ways. They are fundamentally simple multiplayer games with delusions of singleplayer complexity. World at War, Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops had terrible, terrible single player games. World at War being the closest they've come to acceptability. It's not a matter of popularity. The simple fact of the matter is, in order to churn out games every year, they removed the components they felt unimportant, aka the singleplayer.

On a final note, the whole "COD kids" thing as an insult is actually valid, in a weird way. The reasoning behind it is that COD is hugely popular. Thus, it appeals to the lowest common denominator (aka, the stupids). Thus, if you like COD, you are the lowest common denominator.

Is it true in all cases? Not at all, but that doesn't mean it's not mostly true. Stereotypes exist for a reason after all.
 

vxicepickxv

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Sep 28, 2008
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Srdjan Tanaskovic said:
Jim just remember


Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good *looks at Twilight*
Wo, I would have gone for a Beiber, whatever the hell that is as a target myself.

The biggest problem with the Call of Duty series is that it's too predictible. Release game in November, release map pack 1 a few months later, release map pack 2 a few months after that, then release new game a few months later, in November. That's 120 bucks a year for what?

What real benefit would I get out of doing it? The short as hell campaign(that seems to get shorter every year), the fact that the only people with microphones that I know of are those loud ass ignorant teenagers, or the fact that I can't keep playing with my friends unless I spend the mony on a slightly new game and new maps?

I wish Activision would sell a Multiplayer only edition of a CoD game at 5 bucks cheaper, just to see how little they need to pretend to cater to people who don't even know there's a single player campaign.
 

FateOrFatality

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The reason I dislike Call of Duty isn't because of it's gameplay, story, or even graphics. I dislike CoD because of it's business model. Releasing a short campaign paired with a practically identical multiplayer is down right criminal in my opinion, and I hate how consumers enable Activision by repeatedly purchasing the same game.

Because of the success of CoD, other developers are taking on this mindset of quantity over quality - yearly, subpar releases to bring in large amounts of money. All you have to do is look at Dragon Age 2 and how rushed it was to see an example of this.

Oh, and n00btubers. God I hate those guys...
 

Baggie

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I don't hate COD or its player-base (well the elitist idiots that jump onto whatever the newest COD is and claim it to be revolutionary kind of annoy me) and I get that you don't like being looked down on for playing it. But come on, you can't expect to be taken seriously with both 'Black Ops' and 'Well paced narrative' in the same sentence. And you seriously can't believe that knowing the pickups in an arena shooter is anything close to the grind-fest that is the weapon system in Call of Duty.
People that expect every game, especially multiplayer centric games like COD to be artsy are about as worth listening to as the people that give COD a bad name. Responding with what looks like a temper tantrum in order to sate your own wounded ego about a video game you play just makes you look childish.