Let's talk about Call of Duty

[Slayer_2]

Call of duty was fun for me up till Black Ops 1. Loved CoD 1 to MW2. Everything else has been shit, I think. It's a matter of personal opinion, though.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

I like Call of Duty, actually. Well, the Treyarch ones. And honestly, it is one of the better online games I've played. Borderlands 1 (haven't played 2 online with someone else hosting) had lag issues, and I only ever found maybe 1 or 2 servers in Duke Nukem Forever that didn't have serious lag issues.

I think most of your arguments are fine OP but I do take issue with the last one. Yeah, you probably aren't stupid, and you probably do just enjoy the game more than me, but the fact is that there are hordes of people throwing money at a company for releasing the same game over and over, all the while the companies that take risks and try to innovate and bring something new to the gaming scene suffer. It just pisses me off is all.

Also, YOU may be intelligent enough to see what is going on, but my friends sure aren't.

When you think about it, they do change more than most sport games do. Different settings, some different guns, etc. Sure the engine is the same, and they don't change as much as they could, but still more than Madden.

This seems to be a double edged sword, though. Look at how much hate the Final Fantasy series gets, and with the exception of direct sequels (X-2, XIII-2), they change a lot of the game up every time (completely new characters, worlds, story, battle system, etc). Make changes to a game, people ***** that something has changed. Leave it the same, people ***** that they are just putting out the same games over and over again.

 

[F'Angus]

I enjoy the multiplayer myself because it's repetitive. I want to just sit down and do something that doesn't need too much thought.

Personally I preferred the CoD 4 system of killstreaks at 3,5 and 7, and I preferred CoD 4's maps to the new ones. But It's still fun.

As to them releasing the same game every year, okay it's pretty similar...but go back and play the old ones and see how they've changed. I've only bought two CoD games, MW3 and WaW. Both preowned and I even got WaW free...if you don't like buying a new game twice a year then you're really not being forced.

One thing I wish they would do would be to keep supporting their old games after they release a new one, WaW has been pretty my taken over by hackers now, CoD 4 probably too...which is sad, because I like those games.

 

[eternal-chaplain]

I don't believe you can legitimately criticize a game for its player base, but if I am being honest, I have stopped playing the franchise's multiplayer almost completely because of it. The verbal abuse is mind blowing at times to me, and I distinctly remember an instance in which my entire team began to 'shoot-at' and toss explosives at one of our own just because his ID had 'gay_pride' in it. Allowing voice chat only makes things worse for me.

But again, that only applies to some cases, and in any case it is not exactly a part of the game itself.

I do like the point you raised that a game being 'repetitive' is not a valid argument, unless you're willing to admit the same of some of the better games made.

What I truly dislike about the game is its focus on insubstantial gimicks. I liked the first modern Warfare title a lot, though I knew the sequel would be awful and skipped it. However I gave Black Ops a chance as it was made by a different developer team, so I couldn't make any assumptions right away. Of course, as we all know, what I got was one of the worst gaming experiences of my entire life; nearly everything in the game's campaign is completely arbitrary in nature, like harpooning a helicopter during a prison riot, causing a PSOne quality explosion. Or pulling the pins out of a man's grenades and watching him explode in a quick time event. . Or playing on a multiplayer map so small, absolutely no action could possibly carry any weight. Or making nearly every line of already-awful-dialogue rife with swearing because that's a child's idea of 'maturity'. Etc. Etc.

Fast forward to now, to Black Ops 2, and we see things like horse-back riding sequences, which are surely much akin to the auto-pilot, Tap-R1-To-Proceed motorcycle sequence from the first Black Ops. It's pretty much a guarantee at this point that the levels will be a series of textured blocks to crouch behind and shoot things from, and not even a soundtrack composed by Jack Wall will make it more interesting than the couch you sit on when you play it.

It seems to be all flash, and no substance.

 

[getoffmycloud]

The main issue I have with COD and I am sure this is more what people complain about when they complain about what COD is doing to the industry is the yearly sequels. It has shown the industry that they can make a successful game and then release it multiple times with nothing more than a few changes that could have been DLC or even just a patch.

One other thing you do hear about COD every year, often in reviews is the quote it makes tweaks to the formula but it is still the COD you know or something along the lines of that and that just isn't good enough for a sequel.

 

[SpectacularWebHead]

"It's only played by 10-year-olds"

Spoiler

This argument is false right out of the gate. I play CoD and I'm 18 and I'm in a clan with people ranging from 16 to 33 (many of whom are married). You heard a kid with a squeaky voice? So what? Mute him. In fact mute everyone if the prospect of human interaction is as unsettling to you as it is to me. If something is popular naturally then munchkins will want in on it, it's that way for everything and there is no way you can truly get away from them. (Except in single-player of course but as stated above if you don't like multiplayer then don't just redundantly say that)

This argument is pulled with most online shooters, I agree, it's stupid.

"CoD is full of Racist/Sexist/Stupid people"

Spoiler

This may seem like a cop out argument, but welcome to the damn internet. Those kinds of people will always be where anonymity offers them safety from punishment. There are just as many douches on any multiplayer game (Dark Souls is my best example of this). Singling CoD out for it is simply petty. Should I dislike the Escapist as a whole because some people on it are pretentious asshats? (See the Witcher 2 ZP Facebook comments for my evidence of this)

That is very much a cop out argument, considering the fact that CoD as a series over all has the highest concentration of sexists, if anything else. I can't say much for the other stuff, that's reasonably spread throughtout the internet, but CoD as a series has ALWAYS had a sexist following, more so than most other games.

"It's repetitive"

Spoiler

I'm forced to call immediate bullshit on this argument for two reasons. (When this is used as an argument against the games' quaility) Firstly because other games get a free ride. No one ever rails on TF2 because it's repetitive. If you get bored of a game then that isn't necessarily the games fault; especially when hundreds of thousands still play it. The other reason is because to many the repetition does nothing to stop their enjoyment of CoD, or anything else for that matter. Does repetition stop football from being enjoyed year after year after year? Is football bad because of that?

First of all, TF2 updates quite a bit. It is repetitive, but at least it gives you a new place to go every few weeks. It has a nicer community, Valve has a decent relationship with it's fans, and the characters are more interesting than anyone in CoD. Secondly, just because other games are repetitive doesn't give CoD a free pass to be so damn repetitive over the course of the entire goddamned series just because it takes the Flak.

"It started the Modern Shooter market saturation"

Spoiler

I really can't say that this isn't true. I can however say that it isn't CoD's fault. Whenever something is popular hordes of pretenders will try to ride its coattails. It happened with Star Wars, Twilight, Law and Order, the Da Vinci Code, Black Sabbath, Monkey Island, Seinfeld, Half-life, the Simpsons and whoever the first metalcore band was. It isn't CoD you should be angry at, but rather those who insist on trying to emulate it. CoD didn't force anyone to make a knock off of it, retarded publishers did.

Well no, we can be angry at Cod, because instead of using it's position of power and knowing that people will try to ape it, it hasn't changed its very formulaic chestpounding routine at all in it's entire series, thus leading to it cloning itself again and again, then the clones being spawned into the many series trying to make a quick buck. It's not its fault that it was copied, but it is it's fault that we've have so many shitty fps'.

"It's the same game every year"

Spoiler

I'm forced to come back to the sports analogy. People will pay ludicrous sums of money to simply watch a sporting event; often with the same people playing, the same rules, and the same drunken riots for stupid reasons. While they do face some flack I haven't seen any threads demonizing sports leagues or the people who watch them. I pay 60$ a year for around 10 new maps, 30 new guns, 1 or 2 new game modes, a six hour campaign, and some streamlined features (more zombies this year is a bonus). If that isn't enough for you, fine, you?re entitled to your opinion and I respect that. But it is enough for me and many others, and it doesn't make us thick it just means that we enjoy it more. (And yes MovieBob, Nintendo pumping out Mario sequels is in fact the exact same thing as what Activision does with CoD. Deal with it.)

I'm sorry, but how is any of what you've said a good thing? You've just pointed out your own sheepish mentality into spending 60 bucks a year for the exact same thing you spent 60 bucks on last year, just with a few extra bells and whistles? This isn't a strong argument, this actually shows the kind of instant gratification mentality that keeps these games from ever shaking up the formula and trying something interesting.

 

[stupenderifous]

The biggest problem that I have with CoD is, quite simply, the campaign. At least after the first Modern Warfare, I cannot say that any CoD game has had a solid campaign. They are so poorly written, so bat-shit insane and lacking in any semblance of so-called realism that it reduces the entire series (which had potential) to nothing more than ludicrous set pieces involving a bunch of faceless nobodies that we don't care about. When I say that it lacks realism, I do know that these games are not meant to be realistic (few games could do that). However, we should be taking issue with the fact that thousands of people heap so much praise on it for being "realistic", when it is not. And that so-called realism completely juxtaposes the ridiculousness of what is happening on screen that I cannot loses myself in the experience like I could in MW1. If the games after MW1 were parodies, they might work a little better; Alas, they are not and they do not.

Oh, and Infinity Ward, just because a little girl died does not mean that I have to care. That was the worst display of shallow manipulation that I have ever seen in a video game and everybody who works there should feel ashamed of themselves. Thanks MW3!

 

[vun]

Spoiler: Spoilered because huge post

"It started the Modern Shooter market saturation"

This one always makes me laugh. While this game is not a military shooter, it did spawn the trend of campaigns that make extensive use of scripting. Can you guess which game it is?

"It's the same game every year"

This one is also funny. COD catches so much flack for not "evolving", while Total War is fine...? What major innovations has CA made to it's long running series between Medieval 2 and Shogun 2? Naval battles, better multiplayer, and that's about it.

COD, in my opinion, doesn't need to evolve, it needs to go back to what it used to be. COD 2 was great, and even MW2's multiplayer was decent in it's own way. They have a multiplayer formula that worked and with MW3 and BO2 they are actually trying hard to develop it further, but they are fucking up hard in the process.

OT: So, anyway, my thoughts on COD.

1) They should either cut the campaign or force the entire studio to play COD 1&2. The campaigns have ALL been terrible since that point, with the exception of WaW, which was merely competent. And yes, you heard that right, I didn't like COD 4's campaign at all. Wow, you got nuked. And what about all the other stuff? Oh, right, terrorists are here, you go there, shoot brown people, nuke, patriotic music, the end. People who praise COD 4's campaign while critizising MW3's in the same breath piss me off, if you claim to love one but despise the other you are just trying to look cool.

2) The biggest problems with COD's multiplayer is too much fucking shit. MW3 had like 50 different killstreaks that went into 3 different streak systems. Every gun had over 10 attachments. Those guns also came with a slot for a speciality of your choosing, ranging from more damage to increased range. That's not to mention your 2 equipment slots and 3 perk slots. Oh, and don't forget deathstreaks, theres also five or so of those in MW2 and MW3.

It is too much. Both Infinity Ward and Treyarch have proven they are not competent enough to balance all this stuff, while Sledgehammer have proven they shouldn't be let near any multiplayer modes in the future. It is the wrong kind of "innovation". Killstreaks aren't even killstreaks anymore, you can go 5-45 and still get a UAV.

And when they do have a great idea, they go ahead and exclude it from the next game. Stopping Power and Cold Blooded should still exist. Killstreaks should actually be powerful. Even One Man Army was an interesting idea that should have had a place in the COD games after MW2, obviously with some changes.

But no, they excluded all of those things while keeping Second Chance and deathstreaks in the game. Hell, they even added new killstreaks. What are they doing?

So how do you fix all of this?

a) Bring back the aforementioned Stopping Power
b) Stick to the number of perks and perk slots they have now
c) No more fucking specialist or support. You get to choose 3 killstreaks from a list of 10. No fucking stacking upon death or any of that bullshit.
d) Who designed the maps for MW2? You bring that guy back. If you can't get him because you fired him, get the guy from COD 2. If you can't get him, don't fucking make a multiplayer mode, because apparently every other developer Activision can hire doesn't have a clue what he's doing.
e) Cut the campaign and cut the price.
f) Piss off with this COD Elite bullshit and calm down on the DLC. You can't play any recent COD game without being flooded with notifications stressing you to buy the latest "3 really bad maps" DLC.
g) You get a gun and a secondary. Both of those guns get one attachment. Finite.
h) Make the PC versions decent again. If you can't, let a bunch of amateur modders handle it for you and don't fucking nuke their project. Leave AlterIW alone, let it live (or die) in peace.

This is a nearly perfect summary of my thoughts on the subject.
I've been a fan of CoD games since I got my hands on the demo for the first game, although the 2nd one was the first full game I got. So far I'm in the "every other game is good" camp, having spent most of my time in CoD2, 4 and 6(MW2).
I will never take CoD "seriously" as an FPS as I've grown up with games like Counter-Strike and Quake as the serious competitive big-shots, but the CoD games have been incredibly fun over the years and MW2 got the fun formula nearly bang on. Especially the maps, the MW2 maps were awesome and the biggest let-down with MW3 for me was the maps; in my opinion they are all terrible. Saying "in my opinion" is a bit redundant, but other people apparently love the game, including my friend who's been my brother-in-CoD in MW and MW2. Map design is something I don't really know much about so I can't say much of value about them, but it feels as if they lack choke points at least.

And yeah, just too much stuff. The Barebones modes in MW2 were great, but they never had any players when the game was still relevant, now that MW3 is out and BO2 on the doorstep it's completely dead.

I so wish they just polished the MW2 MP because with most games you can say "oh, the old games don't go away", but in this case they do: The only reason I play CoD games is the multiplayer, and while you can still find decent CoD4 servers the MW2 playerbase is pretty much gone.

 

[L4Y Duke]

My biggest issue with CoD isn't to do with the game itself, but more the community that it seems to attract.

Sure, there are people out there who play CoD and are genuinely good people, playing fairly and behaving, but it seems like every time I go on MW3's multiplayer, I encounter people swearing at each other and/or a hacker.

And not a subtle hacker either. I'm talking people who sit 30 feet in the air and coat the entire map with RPG rounds.

Or people that cause the enemy team to spawn 30 feet in the air and fall to their deaths constantly.

Or people that throw 20+ grenades/C4 non-stop.

Or people that call in AC-130s non-stop.

Seriously. The PC version of MW3 is ruined by the very people that play it. I've encountered more hackers in a 30 minute session of it than I have in, say, 300+ hours of TF2.

 

[Owen Robertson]

Hmm... Balanced views, for the most part. I'll say that I'm an occasional fan of some aspects, and I do buy it yearly, but I won't pay for another Modern Warfare. I'll get Treyarch's every 2. I use multiplayer as an interactive Facebook. I joke around with a few friends, have some fun with some ludicrous guns (like that under-mount flamethrower. It's so hard to use, it's fun!) and torment those with ignorant attitudes. I like to think I'm good with accents, so I pretend to be Irish for one match, Scottish for another Jamaican the next, and so on. It really fucks with people. And it weeds out the racists so I can headhunt them.

 

[gigastar]

The reason why CoD needs to stop is because of genre fatiuge.

Its happened to fighters, RTS, space sim, and 4X, i wouldnt be surprised if within the next few years that one of the 5 CoD studios will fuck it up in a big way and it will put the entire FPS genre under for a few years while everyone worth a shit moves onto the various strains of RPG and MOBA.

 

[The Lunatic]

It's a game made for as cheap as possible to make as much money as possible and to appeal to as many people as possible.

People like it, that's the point.

It's not my type of game, but, I can see why people would buy into it, it's kinda what Activision Blizzard is going for with the series.

It is not a great game, it does not deserve the accolades and lofting it gets.

It's not a poorly made game, there's nothing "Wrong" with it, but, "Being fun to a lot of people" does not make something great.

For me, CoD represents a lot of what is wrong with the industry.

It's popular therefore it's taboo for anyone in any position to state anything negative or "Not great" about the game, you'll either be hounded by fan boys for saying that the game isn't the second coming of christ, or fired by the company you work for due to the bad press being negative of a popular game brings.

It's popular, so almost every other significant publisher tries to make their own version to take some part of the market. Every shooter has to conform to certain standards, it has to have classes, it has to load outs, we're even getting to the stage where not having ADS is a negative trait.

And worst of all, it's almost entirely stagnant. It does nothing new, rarely does it even try to for fear of slight alienation that might reduce it's profit margins, it's a game made by scared developers on the command of scared publishers, fearing that even the slightest bit of innovation may cost them even the smallest cent.

So, I guess a lot of my issues are from the business practices around the company that makes this game.

I played MW2, it was okay, nothing special. I had "Fun" if that's what you what, I later moved on to PC games and lost interest in console oriented shooters, but, I had some fun when I played it.

 

[Sande45]

What part of "stacking upon death" did you not understand? And just in case you don't know, some of them do stack upon death, meaning Johnny McScrubbyPants will still be pumping out UAVs despite getting 3 deaths for every kill. Also, killstreaks stacked in WaW, a Treyarch game.

Your score streak resets when you die, but if you have acquired something like a deathmachine you get to use every round in it even if you die before that.

In regards to Ghost, treyarch did balance it in that you only reaming hidden as long as you remain mobile, as well as splitting the immunity to killstreaks into a different perk in the same tier, essentially forcing you to chose between one and the other.

Well not exactly but it does take three points.

On topic: I think people who don't play Cod almost at all aren't really in the position to say how copy-pasted they are. As someone who has put a lot of time in every Cod since MW I could instantly tell them apart based on graphical style, weapons, maps, animation, and yes, graphical quality. Also, every Cod I've played has been quite different compared to others. If there's anything wrong with the series, it's the overpriced DLC, horrible single player and catering to noobs and "casuals" with autoaim, deathstreaks, zero recoil etc.

 

[Lucky Godzilla]

To address your point on stopping power, it was indeed an overpowered perk. It gave all players using it a 33.3% damage buff, meaning that anyone who wasn't using stopping power was put at a massive disadvantage when facing someone who was running it. This basically meant chaining your second perk to stopping power, unless running a specialized class for say anti air. You are simply less effective as a player in a gunfight without it.

Your argument would be valid if COD was just 10 people spawning on a completely even and empty field over and over again. Damage is not the only thing that plays into gunfights.

If I manage to flank the enemy with Cold Blooded or Lightweight, something that is easy to do in every COD that had Stopping Power, it doesn't matter what perk he is running in that second perk slot. I am winning that fight. He won't even get a shot off on me, because I'll shoot him in the back.

You are less effective in a straight up gunfight, that is true. However, you are more effective at roaming the map, either by means of speed or stealth. You play to suit your class and suddenly Cold Blooded is doing more for me than Stopping Power will ever do for you, even beyond taking down air support.

For a short while, I was an absolute beast at Call of Duty. My aim was spot on. But that was not what made me a good player. What made me a good player was the ability to read the map and read the spawns. Often Cold Blooded or Lightweight would help me more in playing this style than Stopping Power did.

Finally in regards to the campaign, it is a shame you want it cut considering what treyarch is doing with it in blops 2. There is a new series of levels in campaign called strike force missions. You get to select which one you partake in (you cannot do all strike missions in a single run) and you are plunked down into a sandbox with a set of objectives. What really makes it interesting is that you control a force of both human and robotic allies, either through an rts style of gameplay, setting waypoints and targeting enemies, or by assuming direct control of individual units of your choosing. What's more you can actually fail strike force missions, you aren't kicked back to your last checkpoint. You failed to achieve your objective, and that will reflect in one of the multiple endings of the game, as well as wat missions you went on in the first place.

Well, two things.

One: if I feel like playing an RTS I will look to Starcraft or Total War. I doubt Black Ops 2 will do it better than either of those games. Remember that town building thing in Assassins Creed 2? Remember how fucking stupid it was, because while it was something to do, it just felt like a really, really shitty version of AoE? That's what I imagine strike missions will be like. Sure, I can take control of singular units, which is nice, but I don't see that being enough of a saving grace.

Two: assuming these strike missions actually turn out to be great, which I will admit is a possibility, they will probably be a lone highlight in a mess of scripted events involving collapsing buildings and a lot of damn explosions. We have seen enough of the campaign to know that Treyarch don't want you to play the campaign, they want you to watch the campaign. Say it is 8 hours long - a generous estimation - 3 hours of strike force missions will not make up for 5 hours of ridiculous plot twists and linear pop up shooting. I am fed up of the COD style of campaign (shoot Russians/Chinese/terrorists from some brown country nobody cares about, witness big explosion, shoot more terrorists, scripted event in which you defuse a bomb by holding the "W" button, then holding the "F" button, another 5 minutes of walking down corridors, another scripted event, etc...). Allow me to use Yahtzees favorite term here. Juxtaposition. Strike missions will not fix this.

You may have missed the fact that you do not have to control it like an RTS, you can select and jump between any of your units at any time. If you want to play the entire mission as a grunt, go ahead you can do it, if you want to jump around all of your units, playing as a flying drone one second and a walking tank the next, you can do it. And of course you can play it all from the perspective of an rts. As for the rest of the campaign, I think it is best to reserve judgement for when the game is released.

Going back to stopping power, the real issue is that when two people start shooting at each other at the same time, the winner should go to the person with the better aim right? That's not the case with stopping power, with it you can afford to be sloppy as the increased damage will compensate for lack of skill.

 

[Aeonknight]

Spoiler: Spoilered because huge post

"It started the Modern Shooter market saturation"

This one always makes me laugh. While this game is not a military shooter, it did spawn the trend of campaigns that make extensive use of scripting. Can you guess which game it is?

"It's the same game every year"

This one is also funny. COD catches so much flack for not "evolving", while Total War is fine...? What major innovations has CA made to it's long running series between Medieval 2 and Shogun 2? Naval battles, better multiplayer, and that's about it.

COD, in my opinion, doesn't need to evolve, it needs to go back to what it used to be. COD 2 was great, and even MW2's multiplayer was decent in it's own way. They have a multiplayer formula that worked and with MW3 and BO2 they are actually trying hard to develop it further, but they are fucking up hard in the process.

OT: So, anyway, my thoughts on COD.

1) They should either cut the campaign or force the entire studio to play COD 1&2. The campaigns have ALL been terrible since that point, with the exception of WaW, which was merely competent. And yes, you heard that right, I didn't like COD 4's campaign at all. Wow, you got nuked. And what about all the other stuff? Oh, right, terrorists are here, you go there, shoot brown people, nuke, patriotic music, the end. People who praise COD 4's campaign while critizising MW3's in the same breath piss me off, if you claim to love one but despise the other you are just trying to look cool.

2) The biggest problems with COD's multiplayer is too much fucking shit. MW3 had like 50 different killstreaks that went into 3 different streak systems. Every gun had over 10 attachments. Those guns also came with a slot for a speciality of your choosing, ranging from more damage to increased range. That's not to mention your 2 equipment slots and 3 perk slots. Oh, and don't forget deathstreaks, theres also five or so of those in MW2 and MW3.

It is too much. Both Infinity Ward and Treyarch have proven they are not competent enough to balance all this stuff, while Sledgehammer have proven they shouldn't be let near any multiplayer modes in the future. It is the wrong kind of "innovation". Killstreaks aren't even killstreaks anymore, you can go 5-45 and still get a UAV.

And when they do have a great idea, they go ahead and exclude it from the next game. Stopping Power and Cold Blooded should still exist. Killstreaks should actually be powerful. Even One Man Army was an interesting idea that should have had a place in the COD games after MW2, obviously with some changes.

But no, they excluded all of those things while keeping Second Chance and deathstreaks in the game. Hell, they even added new killstreaks. What are they doing?

So how do you fix all of this?

a) Bring back the aforementioned Stopping Power
b) Stick to the number of perks and perk slots they have now
c) No more fucking specialist or support. You get to choose 3 killstreaks from a list of 10. No fucking stacking upon death or any of that bullshit.
d) Who designed the maps for MW2? You bring that guy back. If you can't get him because you fired him, get the guy from COD 2. If you can't get him, don't fucking make a multiplayer mode, because apparently every other developer Activision can hire doesn't have a clue what he's doing.
e) Cut the campaign and cut the price.
f) Piss off with this COD Elite bullshit and calm down on the DLC. You can't play any recent COD game without being flooded with notifications stressing you to buy the latest "3 really bad maps" DLC.
g) You get a gun and a secondary. Both of those guns get one attachment. Finite.
h) Make the PC versions decent again. If you can't, let a bunch of amateur modders handle it for you and don't fucking nuke their project. Leave AlterIW alone, let it live (or die) in peace.

After reading this post and a few of the ones following it, I have only 1 thing to say:

Fucking spot on.

Stopping power was great for when I felt like being loud. When I wanted quiet, I had a stealth setup where I could literally lay behind a corner and watch 4 people run by me because that "ENEMY UAV IS ONLINE" phrase that you hear oh so very often dictates that their entire team now has their eyes glued to that minimap like 2 buddies screen peeking off each other in a split screen game.

I fucking loved it.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Sorry to do the one thing you specifically asked not to do but I'm sorry I just don't like multiplayer, especially the multiplayer in Call of Duty.

Do you know how I deal with that though? I just don't play it. (I know shock horror!)
It certainly hasn't stopped me from enjoying Call of Duty specifically for the single player though. (Although playing Call of Duty JUST for the singleplayer may in itself be a little unusual... I don't know?)

I don't dislike playing multiplayer for any of the reasons you listed I just don't find it fun. I get the feeling though that most of the problems people tend to complain about with Call of Duty are more about what it represents rather than the about the games themselves, more so its effects on the industry as a whole... you know what I mean?

In any case I don't agree with any of the hate. You can count me as another fan... even if it may be for slightly different reasons than yourself.

Cheers

Oh hey, I like playing the CoD games almost purely for the single player as well... I generally suck at multiplayer (and hell, I suck at the single player as well) thanks to being colour blind, so the amount of times the screen has fuzzed because of friendly fire is ridiculous.

Anyway, what this guy said...

Though I'll add that I enjoy the games for another reason: the soundtrack. Seriously, MW2 is all the more enjoyable to me because I've got Hans Zimmer rockin' it in the background!

 

[Lunar Templar]

why are we defending CoD again?

it seems to be doing just fine despite the hate people lob at it.

that said, you couldn't PAY ME enough to want that crap on my system

 

[miketehmage]

When you think about it, they do change more than most sport games do. Different settings, some different guns, etc. Sure the engine is the same, and they don't change as much as they could, but still more than Madden.

This seems to be a double edged sword, though. Look at how much hate the Final Fantasy series gets, and with the exception of direct sequels (X-2, XIII-2), they change a lot of the game up every time (completely new characters, worlds, story, battle system, etc). Make changes to a game, people ***** that something has changed. Leave it the same, people ***** that they are just putting out the same games over and over again.

Yeah that's a fair point. I think then that maybe the problem is releasing the games as frequently as they do, and maybe they should strive to find a balance between making too few or too many changes. I just think that CoD peaked at CoD 4 and I feel like it has been milked ever since.

 

[mavkiel]

Crazy question, but I was considering getting black ops 2, is it worth it? I have no real intention of playing multi-player.

The last shooter I got was Modern warfare 2. I thought it was fun for the most part, but the story was laughingly bad.

Basically I am wondering if black ops 2 is a good bet, or is there another game on the horizon? Can one fly/drive vehicles in black ops 2?

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

Snip

Thanks man, you have given the exact kind of comment that drove me to make this thread in the first place.

Please present proof that CoD is more sexist than anywhere else on the net. Are the mechanics of the game sexist? Does it offer sexists/misogynists some kind of special treatment?

TF2 is always the same maps, with the same characters, and the same gamemodes. I still play TF2 almost every week and I have the balls to admit that it's the same game every time I play it. Just because it's valve doesn't mean it gets a free pass.

How exactly does CoD abuse it's power? People like playing it so they make more of it? Has that stopped being basic business strategy while I wasn't looking? Also your logic makes absolutely no sense. How is CoD responsible for creating series by developers that have nothing to do with Activision or IW/Treyarch? If you wrote a bestseller should I be mad at you for the choices of other authors to parrot your work?

Lastly, did you even read the damn paragraph I wrote? Where the hell do you get off calling me sheepish for spending my money on things I enjoy? It's isn't instant gratification or any other cop-out pretentious statement. (ADHD, Aspergers, Autistic whatever) I enjoy CoD, when I stop enjoying it I'll stop paying for it.