Where has COD gone?

[Lord Habbs]

Does anybody remember the original Call of Duty? In a time before the campaign was about America saving the universe in a ridiculous falsified version of events? Im pretty sure the reason COD was successful back in the early years was its attention to realism and the recreation of being an ordinary soldier in an extra ordinary scenario.
Remember taking that boat Trip across the Volga thinking, "Shit this is what ordinary Russians had to do in 1945"?

When the protagonists in the game really were answering their countries calls of duty...

Now we get these military supermen who can fight of a division of the Evil Communist Scum with nothing but a revolver and the image of a bold eagle flying past.

Just wanted to know if there are any people out there who still expect the feelings of realism and accuracy from COD that made it such a success in the first place?

Or should I just accept that games like Call of Duty and Vietcong are a thing of the past and its all about big explosions?

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Eh, Call of Duty found success with a fictional story, you can't blame them for chasing a profit. Not to mention that by the time Call of Duty 3 came out we were all complaining about the large number of World War II games. Lets face it folks, getting out of World War 2 may have been the best thing for Call of Duty in general.

Maybe if they focused on actual battles in both Vietnam and South Korea, then we could have a similar game, but til then, we're stuck with a guy who is hearing numbers in his head and a JFK that sounds like Mayor Quimby from the Simpson.

 

[spartan1077]

I think COD has gone on the shelves...

OT: I remember the first CoD and loved it. It made me happy to be able to switch between firing modes. I agree that now it's a little like Die Hard. THe first one he was just a normal cop, then he was jumping a car through helicopters.

 

[twistedheat15]

Considering it's more successful now then it's ever been, I'll say the ones who still expect realism outta it are the ones who aren't playing it. And chances are the game won't go back into realism till ppl get tired of playing it which won't be for another 2-3 years.

 

[kokirisoldier]

Seriously speaking from a someone who was in Afghanistan just last year, the SF soldiers on my FOB were seriously gods amongst men. Those guys would go on missions and come back with the most amazing body counts you could ever hear of (and the picture and evidence to prove it too). So from a "slightly realistic point of view, YES the battle field has changed and a small group can once again do more damage than the larger force in MRAPS.

But yes they never took on a total division.

I liked the modern warfare series, but I also liked the WW2 series as well.

 

[StBishop]

I would like to point out that I believe you have misspelled Bald Eagle.

 

[Infinatex]

I think COD has gone on the shelves...

OT: I remember the first CoD and loved it. It made me happy to be able to switch between firing modes. I agree that now it's a little like Die Hard. THe first one he was just a normal cop, then he was jumping a car through helicopters.

Actually its gone off the shelves at a ridiculously fast rate!

OT: I'm guessing because WW2 got boring. Theres so many games about it so they found a new, more exciting direction. I didn't play COD games until COD4 for this reason.

 

[RatRace123]

It's become mainstream (God that makes me feel like such a tool to say) it used to be a still somewhat successful, but definitely not as mainstream.
Come number 4, it moved out of WWII and into the modern warfare front.

And, in simple terms, it became a power fantasy.
Power fantasies sell well, er go, all new CODs become epic, overblown, action movie style, power fantasies.

Though, I'm not a fan, I don't mean to belittle the series' direction. Its new direction is obviously good for the franchise, financially.

 

[HarmanSmith]

My biggest problem with call of duty today is the lack of relatable characters. My favorite CoD game of all time was Big Red 1. True, the vehicle sections were a pile of shit, but I actually cared about what happened to the characters. Huxley, Brooklyn, Sarge; they actually had depth! When Hawkins got shot, I ran my ass over to get him because I wanted him to survive. Now, the characters are so 2-dimensional I couldn't care less if they get nuked or shot or set on fire or whatever. The hard truth is the storytelling in the series has gone way downhill.

 

[Lord Habbs]

Seriously speaking from a someone who was in Afghanistan just last year, the SF soldiers on my FOB were seriously gods amongst men. Those guys would go on missions and come back with the most amazing body counts you could ever hear of (and the picture and evidence to prove it too). So from a "slightly realistic point of view, YES the battle field has changed and a small group can once again do more damage than the larger force in MRAPS.

But yes they never took on a total division.

I liked the modern warfare series, but I also liked the WW2 series as well.

ive got mad respect for anyone who has served and yeah I know that special forces really are the shit when it comes down to it but its like spartan said

now it's a little like Die Hard. THe first one he was just a normal cop, then he was jumping a car through helicopters.

i know you're all pros but special forces are the elite and the whole charm for me about the call of duty sires was the fact that you were nobody special...and the attention to realism...but i guess thats the historian in me

 

[Lord Habbs]

It was either continue the endless hit parade of WWII games...

Medal of Honor (All 12 of them)
Wolfenstein
Battlefield
Brothers in Arms
Hidden & Dangerous
Battlestrike
Deadly Dozen
Silent Service
Mortyr
Combat Elite
Sniper Elite
Hour of Victory
Beyond Normandy
Airborne Heroes

(and that's just FPS and TPS)

or make an original story that hasn't been told 1 million times. I'd rather have the latter.

played a few of them and only brothers in arms and cod were really about about world war 2...the rest were just action films set in ww2...thats the reason that cod and bia stand out for me...
and there have been so many conflicts over the years that are still fresh by comparison such as Vietnam...
Only vietcong and men of valour are even worth considering...and that includes black ops attempts at covering it

 

[Lord Habbs]

I don't remember it, as I was a Medal of Honor man back then (European Assault on the Gamecube, ahh, memories), but I'll agree with some people in this thread saying that getting out of WW2 was the best thing they could've done. WW2 gets boring pretty fast, and putting things in modern settings is the new hot thing. Now they just need to go a bit into the future (like BF2142) and complete the trifecta!

I have nothing against them moving away from ww2...i just don't like the way the story telling has gone from being an average soldier to rambo

imo the last 2 games shouldn't have had the COD stamp on it...not because of the change in setting

 

[Zhukov]

Ehh... I sort of agree.

The main reason I bought (and enjoyed) the original CoD was because it included the Russian campaign on the Eastern Front.

"Holy crap, a video game about WWII that includes the Russians? And... wait... what's this? It even lets them have the last word! They don't even have a band of rugged multi-ethnic American paratroopers swooping in to kill Hitler and pose for pictures at the last moment. Wow. Revolutionary stuff."

However.

I also don't resent the fact that the series has undergone some evolution. There was nothing wrong with bringing it into the modern era with a fictional storyline. Hell, CoD 4:MW was possibly the best game in the series. And, as several others have already pointed out, the market was being flooded with WWII FPSs.

Sure, the series took a bit of a dive with MW2 and again with Black Ops. But hey, nothing stay good forever. And the multiplayer is still fun.

 

[Corporal Yakob]

The new trend of action movie badassery in MW2 and Black Ops is entertaining for the sheer "How much crazy frantic and explosive shit can we pack into this plot?" factor but I never take it too seriously:

Airport massacare leads to Russia mobilizing for war with US in 3 days and invading American soil against virtually no resistence?

Or how about almost every mission in Black Ops involves at least one part in which you're hurled to the ground by a explosion, groggily get up and kick foreign ass?

I've always prefered WW2 but the modern games are still pretty good. HOWEVER, I've said it before and I'll say it again: make a WW2 FPS from the Axis point of view! That would completely revitalise the WW2 genre in my opinion as long as it was done properly i.e. in a COD: Wehrmact the Germans aren't all blood crazed fanatical Nazis or hippy flower children who draw beads on their enemies with tearful relutance and constantly bemoan going to war. Just portray them as any Allied or Soviet soldiers are portrayed: the majority fighting for their country with a few extremists on both sides of the spectrum.