Zero Punctuation: Call of Duty: Ghosts

[SSJBlastoise]

The lack of the dog mostly is quite weird too, he was the major selling point.

Outside of the first reveal, where was the dog pushed as a major selling point? In any of the adds I saw there was barely any dog action shown. I really don't get where people got this from. I think people are mistaking what the community was going on about rather than what the developers were saying.

Fucking South America, are you shitting me!? Christ, lets just drop any semblance of reality COD and have the freaking English do it, thats more plausible than FUCKING SOUTH AMERICA!!!

It's a game, why does it need to be 100% realistic? People complain about them being the same so they try using an enemy that is hardly ever used instead of reusing China or Russia for the millionth time.

Again with people complaining that Yahtzee doesn't review COD Multiplayer.

1) He's stated numerous times that he doesn't play multiplayer unless he's absolutely forced to by contract (Diablo III, SimCity 5) because it's incredibly repetitive. He seems to dislike any kind of grind and what is multiplayer if not that?

2) He lives in Australia; spelled b-a-d-i-n-t-e-r-n-e-t-c-o-n-n-e-c-t-i-o-n. I can't remember where, but I seem to recall him stating that on the best of days, he gets a laggy connection to a few dozen people and the furthest away is New Zealand. This is COD, a game that relies entirely upon twitches. It takes very few bullets to kill you and the guns fire very fast. It's hardly an unknown fact that the best internet connection wins in COD in the Western hemisphere. Imagine what it would be like for him online.

EDIT

Regarding the story; some people here are saying that IW and Treyarch et al should remove the story section and it will solve all the problems. It sounds like the issues are deeper than that. If the stories really do have all these undertones to them, it's far more troubling than simply having a vestigial option.

1. There was one person that said that in this thread and I am 99% certain he said it sarcasticly

2. As an Australian that is a lie. Yes, our internet is not the best in some places (mainly country areas) but in the cities it is perfectly capable for online gaming. I occasionally play COD online and a number of other games on my laptop online all the time and almost never experience lag.

OT: Does anyone else find it funny that a couple of episodes ago Yahtzee said he won't review Pokémon X and Y because it's too samey yet constantly reviews COD? Other than that it was a decent review but far from his best.

 

[BrownGaijin]

I do find it ironic that the dog had the most personality out of the entire cast members.

 

[Amir Kondori]

They don't call COD the micheal bay of video games for nothing. Seriousally south america invades the US? I call BS! This is why I play only multiplayer in COD, FYI the guard dog killstreak is OP.

Well it couldn't very well be England or France invades the US, COD players would get confused if they virtual people they were killing weren't brown.

 

[gridsleep]

Huh. Couldn't get Ian McKellen to read it into the microphone, eh?

 

[Grabehn]

I absolutely ADORED the Mogworld audiobook and now this? I'm gonna get it right now.

BTw, SA invading the US? Bullshit on that, but the dog gets KILLED? FUCK YOU IW, FUCK YOU! And if it doesn't actually die... FUCK YOU anyways IW.

 

[warpoetry]

holy shit he made a Ghost Dog reference. I love Yahtzee.

 

[Dalisclock]

The Wolf Among Us next plz? Also he gave Cod a right good bashing now maybe people will stop buying that crap for good.

He's bashed every COD with the exception of 4. In the past, this was one of the few things I disagreed with Yathzee on(he hated the games, I generally liked them). Though this one sounds idiotic enough to make me not want to bother.

I still think they should have focused on the 141 and covered (part of) the 5 year gap between MW and MW2. But apparently I'm not smart enough to be a game developer.

 

[Raiha]

i get the feeling yahtzee wrote the bulk of this script while reviewing black ops 2 last year. i kinda hope he skips COD next year, it must be tough to review the same game 4 times

 

[RicoADF]

Wait a minute WHAT!? Orbital missile platforms? Did Activision miss the part where those were outlawed by the Geneva Convention? That's a freaking war crime waiting to happen right there! And who exactly is the US going to nuke? This all coming from a freaking American!

Correction, it's not the geneva convention that bans WMD's from space (that was drafted before World War One, well before such things existed), it's the Outer Space Treaty drafted in 1967 between the US, UK and Soviet Union. Other nations have since joined currently sitting at over 100 nations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

OT: Latest CoD game has gotten worse, suprise suprise, I haven't bought a CoD since MW1 and even that was when it was on sale, the others I have only due to friends gifting them to play coop (I refuse to waste my money on the series).

 

[Razorback0z]

Get the Foreigner song "Dirty White Boy" in your head then replace the lyrics with "Burley White Dewd"

Oh well it was funny when I thought of it

 

[Da Orky Man]

Wait a minute WHAT!? Orbital missile platforms? Did Activision miss the part where those were outlawed by the Geneva Convention? That's a freaking war crime waiting to happen right there! And who exactly is the US going to nuke? This all coming from a freaking American!

To my knowledge, only WMDs is space are outlawed. If I remember rightly, the weapon in Ghosts is more akin to the Rods From God weapon, which though massively more expensive and equally as effective as ground-launcher missiles, are allowed under the Space Treaty.

The Geneva Convention was negotiated before the first man-made satellite, and was largely about human rights during warfare.

 

[IrisNetwork]

Anyone else unable to shake the feeling the Spec Ops: The Line may have warned us about the orbital space cannon bit?

Seriously, someone please acknowledge this, it's driving me crazy.

Well, the white phosphorus in Spec Ops was used in a similar way to the orbital laser. Only Spec Ops made you look at what the blipping lights were later.

 

[blackrave]

CoD needs futuristic US civil war setting
But not the lazy scenario (copying past North vs. South war, but with lasers)
Something more interesting- maybe conglomerate of companies vs. government?

I hope they didn't give all the villians Mexican accents (please, please tell me they didn't).

You know what? At least this would make the game somewhat entertaining
Imagine if every enemy character sounded like stereotypical latinos gang member
Or even better- make them sound like characters from AliG Indahouse
Then at least we would know that it is a parody
But noooo, everything is so goddamn serious, so straightfaced it becomes creepy

 

[blackrave]

Wait a minute WHAT!? Orbital missile platforms? Did Activision miss the part where those were outlawed by the Geneva Convention? That's a freaking war crime waiting to happen right there! And who exactly is the US going to nuke? This all coming from a freaking American!

.
.
.
O_O

I just realized something
What if player never receives full story
And the full story is
US spat on international agreements and started to launch WMD platforms into space
Rest of the world tried diplomatic approach, but it failed
Then UN was threatening US with economic blockade (how long US could stand with oil supplies?)
US threatened back with said WMD platforms
As a response teams of russian and chinese hackers hacked these satellites
Next step would be military enforcement
South America invading US was only the first wave (being relatively close to US)
Second wave of attack would be united front of European, Asian and African forces
That would be sequel to Ghosts (in the end player blasts all of remaining world- as the response nuclear superpowers launch missiles towards US)
In the end it would be US vs. World
And nobody wins

Captcha: what if?
Exactly captcha- what if?

 

[blackrave]

Hasn't there been nuclear war yet in the Call of Duty series? Why not just have an old fashioned resource war as the setup for a game? The United States can still have the killbots and high tech stuff, but lack of resources to maintain the high tech gear makes them very valuable but only as an ace up the sleeve when the situation is dire. It also justifies people we normally wouldn't think of as threats being antagonists, they're the strongest simply because they were the least f-ed up by the previous war. Further, with the simple goal of getting the resources to keep their own civilization going, it would set up moral ambiguity which would come across as more genuine.

Because the it would make too much sense
And that would make US bad guys (and we can't have it right?)
And it would remind story of Fronlines

Spoiler: extremely short recap of Frontlines:Fuel of War story

Energy resources are scarce, Coalition (US+NATO+others) tries to takes over oil rich country of Alliance (Russia+China+others), Alliance retaliates, global hijinks ensues

And even in Frontlines Alliance was presented as villains ("They shoot first, who stabbed who prior to that doesn't matter, now stop thinking and be all patriotic'n'shit!")
Tradition I guess :/

P.S. I just posted 3 times in a row- maybe I should stop for a moment.

 

[DataSnake]

For example; I don't remember the exact details, but I think there was a paratrooper unit that was disbanded because they were torturing prisoners for shits and giggles. This was only a decade or two ago.

We blamed "a few bad apples" and then tried to change the subject, you guys actually disbanded the unit. Therein lies the difference.

Then we have Mayor Rob Ford representing the largest metropolis in our nation and the people who refuse to stop supporting him.

You think that guy's bad? How quaint. Here's a small sample of the idiocy produced by the US political process:

Spoiler: Ted Cruz

Spoiler: Louie Gohmert

Spoiler: Hank Johnson

Spoiler: Rick Santorm

Spoiler: Rick Perry

Spoiler: Paul Broun

Spoiler: Michele Bachmann

EDIT: on a different note:

The weapons in Ghosts are inspired by Project ODIN, which uses kinect kill weapons dropped from orbit. These are perfectly legal as they are not classified as WMDs due to not being "Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical" which is how the treaties define WMDs. The only reason we havent built a real version is that the cost of getting the tungsten poles from earth to orbit is so costly that it would out weigh its strategic value.

Best. Typo. Ever.

 

[lickilax]

Wait a minute WHAT!? Orbital missile platforms? Did Activision miss the part where those were outlawed by the Geneva Convention? That's a freaking war crime waiting to happen right there! And who exactly is the US going to nuke? This all coming from a freaking American!

.
.
.
O_O

I just realized something
What if player never receives full story
And the full story is
US spat on international agreements and started to launch WMD platforms into space
Rest of the world tried diplomatic approach, but it failed
Then UN was threatening US with economic blockade (how long US could stand with oil supplies?)
US threatened back with said WMD platforms
As a response teams of russian and chinese hackers hacked these satellites
Next step would be military enforcement
South America invading US was only the first wave (being relatively close to US)
Second wave of attack would be united front of European, Asian and African forces
That would be sequel to Ghosts (in the end player blasts all of remaining world- as the response nuclear superpowers launch missiles towards US)
In the end it would be US vs. World
And nobody wins

Captcha: what if?
Exactly captcha- what if?

If only activision had the testicles but this is not spec ops
I`m sad that these games can`t just go the saits row route already, its nuts just admit it Activision cod is nuts, stop pretending to be serious its really jarring.
Or what you are suggesting with the whole no one wins route, where the whole thing is designed to make war look like shit, which you SHOULD do because war is in fact pretty shitty.
I want either the next game to be over the top and not vaguely realistic or a game that goes back to its roots but they are not going to do that.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

For example; I don't remember the exact details, but I think there was a paratrooper unit that was disbanded because they were torturing prisoners for shits and giggles. This was only a decade or two ago.

We blamed "a few bad apples" and then tried to change the subject, you guys actually disbanded the unit. Therein lies the difference.

Then we have Mayor Rob Ford representing the largest metropolis in our nation and the people who refuse to stop supporting him.

You think that guy's bad? How quaint. Here's a small sample of the idiocy produced by the US political process:

Spoiler: Ted Cruz

Spoiler: Louie Gohmert

Spoiler: Hank Johnson

Spoiler: Rick Santorm

Spoiler: Rick Perry

Spoiler: Paul Broun

Spoiler: Michele Bachmann

EDIT: on a different note:

The weapons in Ghosts are inspired by Project ODIN, which uses kinect kill weapons dropped from orbit. These are perfectly legal as they are not classified as WMDs due to not being "Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical" which is how the treaties define WMDs. The only reason we havent built a real version is that the cost of getting the tungsten poles from earth to orbit is so costly that it would out weigh its strategic value.

Best. Typo. Ever.

Found the incident I was talking about; the Canadian Airborne Regiment. Disbanded in 1995 due to the death of a Somali teen at the hands of known white supremacists who also happened to be our most elite soldiers. The commanding officers knew they were white supremacists but sent them anyways. To Somalia.

Shouldn't have happened in the first place.

I'm sure I could find statements just as stupid if I went through the records. No one knows about them because we're just Canada.

I can tell you that the leader of our largest military base, Russell Williams, stalked women, broke into their houses and eventually killed a few.

 

[IPunchWithMyFists]

Anyone else unable to shake the feeling the Spec Ops: The Line may have warned us about the orbital space cannon bit?

Seriously, someone please acknowledge this, it's driving me crazy.

Well, the white phosphorus in Spec Ops was used in a similar way to the orbital laser. Only Spec Ops made you look at what the blipping lights were later.

How beautifully prophetic, I love Spec Ops, goddamn.