Your True Opinon On... (#2): Call of Duty

[Clonehunter]

Grabble Grabble Hello. (Again!)

For no paticular reason at all over the course of the next few months or so, or perhaps moreso whenever I feel like it, I will be conducting a series of five or so threads asking for your true gamer opinons on several popular or unpopular game franchises.

Yep. For no reason whatsoever. Just to do it. Because I'm curious. I believe most of us/you here are well rounded gamers correct? Correct me if wrong if you all you have ever played is Doom or whatever.

Anyways, today's *shifts eyes* topic is: Call of Duty

Oooh yeeeaaah... The games we love to hate. Now of course, we always rip on games like Warfare and Black Ops, the Treyarch and InfinityWard titles. But what about the other ones? The ones that started the series? The ones that noone remembers today because of Black Ops, the game that will eventually be forgotten as well and be replaced by Modern Warfare 3? As we should know, Call of Duty debuted I think in 2003. Set in World War II like the classic Medal of Honor franchise, Call of Duty became the next must have game. Call of Duty was followed by a few expansions and sequels, and was later ported to Playstation 2 under the subtitle of Finest Hour. It was very well recieved for both it'd singleplayer, and its multiplayer. Modern Warfare also took a unique turn on multiplayer with the ability to create custom weapon classes and the perk system. World at War arrived diving back into the franchises's roots and brought along the mega popular Nazi Zombies. Black Ops later topped the sales charts. So, with all of this, how do you really feel about the entire Call of Duty franchise?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The first CoD game I remember playing was Modern Warfare for the PS3. I played a little online at a friends house, and then did some four-player splitscreen. I went to that friend's house again later and played some World at War, where again we did Online and SPlit-Screen. He also showed me Nazi Zombies, where dogs and half-soldiers scared the shit out of me, especially when they got me in a corner. I don't think I touched Call of Duty again until a year or so later I rented World at War from Blockbuster for the Wii. The controls were hard to get used too, and I got through one or two US missions. I mostly played multiplayer though. Another two years pass and I get both Black Ops for DS and Finest Hour for PS2. I thought Finest Hour was great. I liked the Tank Missions for Russia and the opening two levels were just great, especially the soundtrack. I was also interested in the North Africa campaign, as not a lot of WWII games usually touch up on that part of the war. (Unfortunatly, this is the shortest Campaign [British], and I was dissapointed it wasn't longer.) The American campaign is also nice in that it is just plain hard. Black Ops DS is alright. Zombies is nice, and plays well. It's annoying how they kill you though with one fell sweep of their arms. The graphics are exceptional for DS, but then again, Graphics I don't really care about. The Multiplayer though is rather fun, and works very well on DS. I also got the chance to do some 360 Black Ops during a vaction to Florida. My couins brought along their 360 and we played Black Ops for msot of the vacation. While the multiplayer was indeed strong, and zombies delightfully gory and funny, the singleplayer just, well, didn't look good. I was personally showcased two levels. One was a level in Vietnam during an ambush. It was so god damn linear and straightforward it was pretty much a railshooter. A fancy two button combo would then activate some long twisted sequence of jamming a grenade into some guy's belt and blowing him in two. Awful. The second mission was also in Nam, this time on a patrol boat. It looked somewhat interesting, but once again it was basically a rail shooter where all you did was turn the screen and change the boat's speed. More recently I have gotten World at War for Wii now and it's pretty neat. I mostly play multiplayer, but I have almost beaten the campaign as well. The action in it is neat, but the story is rather convoluted so I just ignore it. Again, even mre recently though, I got the demo for Call of Duty number ONE. ANd God! It is boring. The action is not exciting, and the fights are lame. Only machine guns are dangerous, and there are not a whole lot. I can't rate the rest of it, but I don't have high hopes for it. So...

Call of Duty Demo (PC) - 5/10
Call of Duty Finest Hour - 7/10
Call of Duty - Modern Warfare (PS3) - N/A (Not enoguh play time)
Call of Duty: World at War (PS3) - See Above
Call of Duty World At War (Wii) - 7/10
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC) - 6/10
Call of Duty Black Ops (DS) - 6/10
Call of Duty Black Ops (360) - 6/10

Let's go.

[yellowmadness54]

I truly do admire the way you word these out for many reasons.

Anyways, my true opinion on CoD is already known. So, ugh, yeah. I'll be enjoying the rest of everyones responses from now on, and will reply if I see anything that concerns me.

Good day, all.

~yellowmadness

[Technician]

An average, predictable, cliché, mediocre franchise.

[Remilia Scarlet]

The first game wasn't too bad, though for some reason I always get it confused with the first two Medal of Honor games. Past that the series got pretty boring. Each iteration felt like the developers recycled too many gameplay elements from other modern shooters, and so after a while I stopped caring. But then again, it's like this with most FPS games these days.

[Mithran Denizen]

The first one wasn't bad, before the WWII shooter idea was completely beaten into the pavement like it is today. in any case, I never bothered to touch another in the series until I spent a month motoring through COD4's campaign one weekend. It had some cool moments, but wasn't particularly inspiring.

I did kick ass at that bonus airplane mission on the highest difficulty, which is actually the only thing I really remember about the game other than the fact that another mission was set in Pripyat.

Aside from that, I've avoided exposure to the series (apparently for the better), aided by the fact that I don't watch TV ads or follow game industry news. I guess I'm also lucky that my IRL social circle is void of losers gamers, who might otherwise foist this tripe upon me as real entertainment.

[Lila Feuer]

Well, I want to play the first two Call of Duty games since they're suppose to be very good, along with their expansions. The third one was for consoles and thus blew, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare if I dare say it was probably the last good CoD game that tried something different. MW2 is a disaster and don't even start with Black Ops.

Forgot to mention World At War, I heard good things about it, it looks to be similar to the first two games, but with an M rating so it's much more gory. Regardless, it is not my favorite franchise nor era in video games.

[wildweasel]

Black Ops isn't bad. I certainly enjoyed the campaign mode and some of the more unique online modes (Sticks and Stones provided good fun for a while; reminded me of my Goldeneye days when I'd set the weapons to throwing knives only). Much as I dislike some of the things the CoD series has come to inspire (the endless deluge of modern-warfare FPS games where you can only carry two weapons, regenerate health, and run through identical looking Iraqi villages mowing down enemies that all look the same), I do have fun playing most of the series.

World at War is honestly my favorite in the series, since unlike World War 2 games before it, there's a LOT of gore (enemies can be dismembered by MMG fire), the American side of the campaign takes place entirely in the Pacific theater (to my recollection, only MoH: Pacific Assault and some History Channel game on 360 have bothered with the Pacific in an FPS game), the Russian side doesn't take sides in depicting which side of the fight is more brutal (the Germans might look like bastards, but your own sergeant encourages you to execute enemies that are already bleeding to death).

Then there's the Zombies maps, which are probably the best example of an "invasion" game I've seen in a while, since you aren't just running around, picking up items and killing dudes, you also have to maintain your barricades, and then there's the risk-reward issue of either racking up points or spending them on more guns, ammo, or powerups to keep you going further.

That said, even as far as CoD games go, MW2 is about the worst game in the series, a game where you can't ignore the crappy plot because it's constantly in your face and blowing shit up for no reason whatsoever. Okay, CoD4's plot certainly doesn't get anywhere as good as a Tom Clancy novel (and even then, Tom Clancy isn't exactly the greatest war writer, from what I've heard), but MW2 totally disgraces it by turning the proceedings into a Jerry Bruckheimer summer blockbuster. It's got everything - the US is inexplicably invaded by Russia after three guys shoot up an airport and leave behind a dead CIA agent. Nukes get stolen and even used. There's even a brief scene in space (all we need now is time travel and the series will have completely blown through their quota of cliches).

[Lila Feuer]

Ha! Perfect review. I just heard they really messed up Black Ops by attempting to "balance" it, by that I mean you'll only see two weapons being used 97% of the time. The AKS-74U and another one.

[wildweasel]

Cyanosis said:

Ha! Perfect review. I just heard they really messed up Black Ops by attempting to "balance" it, by that I mean you'll only see two weapons being used 97% of the time. The AKS-74U and another one.

I don't see online CoD having anything to do with weapon "balance" so much as personal preference (except the Olympia, which is pretty universally crap). Any weapon can dominate the high scores if the player using it is willing to learn its ins and outs...and even then there aren't that many of them, just which perks go with the weapon and the player's style. I, for example, have had the best success with a Stakeout shotgun with the foregrip and sleight of hand perk.

Though in all honesty, take what I say about online balance with a grain of salt, considering I have not played Black Ops past a rank 21 and have never prestiged (never saw the point, the only thing it unlocks is more slots for custom classes, and if you NEED that many different classes, you need to learn to specialize).

[DoomUK]

Every single Call of Duty game (and I've played all of them) has left exactly the same impression on me: forgettable, boring singleplayer campaign; excellent multiplayer fun. All I ever play is TDM, but I've had some of the best hours with these games in multiplayer mode.

I fear the Call of Duty franchise (particularly the Modern Warfare entries) is the kind of thing where it's not cool to admit you like it in any way. Thankfully I'm above that way of thinking.


It's just too bad the PC version of Black Ops is a broken game.

[yellowmadness54]

well, I have to say CoD in general for me, atleast the MWs and what not, are awful entirely, and broken. the weapon "balance" is laughable (not nearly as bad as crysis 2's, though, Jeez)

It seems most people will use the same guns, typically being the extremely over powered ones IE UMP .45 in MW2, or the ACR, etc.

The campaigns are usually very short, and scripted to the point where it makes doom look like an open world game.

The only good aspects of CoD is the admittedly addictive multiplayer, and thats about it. Even then, you can point out plenty of flaws in it.

I liked CoD 2, and CoD 3 was ok. World At War is the only one I play now, even then thats pretty rare. But it isnt anywhere near as broken or noobescent as the modern day CoDs about imaginary BS that makes no sense.

[DoomUK]

I meant "broken" as in, running at unplayable framerates for no sensible reason while Modern Warfare 2 runs just fine. Nothing to do with weapon balancing and whathaveyou. It's been months since I bought the game and still nothing has been fixed.

[Phobus]

I don't buy the games myself, but I have experience of CoD4: Modern Warfare and beyond.

The campaign makes a nice run-through maybe once or twice, especially if you go for the acheivements where possible. The real strength of it always is the multiplayer. CoD4 had hours sunk into it by me and my mates playing 4-player DM.

World at War got a similar treatment, and my brother and I loved slogging through the co-op campaign on one of the hardest difficulties, even with multiple retries. The Nazi Zombies mode was a great gimmick, and certainly proved quite fun a few times through as well with a variety of co-survivors.

MW2 does have a ridiculous plot, but I rather enjoyed the campaign all the same. The Spec Ops are a brilliant arcade-y take on the various odd situations the game throws you into, and provided a lot of fun. The multiplayer offline was again really fun (great to have the unlock system offline on consoles too), but I think this is when we all started getting a bit bored of the same game every time.

I've not really played through the whole Black Ops campaign - it works out much the same as the others from whatI have experienced. Kind of fun, quite a lot of "rule of cool" going into it, what with the dragonsbreath shotgun and the death machine. My multiplayer experience is incredibly limited, but Nazi Zombies seemd alright, if a bit hard, and Dead Ops Arcade was a good laugh too.

I think my over-arching opinion is that they've kind of turned into those summer blockbuster type of thing. Lowest common denominator stuff that is pretty fun, but not really breaking any boundaries or pushing the standard up in any way.

Quite looking forwards to getting a proper run through on the Black Ops campaign at some point, and MW3 should be a bit of fun to explore and experience too. Still wouldn't buy them myself though.

One thing I am convinced of, however, is that the series can not last. Activisions marketing technique seems to be running it into the ground, and its only so long before people want something different.

[dannebubinga]

I had over 1500 hours of CoD action on my xfire back in 2004-2005, just before CoD2 came out. CoD1 was a really tight game IMO, much better than CS and Q3 (sorry q3 fans). I'm talking MP of course. The search and destroy game mode was really great with awesome maps and well balanced spawns, covers and weapons etc.

I also played in a very good team wich made it alot more fun to play on clanbase and other tournaments. It's a shame that the old CoD games are more or less forgotten thanks to the hype of the newer CoD games. I think that the newer CoD games are boring and to fast paced, it's obvious that CoD is an industry and not a game series.

[Fulgrim]

I do own COD2 and its a ok game. There single player had some pretty intense moments and the muliplayer is pretty solid. Aside from COD2 though I have never gotten into the series. I ended up buying Battle Field 2 on the day it launched and shortly after stopped playing COD2. At this point I don't really see myself getting into the COD games. Its not that they are bad games, its just the fact that I prefer the Battle Filed games because of there large scale battles.

[Ultraboy94]

I'v never owned a CoD game so my opinion is not nessecarily the best.
I've played one game of Modern Warefare 2 split-screen at a friend's house and it was mediocore. End of last year this friend and their family were very excited about getting Black Ops, I watched them play it for a few hours and again, mediocore.

The only reason the more recent games are so successful IMO is the fact that most general people who buy these games don't know much about what other games there are to offer, and the marketing capitalises on that. See: iPhones.

[Fulgrim]

Ultraboy94 said:

The only reason the more recent games are so successful IMO is the fact that most general people who buy these games don't know much about what other games there are to offer, and the marketing capitalises on that. See: iPhones.

I do think that has a lot to do with it. COD is what the "cool kids" are playing. So people are jumping on the bandwagon. But, it does not mean they are crap games. They are ok in there own right. Just not as great as people make them out to be. The Halo games are another example of this .

One of the things that turned me off to the COD games is the simplicity of them. The multiplayer did feel like Counter Strike with some changes, like regen health and not having to buy your guns. One thing that got me hooked on the Battle Field games where more of the strategic elements of the games. Things like having to factor in bullet-drop and target distance when sniping and how vehicles take different amounts of damage depending on where it is hit with a rpg. You don't get that type of game play mechanics in the COD games.

[DuckReconMajor]

The first Call of Duty I owned was 2, which I got when the 360 launched. It was great. It was the first console shooter I'd played since GoldenEye. The campaign was fun (the British campaign takes place in North Africa, Clonehunter). The multiplayer was the first console game I'd played online. It was so much fun back then, when people would talk in lobbies, instead of everyone talking to their bitch-ass friends all day in party chat like they're too good to talk to anyone else.

I didn't touch the series again until MW2. With all this "modern warfare" stuff I figured it was going to play slow like Ghost Recon. I instantly regretted it after seeing they had kept the old faster paced gameplay but with a modern twist. After playing through the campaign (which does have a crappy story admittedly), I played online for a while and prestiged once.

After playing MW2 for a while I went and got the first MW. The main thing I did in this game was try to beat it on Veteran, which is pretty hard. After doing that I went and beat MW2 on Veteran, which was much easier.

I got Black Ops at launch and immediately jumped online. I know everyone touts the Wager matches, but I kinda thought they were boring, so I stuck to the normal modes. I prestiged 3 times. I played through the campaign. I think it's the best Call of Duty story so far that I've played.

Satyr000 said:

One of the things that turned me off to the COD games is the simplicity of them.

The simplicity is the reason I love the series so much. It's like the Doom of console shooters, though that comparison will make people here cranky no doubt.

[Jodwin]

Never played, but I know it sucks.

[sirjuddington]

Only ever played the first, which I thought was pretty average. Never saw any reason to play any of the hundreds of following ones.

[DeathevokatioN]

Overrated piece of stinking shit with no redeeming qualities and boring gameplay, that's made by faggots, for faggots.

[DuckReconMajor]

Oh by the way for MW3 they are making plans for an optional subscription based service. If the added features look good enough I might consider paying it.

[cbronson]

Well I've only played the first and second games, and single player only. I also have the sentiment that there never was anything really remarkable about them.

That's pretty much what I remember.

[AirRaid]

I remember playing a WW2 CoD way back. Probably the first one. It was decent, but the constant glut of ww2 games quickly made me lose interest in any sequels. I picked up the series again at Modern Warfare, after everyone at work was talking about MW2. I enjoy the MW games (and BLops) campaigns in the same way I enjoy big dumb action movies like Rambo, The expendables, etc. They're fun to play with your brain switched off, not really realistic, and there's lots of things exploding. They're popcorn games. They do this well. I'm looking forward to MW3 because it will hopefully close out the story arc from MW2.

The MP is good fun too, provided you can get a decent match with decent people going. Plenty of room for exploitation in the map designs though. At least in MW2, I never played BLops MP because, like doomuk, the game runs appallingly badly for about 60% of the time. For no apparent reason.

So yeah, they're pretty good, taken at face value, but don't expect any meaningful, insightful storylines or groundbreaking gameplay, cos that's not what they're about.

[Mr. Freeze]

Call of Duty is a truly sad case of how greed destroys quality.

Back in 2004, I remember reading about the new IP by a new studio named Infinity Ward, and how it was going to kill Medal of Honor. To this day, I still remember my initial reaction: "Bullshit".

When it was released, my local internet cafe took it up immediately. It was an instant hit. It tore me awa from CS:S for a brief time, and I bought COD2 when the XBOX360 was released.

From there, I bought every new CoD. Up until WaW...and then the announcement came that MW2 wouldn't have dedicated servers. Imagine my frustration.

To this day, CoD's core gameplay is still pretty fun. Single player is a absolute blast to play through, no doubt. The problem lies in the multiplayer, which has been absolutely brutalized due to balance issues, underage kids, proliferation of hacks...it's a total cesspit. And "CoD Elite" basically tells me "We at Activision are gonna nickel and dime you to death, AND YOU WILL LIKE IT".

Fuck you, Activison.

[Sharessa]

I've never played the series. I got tired of FPSs after Half-Life (which was a good game, I just got tired of FPSs after 10 years of playing them), and haven't picked up any new IPs since then. The glut of 'realistic' war shooters really helped turn me off of the genre, so I was doubly uninterested in the series.

Also, I'm actively boycotting Activision so I'm never going to pick any CoD games up, not even to pirate.

[Captain Toenail]

I used to have no interest in Call of Duty, I didn't realise at all how big CoD 4 was and didn't play a game in the franchise until my friends persuaded me to get MW2.

I got completely sucked into the game, looking at the multiplayer stats recently gave me a holy-crap moment, apparently I've spent 27 whole days playing MW2, I have a win-streak of 57 and a kill-streak of 40. Since then I bought W@W, CoD4 then Black Ops.

These days I don't play Call of Duty much, every second day I'll play MW2 team tactical with 2 or 3 of my friends, we always dominate the other team because we use tactics, coordinating our movements, setting up ambushes etc. using voice chat. The other team is always made up of children with stupid names like xxSnIp3rxx trying to quickscope and other bullshit so they always get dominated. The rage messages I've recieved over the past year is astounding. We don't play Black Ops online though at all, laggy broken crap that it is, but zombies mode is another favourite of mine.

The games do have a LOT of flaws though, hopefully the next instalment won't have:

1. quickscoping (such a bullshit abuse of auto-aim)
2. drop-shotting
3. torrents of angry swearing children (seriously where do they all come from? Who are the parents?)
4. overpowered weapons, killstreaks and perks (I'm looking at you, ump45, mp40, commando etc.)
5. Script kiddies messing up the prestige, challenges and leaderboards.

Yes I enjoy Call of Duty a lot, it's massive fun to play with friends, despite its flaws.

[DuckReconMajor]

Captain Toenail said:

1. quickscoping (such a bullshit abuse of auto-aim)

I don't really mind this, as many others have said, CoD maps aren't big enough to do any real sniping, so there's not much else you can do with sniper rifles. Black Ops made quick scoping impossible (the scope shakes everywhere when you first raise it and you have to wait for it to settle, I dunno if they took it out) and it made sniper rifles pretty much useless.

Captain Toenail said:

2. drop-shotting

This is dumb I wouldn't mind seeing this get taken out.

Captain Toenail said:

3. torrents of angry swearing children (seriously where do they all come from? Who are the parents?)

I prefer this to people holing themselves up in party chat.

[The Lag]

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Edited June 17, 2023 by The Lag

[DuckReconMajor]

You can download the Duke 3D shareware before dropping money on it. I found it boring.