Post by _ on Nov 26, 2009 0:30:31 GMT -6
Call of Duty is starting to be a really repetitive franchise. Boringly repetitive.
But repetition can be -- and nowadays, usually is -- justified by the ol' "don't fix what ain't broke" defense -- Call of Duty is a game that is traditionally the same story of "walk through this area, do this, kill that, mission complete!" But just how long can you keep up this system?
Modern Warfare 2 (I will NOT call it MW2 -- Mech Warrior 2 is a game that deserves those initials far more than this shit) shows me that this particular formula is rapidly aging.
Time and time again, Call of Duty sent us to WWII, almost inevitably and shamelessly inserting a Normandy mission either in the beginning or in the appropriate chronological slot (due to how action-packed it was IRL), and of course, this whole idea suffers from one massive problem: the player's presence doesn't mean shit. You know the Allies are going to win, and your death really has no bearing on whether or not the red, white, and blue (US or English) is going to kick Germany and/or Japan's ass and win the Second World War. Modern Warfare 1 was a welcome change of pace -- using modern world affairs as a backdrop, create a new world and a new war to provide the player a new experience despite the same tired old formula. Let's discuss the formula, shall we?
I'm not stupid enough to claim every game should be free-roaming. Not by a long shot. Some games just don't do it well at all. That said, free-roam/free-play worlds have become a very real and very prevalent part of modern gaming. RPGs, FPSs, Action-Adventure/Platformers -- the genre which have received the open-world treatment all have very clear examples of what makes this trend so great -- Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Assassin's Creed (2, especially, 1 wasn't so great), Crackdown, GTA IV... It seems wherever the seed is planted, at least a few blossoms sprout among the dirt. I'm sick of a map being a mission; that is to say, in closed games, you enter a map, perform some mission, and leave. Maybe you return to it in another mission, but if you don't, it doesn't matter -- you've done what you came to do. It's done now. With an open game, you can enter the area before doing the mission, and you can enter after. You get the feeling that the location exists in spite of you, and even that simple conclusion can just feel great to a player -- you become a resident of a world that isn't completely tied to whether or not you have the console on at the moment. That said, in a free(r) world, is Call of Duty really a good game to have nowadays?
Yes and no. For story purposes, the game HAD to be fully scripted -- I can accept that. There is no free-roaming, no taking breaks from your job -- you are going to go to the next mission, and you are going to like it. But it is that very push that causes CoD to simply run off the rails for me, despite the fact that you are being very firmly held ON the rails -- with Modern Warfare 1, okay, I can deal with the script because, well, Infinity Ward actually had a NEW story to tell. Awesome. New world, new weapons, new setting -- all good. But Modern Warfare 2 doesn't do anything innovative, in my most honest opinion. It's just MW1 with some new terrorists to kill, and new weapons to kill them with. Now that they've brought in this world, maybe they could have given you a task center, at least, and let you, like, pick which cell to attack first? I don't know, it just would have felt so much better to me if you could choose where and how you attack (infiltrate their ranks first? Guns blazing? Sneak in the back door?) Rainbow Six, especially on PC (at least for Raven Shield -- I haven't played Vegas, so I have no idea if you could do tactical planning), had this down fantastically -- plan out your whole damned mission, if you want to (with full loadout modification IN THE CAMPAIGN, something I wish you could do in CoD), or just give the green light and lead your faithful team into combat. Your choice. Should have been the case here. God damn you, Activision.
Now, I'm not gonna knock the multiplayer deal. Fine, whatever, acne-ridden teenagers and college students (hurrr) can have their online gun orgies, whatever. With an 18-person server cap, I feel that even this aspect is sorely lacking in appeal. With MAG coming eventually to hold 100+ people on a single server to combat any claims of technical barriers, and with SW Battlefront having tipped the scales at 32 people back in XBox-PS2 days to avoid any precedence arguments, I feel that this is a bit of a letdown for a game so hyped for its multiplayer experience. Hell, that's this game's selling point, isn't it?
But repetition can be -- and nowadays, usually is -- justified by the ol' "don't fix what ain't broke" defense -- Call of Duty is a game that is traditionally the same story of "walk through this area, do this, kill that, mission complete!" But just how long can you keep up this system?
Modern Warfare 2 (I will NOT call it MW2 -- Mech Warrior 2 is a game that deserves those initials far more than this shit) shows me that this particular formula is rapidly aging.
Time and time again, Call of Duty sent us to WWII, almost inevitably and shamelessly inserting a Normandy mission either in the beginning or in the appropriate chronological slot (due to how action-packed it was IRL), and of course, this whole idea suffers from one massive problem: the player's presence doesn't mean shit. You know the Allies are going to win, and your death really has no bearing on whether or not the red, white, and blue (US or English) is going to kick Germany and/or Japan's ass and win the Second World War. Modern Warfare 1 was a welcome change of pace -- using modern world affairs as a backdrop, create a new world and a new war to provide the player a new experience despite the same tired old formula. Let's discuss the formula, shall we?
I'm not stupid enough to claim every game should be free-roaming. Not by a long shot. Some games just don't do it well at all. That said, free-roam/free-play worlds have become a very real and very prevalent part of modern gaming. RPGs, FPSs, Action-Adventure/Platformers -- the genre which have received the open-world treatment all have very clear examples of what makes this trend so great -- Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Assassin's Creed (2, especially, 1 wasn't so great), Crackdown, GTA IV... It seems wherever the seed is planted, at least a few blossoms sprout among the dirt. I'm sick of a map being a mission; that is to say, in closed games, you enter a map, perform some mission, and leave. Maybe you return to it in another mission, but if you don't, it doesn't matter -- you've done what you came to do. It's done now. With an open game, you can enter the area before doing the mission, and you can enter after. You get the feeling that the location exists in spite of you, and even that simple conclusion can just feel great to a player -- you become a resident of a world that isn't completely tied to whether or not you have the console on at the moment. That said, in a free(r) world, is Call of Duty really a good game to have nowadays?
Yes and no. For story purposes, the game HAD to be fully scripted -- I can accept that. There is no free-roaming, no taking breaks from your job -- you are going to go to the next mission, and you are going to like it. But it is that very push that causes CoD to simply run off the rails for me, despite the fact that you are being very firmly held ON the rails -- with Modern Warfare 1, okay, I can deal with the script because, well, Infinity Ward actually had a NEW story to tell. Awesome. New world, new weapons, new setting -- all good. But Modern Warfare 2 doesn't do anything innovative, in my most honest opinion. It's just MW1 with some new terrorists to kill, and new weapons to kill them with. Now that they've brought in this world, maybe they could have given you a task center, at least, and let you, like, pick which cell to attack first? I don't know, it just would have felt so much better to me if you could choose where and how you attack (infiltrate their ranks first? Guns blazing? Sneak in the back door?) Rainbow Six, especially on PC (at least for Raven Shield -- I haven't played Vegas, so I have no idea if you could do tactical planning), had this down fantastically -- plan out your whole damned mission, if you want to (with full loadout modification IN THE CAMPAIGN, something I wish you could do in CoD), or just give the green light and lead your faithful team into combat. Your choice. Should have been the case here. God damn you, Activision.
Now, I'm not gonna knock the multiplayer deal. Fine, whatever, acne-ridden teenagers and college students (hurrr) can have their online gun orgies, whatever. With an 18-person server cap, I feel that even this aspect is sorely lacking in appeal. With MAG coming eventually to hold 100+ people on a single server to combat any claims of technical barriers, and with SW Battlefront having tipped the scales at 32 people back in XBox-PS2 days to avoid any precedence arguments, I feel that this is a bit of a letdown for a game so hyped for its multiplayer experience. Hell, that's this game's selling point, isn't it?
