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  • Subject: I love Call of Duty as a game, hate it as a cultural sensation
Subject: I love Call of Duty as a game, hate it as a cultural sensation

If good looks could kill, I'd be a weapon of mass destruction.

Q: Hey, what did Hitler say to the black jew?
A: Get to the back of the oven.

I'll keep this rant/opinion as short and sweet as possible.

Call of Duty...I have nothing against the game or franchise itself. Is it the same game every year? Mostly, but the campaigns have always been fun to me, as well as the incredible multiplayer offerings. The customization is great and intuitive. An overall very fun franchise.

But why then do I hate it as the cultural phenomenon that it is? Because of what it has done to the gaming industry and culture as a whole. Major franchises are pulling elements from COD to implement into their games in an attempt to sway some of the fanbase.

Now, granted, Call of Duty is not the first franchise to use many of the elements that it has, but by god is it the first to popularize them on such a massive scale.

Now games resort to the customizable skinner box methods as opposed to of the more competitive aspects they used to exhibit. This is in no way indicative of the quality or "fun-ness" of the games themselves, but rather the lack of true and core arena style gameplay (read: everybody has an equal standing at start and the better man ultimately wins) that defined gaming for the true gamers as opposed to of the mainstream "casuals" for lack of a better term. Those who lack an attention span to formulate strategies to better play in an arena setting and instead would rather change everything about themselves to better suit their own personal play style for a few matches.

Again, is that in itself bad? Of course not. But when the market becomes saturated with these kinds of elements in games, it becomes annoying and frustrating.

For the record, while I much better loved Halo 1-3 than 4 (Reach was garbo) I still enjoy 4 quite a bit. I believe they actually used the loadouts to a good effect in the sense that they allow customization without sacrificing much equality. The armor abilities and what have you are fairly equal and the weapons you choose come from a list of similar weapons as opposed to of radically different weapon types (you can't pick a rocket launcher as a primary/secondary weapon a la COD).

Could Halo 4 have done better? Absolutely. Do I disagree with some of their decisions? Absolutely. But I applaud them for using elements from a popular game to (mostly) benevolent effect to evolve the franchise without sacrificing too much arena gameplay. I admit that I am still waiting for the classic playlist however, as I feel like I will enjoy that playlist much more than what we have now.

Finally the ranking system. Rewarding the losers as much as the winners is really what kills me the most. I believe players that do good even on a losing team should be rewarded, sure, but should everyone that gets just a single kill get a major pat on the back and a few thousand XP "just for playing!" ? I'm not claiming to have the best ranking system solution for competitive gaming that can properly reward and detract players, but I think Halo 3's system (despite its flaws) is the best system in recent history. If it could maybe be improved upon...

TL;DR: COD is a great franchise in its own right, but I truly believe its media and public sensationalism is corrupting the gaming market.

Yes I'm telling you what most of you already know. But perhaps I bring up some points you hadn't considered?

Thoughts?

  • 12.18.2012 9:37 AM PDT
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Nothing new under the wall of text, no. We all already knew this.

  • 12.18.2012 9:39 AM PDT
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Don't blame the game for idiotic devs trying to copy them. They should have learned by now that it has never and will never work.

  • 12.18.2012 9:39 AM PDT

If good looks could kill, I'd be a weapon of mass destruction.

Q: Hey, what did Hitler say to the black jew?
A: Get to the back of the oven.


Posted by: A Jar of Dirt
Nothing new under the wall of text, no. We all already knew this.


Thanks for your input. I will seriously examine and consider your points to the greatest of my ability and, if possible, implement them into the original post as they are capable of great qualitative discussion value.

  • 12.18.2012 9:40 AM PDT

Don't blame casuals. Blame the companies who cater to them for the sake of money.

  • 12.18.2012 9:41 AM PDT

Posted by: brandorobot
Don't blame the game for idiotic devs trying to copy them. They should have learned by now that it has never and will never work.

Except it does work. People still buy a hyped game regardless of its quality nowadays.

  • 12.18.2012 9:42 AM PDT
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Posted by: CharlesBrown33
Posted by: brandorobot
Don't blame the game for idiotic devs trying to copy them. They should have learned by now that it has never and will never work.

Except it does work. People still buy a hyped game regardless of its quality nowadays.

There hasn't been a game yet that has taken aspects from CoD which has had any kind of lasting success. They always die out quickly because their fanbase is not going to be interested in a game with identical features. And why would they be?

  • 12.18.2012 9:45 AM PDT