CoD Overview

A brief over view of the Call of Duty series.

By Cyraxis

The Call of Duty series is one that has never been short of praise. The original Call of Duty on the PC that won several game of the year awards and received a 91% from Metacritic, not that I give a damn what other critics think. Critics are a bunch of egotistical pricks who seem to think that their opinion should be law for the masses to follow...wait a second aren't I one of those pricks now?...moving on.

Having got its start as a world war 2 shooter and showing veteran series Medal of Honour how its done, Call of Duty or Cod as it is abbreviated to by lifeforms lower than myself, has decided that there is no future in World War II games, maybe because everyone already knows how it ends, and decided that its time to humiliate all the modern day shooters. So in 2008 Activision and Infinity Ward made Modern Warfare which somehow managed to slip under the radar of most gamers and...oh no wait it was a massive success with scores of up to 94% and also the best selling game of 2007.

Trout4 was praised for its story which relied heavily on shock value with an admittedly incredible scene where you slowly wander through a city after a nuke has just gone off looking at the desolation before succumbing to the radiation and dying. As much as I don't believe any game has ever done enough to deserve the momentous levels of praise and regard some of them have Bass4 is certainly the closest game I have ever played to reaching the hype. Admittedly it did nothing to really revolutionise the FPS genre but it did everything that other FPS games better than other games had done them. I do not agree however that it should still be on the shelves for £20 when most games can go down to that amount after a few months.

Following this Treyarch took the award winning ideas from Modern Warfare and and threw them out the window, creating Salmon WaW or World at War if you like. It decided instead to return to the WWII formula and to their credit the game was still pretty good with the same side switching campaign that was the first Call Of Duty's only unique feature, allowing you to see the war from multiple sides and the Japanese setting did help to mix up the overused settings that most other WWII shooters cling too like shit to the side of a toilet bowl. World at War paled in comparison to the semi genius that was Herring4 but it is by no means a bad game its just that if I was to give an A to Shark4 then WaW would get maybe a C. Its a pass at most levels but it must try harder next time.

And so we move onto the next instalment of this fishy series, Modern Warfare 2, which took all things that made Whale4 amazing (yes I've run out of fish to uses but sea bound mammals are close enough) and gave them back to us...

“wait a second” I said “even WaW changed things up a bit, this is just the same game with a different gritty filter over it” to which infinity ward replied “well its not exactly the same, there are some different guns in it.”

so with Modern Warfare 2 we have been sold what is essentially the same game again but with a less intriguing story and this is the first time I've been inclined to actually talk about the story. The story of Sea Turtle4 was a pretty basic go stop a terrorist group in Russia from being mean to America, whilst on the American side you get to live out all your fantasies about serving in Iraq. If your the kind of strange person who fantasises about that kind of thing then you are either American or you have had all your imagination crushed by the current school system which does its best to make sure that every child grows up to think exactly how the adults do so that none of them ever have any ideas about growing up and doing something with their lives, all ending up being another piece of the huge vile machine that is this oppressive capitalist society until you out live your usefulness and just end up being ground under the wheels. AND IN THE END YOUR OLD AND SENILE, LYING IN SOME OLD FOLKS HOME BEING SEDATED EVERY DAY WITH NO FREE WILL SLOWLY ROTTING AWAY TILL YOU ARE NOTHING MORE!!!! sorry about that I think I got a bit off topic.

Anyway the story in MW2 carries on where the last left off with all the characters being dead. Wait a second no their not that was just where the writers found themselves in a corner and decided the only way out was to use dig. Regardless the main story idea is that the Russians are all up in arms over you covertly entering their country, destroying a missile base that was stocked with nuclear missiles, killing a large chunk of their army, causing massive amounts of damage to a bridge and tunnel that was in major use and finally killing the terrorist who it seems had a rather large amount of support in the last game and have decided to invade America...I think a cold war fantasist might have written this. Well anyway the main plot is that America is being rammed like a gimp in a gay bar and it is up to the British forces to save them from this predicament seeing as the Americans are completely incapable of winning a war on their own despite having one of the largest armies in the world.

So we've established that the story is about as bat shit crazy as an evangelical Christian but that's not too important as long as the game play is still good right? Well the game play is good...because as stated its exactly the same as the last two games. You run around and kill the same three faceless terrorists over and over as you run down identical corridors in various shades of grey, never once considering the families of the puddles your running through that used to be people. then you reach a section where you have to stand around for a few seconds while two NPCs talk about things that you probably don't care much about till being told to continue. The game also tried to cash in on the same shock value that the first MW had by killing off the main character only this game decides to double the shock by doing it twice...slow sarcastic applause are in order. I feel I cannot grade this game like I did the others because if I did hand it in to teacher I'd be done for plagiarism.

And now for the latest game, Call of Duty: Black Ops...its an absolute cluster fuck, moving on

Now as I'm sure you've all noticed I've neglected up until this point to mention the multiplayer and that is because I wanted to address it separately as it hasn't changed much since Call of Duty 2. essentially it goes like this, two teams of equal size, usually about eight enter, fight till one team has fifty kills and then you go back to the lobby where the winning team laugh, gloat and challenge the sexuality of the loosing team safe in the knowledge that no harm an come to their fat, pale little bodies. I tell you when I perfect my device that allows me to lean through a TV screen to a specific person on the other side I am no longer going to have problems controlling my anger.

When I first started on Manatee4 I was playing the multiplayer purely for shits and giggles and it was really good. I ran around and killed or got killed, it didn't matter it was fun, I would applaud a good kill on me and in the end it was a game and it was fun. Then along came WaW and things changed. It wasn't entirely the games fault, yes they included a lot of overpowered weapons that enabled the worst players to get a few kills, but enabled the more experienced players to manipulate the camping positions and monopolise the game, forcing those players who don't find fun in hiding in corners to try and wage war in just a few fractions of the map. Adding to my woes was a friend of mine who was terribly obsessed with his kill/death ratio who informed me of where my own kill/death ratio was and from then on I started playing to win, and to get as many kills as I could and slowly the level of campers and cheap tactics started to get to me. The madness had begun.

And now on to the latest two games, once again the only thing that has changed is that the producers have rubbed yet more shit on the game that once stood as one of my favourite games. Some of the new maps are designed specifically for one type of weapon for example Afghan on MW2 which you are forced by snipers into about a 3^rd of a map where you can't get sniped on spawn, and then that is reduced further by the amount of places people can hide and pop out of as soon as you wander in turn you into the consistency of a hamburger and then hide again.

The weapons become even more overpowered, for example the LMGs for the most part become accurate to a pin prick and the last stand perk has driven me to drink before. People throw grenade after grenade, the under slung grenade launchers designed to hit the opening spawn point as soon as the game starts, and again the camping in one spot. Campers on games like this have a special circle of hell reserved for them where the most unspeakable things are done to them. Every second they sat in one place becomes a millennium, they endure suffering and if they ever get out it will be too soon and oh look at that I'm ranting again.

In the long and short the games aren't bad, their simple dumb campaigns that you can get some fun out of if you play it in short bursts. The multiplayer is a slightly different case, it is shit, its boring, repetitive and more of a grind than the later Final Fantasy games, but its made like that as much by the players as by bad game choices. Like with all new games it seems to have a gritty filter over it and it is desperate to be realistic despite the fact that realistic is not fun, in real life you get shot once and you fall down slowly bleeding out until your saved by someone and left in a hospital for six months before the army tell you they don't want you any more, give you a check and send you to some poorly paid desk job. The games get slowly worse as the series progresses and I expect that eventually all we're going to get when we buy the newest Call of Duty is a box that a member of Activision has wanked in.

Final thoughts: yes I know I haven't addressed the zombie mode on this game but if I think any more about this game I fear that my brain my melt and I'll be reduced to the level of the disgusting creatures who frequent the games multiplayer and I may actually consider buying the next in this cascading pile of shit.