Plus I think I stained myself a little at the end of the BF video, when he looks up at the Little Bird spewing shell casings...
How Call of Duty Destroyed the World
Has the success of Call of Duty done more harm than good?
For centuries, man has been predicting the end of the world as we know it. The Mayans, Nostradamus, R.E.M. – they've all been singing the same tune. What none of them managed to predict however, was that the world would be destroyed by Call of Duty. Well, the world of video games, at least.
Come on, you've been sensing it for a while. You've looked on in despair as yet another FPS is released that wants to be Black Ops. You've felt the mounting deluge of dissatisfaction that's been building inside you ever since Activision clearly realised Call of Duty 4 was a gambit that very much paid off, and could conceivably continue to pay off year, after year, after year at the cost of an entire genre of gaming.
So what do you do about it? Once it's dawned on you that you've been playing the same game with different titles for years now, you look to alternatives. But guess what? They're all uncomfortably familiar; especially when it comes time to go online. At this point your internal reactor reaches critical mass, explodes, and your passion for the act of first-person digital warfare becomes a shadow burnt into the couch where you used to sit for hours and ponder the great quandaries of the 21st century schizoid gamer: "AK-74u w/ grip or FAMAS?" and "Where best to camp?" and, gradually, "Wow, this kind of sucks," and, eventually, "Why is everything trying to be this game?"
Spot the difference.
Call of Duty engineered the destruction of its race, allowing its masters to subjugate the universe, giving them wealth and power beyond anybody's wildest dreams. Now it controls the evolution of any species or technology that it judges to be a potential threat; the greatest FPS scientists and developers forced to work under the supervision of so much inexplicable profit. For that, the global tribunal of gamingdom must put Call of Duty on trial. Intermediaries in this affair include but are not limited to anyone bemoaning the rise of casualised meta-gaming to a seat of absolute power. Hypocritically enough, however, if you play Black Ops then you become part of the problem – or, at the very least, you become an unpaid beta tester, according to UK-based consumer advocacy group Gamers' Voice, who've been taking the concept of a trial extremely literally for some time now. Figuratively or literally, it's a trial that's sorely needed.
So far every glimmer of salvation has been swiftly snuffed, undone by the very tyrant they each seek to usurp. When the Medal of Honor reboot loomed on the horizon, bristling with bearded promise, hope for a better tomorrow stirred in the weary hearts of gamers everywhere. A new challenger had appeared; EA finally taking the fight to Activision with a game that… looked indistinguishable from Call of Duty, and… played similarly… and… might as well have been called Crap Ops, provided that name hadn't already been attributed to Black Ops by certain quarters. Even formerly unique FPS franchises aesthetically outside CoD's jurisdiction towed the line to some extent: Killzone 3's heavier sci-fi tread couldn't escape the prevalence of identically-implemented perks and killstreaks; neither could Crysis 2, despite its dog-tag riff on the former's familiar theme. And Homefront? THQ might be hurling optimistic press release confetti into the air to placate investors, but every gamer knows the truth at the heart of that disappointment.
We're seeing the backlash now. Dead Space 2 was criticized by many for its by-the-numbers multiplayer modes, while the upcoming Prey 2 has no multiplayer to speak of at all. DICE is even actively taking to Activision's lackluster modus operandi in the press, with General Manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson recently launching a salvo of unguided missiles in the obvious direction of Kotick's Fourth Reich and its many silent partners: "The competitors are out there, they're established, and they're very, very big. We believe that they are not innovating, that they are treading water. They're using the same engine," he added, "the same recipe for building a game. At some point you need to take that leap. I haven't seen them take that leap since a long time ago."
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Battlefield 3: Saviour of the Shooter Genre?
It's an interesting sentiment given that, by all hands-off reports, Battlefield 3's single-player looks and possibly plays a lot like Black Ops. No one can be completely sure, however, as no-one's been hands-on with the latest Great White FPS Hope just yet. Have you already pre-ordered yourself a Limited Edition copy? Maybe you have. Scared? You should be, but for a much more worrying reason than the fact DICE might be setting you up for yet another hum-drum offering of derivative tin-can target practice (they have brought back prone, you know, and that means dolphin-dives, and… wait, is that some quick time events we see?).
You now have more in common with Bobby Kotick than is comfortable to admit. The aggressive expanse that is his waistline might swell concurrently with Call of Duty's success, but so too does his receding helmet of ever-shrinking red ripcurls. And how many times has Black Ops made you pull your hair out, either directly or indirectly? It's not just the screaming frustration inherent to a sudden blinding crash whilst you're up 195-190 in the tensest game of Domination ever or being informed in slow-motion that ENCHANTMENT_LOL has nailed you from afar with a frag grenade tossed mindlessly into the ether (again), it's also the fact that everything else not so much wants as needs to repeat this tired montage of firefight fallacies over, and over, and over – and the more they decry this increasingly obvious dead-end, they more likely they are to be trapped in it. The first-person shooter has gone nowhere for years largely because of this series' success; in some cases, it's even gone backwards.
How does he sleep at night? On a posturepedic mattress stuffed with your hopes and dreams.
Why? Money, mostly. Big business savvy will always copy rather than create. It's easier, and the herd at large (you) won't turn dissent into action (by not playing the game), which would in turn either force evolution or result in overdue dismantlement à la Guitar Hero. We're gamers; we have a unique addiction that we love to death yet argue for and against constantly, hoping it will improve itself but feeling more or less powerless either way. It's not wholly unlike being the bitch in a relationship. Simply asking gamers not to play the latest and greatest is totally unfeasible. What it really takes is the stumbling of the status quo to fire up the signal flare of change, and while Homefront's crippled offensive is a very disappointing thing indeed for gamers, it is also a means to a much greater end. It is a Call of Duty copycat that ticks all the right boxes, but fails to rise above campaign gameplay mediocrity. Perhaps it will be the last straw?
In times of tragedy it does us good to laugh, and laugh we should – it's just too bad the comforting comedy we crave is almost as tragic as the tragedy it's supposed to be relieving. The only reason Call of Duty has become such a billion-dollar gaming behemoth is because the franchise at large took a safe but calculated risk back in 2007 with Call of Duty 4, turning 1944 into present day while every other FPS around it pushed forward – whilst marching on the spot – in a slow wave of identikit WWII-centric ennui. Call of Duty 4 didn't do much to innovate, but sometimes changing your stripes is all that's needed, and the rest will follow. Ironically, hilariously, everyone else followed, and continue to do so.
Hope lies with Battlefield 3 – but even men with their mouths full of trash-talk need to eat.
