God, I hate Call of Duty. If you play it and buy the games every year, I probably hate you too. If you pirate the games and play them, I still hate you because you have horrible taste in video games and if you're going to pirate stuff at least make it stuff that's worth having. Every year Activision insults the intelligence of the gaming community by releasing the same game, and every year you retards fall for it. It wasn't always this way though, Activision used to publish some pretty kickass stuff. Remember Tony Hawk Pro Skater? Those games rocked, until they ruined it by releasing a rehashed sequel every 10 minutes until they got so bad that no one cared anymore. The same thing happened with Guitar Hero. The first few games came out and were totally wicked, bringing a whole new gaming subgenre into existence. After that they started releasing far too many sequels far too often, with no real changes to the core game mechanic other than adding drums to compete with EA's Rock Band which was the same thing as Guitar Hero only much better. Wipe that smirk off your face EA, you're guilty of this too.
The problem with strategies like this is that it places absolutely no value on the customers, and relies on the quality of the previous entries in the series to motivate consumers to buy the newest one, even if it's a half-finished, hastily thrown together copy of the great older games. There's no innovation, the reasoning is "well, it sold well last time so let's do it again". It seems like Activision is acting using Hollywood logic: if it makes money, milk it until there's no more money to be made. This is the logic that gave us a Spiderman reboot less than 6 years after the last one ended, or 4 damn Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Endless sequels, reboots, re-imaginings and remakes have been showing up in the last few decades, and it's reached a point where it's getting pretty ridiculous. I'm not trying to say that all of these are inherently bad, some of them are pretty great. I'll admit that I enjoyed Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, and the new Planet of the Apes reboot. I'm interested to see Superman this summer and the recent 007 movies (with the exception of Quantum of Solace) have been pretty impressive.There are some franchises that deserve to be re-imagined, considering the leaps and bounds technology in film has made in the last several decades. But not everything that was successful in the past needs (or even deserves) to get remade (lookin' at you, Michael Bay). You'd think after the steaming pile of crap that was the Star Wars prequel trilogy they'd leave it alone, but nope. There's money to be made, so here we go with another trilogy.
Video games are taking the same path. Instead of new, fresh games coming out every year we're getting sequels, remakes and reboots. And that's not necessarily a bad thing either. Far Cry 3 came out this year, and it turned out to be one of the best games of 2012 because it's easy to tell that the studio learned from the previous games and used that knowledge to make something special and memorable, not to mention incredibly immersive and outright horrifying (goddamn sharks). Last year also saw the release of Hitman Absolution, a reboot of a much beloved series that had been idle for quite a while. The game was great, staying true to its challenging roots while adding replayability and that aspect of creativity that thinking gamers crave. Sequels aren't a bad thing, but there has to be some evolution in them. A sequel should feel somewhat like the game that came before it, but it needs to have enough new ideas to distinguish it as an improvement over what came before. Some games hit this nail right on the head (see Mass Effect 2) and some games fail at this horribly. Which brings me back to my original topic, how bad Call of Duty is. I believe that creating a worthy sequel takes time. The developers need to reflect on what went well in the last game and what didn't, find out what the players liked and hated, and use that information to improve upon the last game. I think a really good example of this is Rocksteady's Batman games. There have been a lot of Batman games in the past, but none have even approached the level of depth and immersion that these have attained. The first game, Arkham Asylum, was fantastic, blending easy to learn but hard to master combat with hidden secrets, puzzles, clever boss fights and a tight, focused story that consisted of interesting, iconic characters and a great setting. Even after beating it there was a lot of stuff to find, and really hard challenge maps to master if you really wanted to get into them. Arkham City came out more than two years later and improved upon the formula a lot. It took place in a huge open world, with a lot more maps and enemies. There were a lot more boss fights and literally hundreds of riddles, secrets and collectibles to find. It also contained more subplots and character development for Batman himself, which was excellent. There were even more playable characters available as DLC, with Catwoman coming free with the game. City was just a massive improvement over Asylum, which is a huge accomplishment considering how great the first game was. This is an instance where thought and creativity brought forth a fantastic sequel.
But in Call of Duty we see no such thing. Every year in the fall, in time for the Christmas rush, we see a new COD game come out. And they're all essentially the same. If you put any two of them side by side you won't be able to tell which is which because they all contain the same guns, virtually identical graphics, the same perks etc etc. I have to give credit where credit is due though, COD4 was a great game that brought life into a dying franchise. It was innovative, and cool. But Activision has been milking that once cool military game for far too long now. If they had taken time to think about what they were doing instead of rushing out the same game every year then maybe they could have released a few worthy sequels by now. But they didn't. And they haven't. The single player campaigns have arguably taken the biggest hit in this respect. They last around 3-4 hours in each game and just basically consist of running around shooting foreign people the whole time while stuff explodes. No replayability, no variety. It feels tacked on compared to the multiplayer modes, which is what everyone apparently buys it for. The multiplayer consists of running and gunning, twitch-based gameplay. Whoever sees the other player first gets the kill. Whoever sets up the most mines and find the best place to camp wins the match. There's no teamwork involved because it's all about getting the highest score. It's complete repetition. Don't feel bad though, if you're a Call of Duty fan. Most people that play it are younger and this generation of game consoles is their first gaming experience. People who grew up playing games like Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six know how great shooting games can be, and how shallow and narrow COD is compared to these games. So it's not your fault. You probably just don't know better.
Another thing that really pisses me off about this game series is the amount of downloadable content that they release for each game. When a Call of Duty game comes out, it has multiplayer maps on the game, but throughout the year Activision releases more maps and game modes, usually around four packs a year at a modest 15$ each. This is an absolutely stupid practice. I'm not saying that DLC in itself is a bad thing, but Activision and a lot of other publishers release too much of it at too high a cost. It's cool to download extra levels and stuff for games that extend the playtime you'll get out of the game and enhance the experience, but paying another 60$ a year (the same cost of the initial game) just to have all the maps is ridiculous. And an obscene amount of people fork over the cash every year. Guess what Ubisoft did a few months after releasing Far Cry 3? They put out some new co-op maps for the 4 player game mode (which is excellent) for the very reasonable price of FREE. Rockstar released new content for Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption, also free. Activision doesn't do this because they think of their fanbase as sheep and want to squeeze every cent they can out of them. To get the full experience of one game, you have to pay for it twice over. And they do this every year. And people still fall for it and somehow enjoy the games.
Reader, you can play any game you want. If you want to throw down 120$ on Call of Duty every year and line the pockets of these Activision execs while they laugh because they can get away with it, cool. I just want you to think about what you're playing, and question whether the Call of Duty series is really worth all the money and time people dump into it.
*SPOILER ALERT*
It isn't.
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