Docky
Hot take time once again: This is not only the best CoD game set in the future but also the best CoD campaign since Black Ops 1 (though not even remotely close to that games greatness)
I think it all comes down to the characters actually being likeable. Look, CoD games almost always have shit plots, even some of the good ones have shit plots (RUSSIA INVADES AMERICA BABY!) and ultimately imo whether a CoD campaign is good or not comes down to the characters which is why the last like 3-4 CoD games have been so bad, they have entirely forgettable/bad characters which makes it impossible to excuse the dumb plots and over the top setpieces.
Also this is the game where they finally learn that when we play a video game, we want to PLAY it, not watch it. We don't want a cutscene of our character using a gadget, we want to use that gadget in game.
You are finally allowed to use all the cool shit the game introduces, but also the game only introduces gadgets you can use more than once, so no invisibility cloak that you only use a single time or magic spiderman gloves that are just quick time events. An example of a useful gadget introduced in here is hacking robots, it's satisfying to hack a robot then self destruct near like 10 enemies and blow all of them up.
It's actually refreshing as hell for this series at this point. Level design is a bit more open but by a bit I do really mean A BIT since its still linear as fuck.
I enjoyed the gunplay, it wasn't perfect but the guns were pretty cool, I liked the guns that turn into other guns (Sniper turns into assault rifle, smg turns into 2 smgs, etc...) and double scopes. Felt much more futuristic than any guns from the last 2 games.
Story was kinda bad but I enjoyed the characters quite a bit, the dialogue and banter was well written, the themes of sacrifice were the opposite of subtle but they did the job much more than whatever shit BO3 might have had in one of those timelines or AW's basic predictable plot. It actually feels like this game had some heart and passion put into it which I can't confidently say for the last like 6 entries in this series.
It's not the peak of the series, not even close, but it is the closest to a return to good as it gets. Decent shit all things considered.
I think it all comes down to the characters actually being likeable. Look, CoD games almost always have shit plots, even some of the good ones have shit plots (RUSSIA INVADES AMERICA BABY!) and ultimately imo whether a CoD campaign is good or not comes down to the characters which is why the last like 3-4 CoD games have been so bad, they have entirely forgettable/bad characters which makes it impossible to excuse the dumb plots and over the top setpieces.
Also this is the game where they finally learn that when we play a video game, we want to PLAY it, not watch it. We don't want a cutscene of our character using a gadget, we want to use that gadget in game.
You are finally allowed to use all the cool shit the game introduces, but also the game only introduces gadgets you can use more than once, so no invisibility cloak that you only use a single time or magic spiderman gloves that are just quick time events. An example of a useful gadget introduced in here is hacking robots, it's satisfying to hack a robot then self destruct near like 10 enemies and blow all of them up.
It's actually refreshing as hell for this series at this point. Level design is a bit more open but by a bit I do really mean A BIT since its still linear as fuck.
I enjoyed the gunplay, it wasn't perfect but the guns were pretty cool, I liked the guns that turn into other guns (Sniper turns into assault rifle, smg turns into 2 smgs, etc...) and double scopes. Felt much more futuristic than any guns from the last 2 games.
Story was kinda bad but I enjoyed the characters quite a bit, the dialogue and banter was well written, the themes of sacrifice were the opposite of subtle but they did the job much more than whatever shit BO3 might have had in one of those timelines or AW's basic predictable plot. It actually feels like this game had some heart and passion put into it which I can't confidently say for the last like 6 entries in this series.
It's not the peak of the series, not even close, but it is the closest to a return to good as it gets. Decent shit all things considered.
Black Ops 3 has a whole lot to offer. It's just that most of it is god awful.
Longest campaign with coop included! Sounds good but then you play it and its a pretentious confusing story that has good ideas but it feels like you need 3 wiki pages, one stupid long youtube video and 3 reddit posts open at the same time simply to understand what happens. It's not that its a deep and complex story but rather that the story telling is absolutely terrible and things just kinda happen without explanation, apparently there's like 2 different timelines going on at the same time in this game and I just tapped out and stopped trying to understand it a while ago.
The multiplayer expands on AW's mp and it is fun at times but the map design is once again too restrictive and boring for this type of advanced movement. The gunplay feels pretty generic and mediocre, a step down from AW's gunplay imo. Also loot boxes once again can be found in the game and all the DLC weapons are placed in them for some reason, why pay like 10$ for DLC weapons when you could pay 100$ for loot boxes for a chance to get them and not even get close to getting one!
There's like 3 zombie modes for some fucking reason. There's the normal 'zombies' mode which has ONE singular map with the rest being payed dlc, yeah go fuck yourself Activision. There's like a version of the campaign but with zombies and why the fuck would anyone want that? And there's that dead ops arcade thing from BO1 that's back and just as fine as before.
Besides that there's also a crappy freerun mode that feels slapped together and cheap.
Best thing that I can say is that I appreciate the fact this game has workshop support for steam ig. Still, terrible game imo.
Longest campaign with coop included! Sounds good but then you play it and its a pretentious confusing story that has good ideas but it feels like you need 3 wiki pages, one stupid long youtube video and 3 reddit posts open at the same time simply to understand what happens. It's not that its a deep and complex story but rather that the story telling is absolutely terrible and things just kinda happen without explanation, apparently there's like 2 different timelines going on at the same time in this game and I just tapped out and stopped trying to understand it a while ago.
The multiplayer expands on AW's mp and it is fun at times but the map design is once again too restrictive and boring for this type of advanced movement. The gunplay feels pretty generic and mediocre, a step down from AW's gunplay imo. Also loot boxes once again can be found in the game and all the DLC weapons are placed in them for some reason, why pay like 10$ for DLC weapons when you could pay 100$ for loot boxes for a chance to get them and not even get close to getting one!
There's like 3 zombie modes for some fucking reason. There's the normal 'zombies' mode which has ONE singular map with the rest being payed dlc, yeah go fuck yourself Activision. There's like a version of the campaign but with zombies and why the fuck would anyone want that? And there's that dead ops arcade thing from BO1 that's back and just as fine as before.
Besides that there's also a crappy freerun mode that feels slapped together and cheap.
Best thing that I can say is that I appreciate the fact this game has workshop support for steam ig. Still, terrible game imo.
Advanced Warfare...tries.
It tries to innovate, it tries to bring the series into a new generations, it tries to tell a story, it sure as hell tries a lot of stuff.
The issue is that it's Call Of Duty, it tries to tell an interesting story but it's plot is literally the only 2 existent CoD plots mashed up, first you fight terrorists then the US gets invaded.
It tries to bring the series into a new generations and innovate but it's still CoD, no amount of cool new shiny gadgets and abilities can hide how painfully linear and rail road-y this game is. Even more than before.
It's design feels super outdated with itself and at odds with its gameplay, you can slide and double jump and can climb walls when the game tells you too and have a grappling hook but all the levels are super linier and you're never truly allowed to use your abilities in many meaningful and fun ways. There's invisible walls everywhere, if you dare go a bit to the right when you're supposed to go to the left well...BACK TO THE LAST CHECKPOINT BITCH!
Don't even get me started on the quick time events. Not exactly a "quick" time event but the infamous Press F to Pay Respects thing shows how much this game thinks you're a fucking moron for playing it (and AW I am a moron but for reasons outside of me having this game on steam), to the game you can't feel bad unless the game tells you. What's next? Press F to Feel Sad? I wouldn't put it past them.
The game also introduced loot boxes into CoD...so thats also another thing to hold against this game.
Buuut there is a reason this isn't a 1-3/10 so lets talk about some positives. Map design is alright, theres a nice variety ig.
The game looks a billion times better than Ghosts and they seemed to put a lot of effort into the game especially with it still looking fairly good even 7 years later unlike Ghosts which would have looked bad if it came out in 2011. Gunplay is also pretty great, which yeah should be standard for this series but it is a positive nonetheless. So the game is kinda fun. Grenades are pretty fun and useless.
Back to the negatives, this game is painfully easy, played my 2nd playthrough on veteran and barely had any issues, whenever I died it was because I was playing like a dumbass not because the game was hard or anything.
All in all, game sucks but I found myself enjoying it slightly more than BO2 and way more than Ghosts, so why is it not a 5 or above?
Well again it did introduce loot boxes and for as good as the F meme is, it does show how little respect this series has for its players at this point so why should I give it a score that it doesn't deserve?
It tries to innovate, it tries to bring the series into a new generations, it tries to tell a story, it sure as hell tries a lot of stuff.
The issue is that it's Call Of Duty, it tries to tell an interesting story but it's plot is literally the only 2 existent CoD plots mashed up, first you fight terrorists then the US gets invaded.
It tries to bring the series into a new generations and innovate but it's still CoD, no amount of cool new shiny gadgets and abilities can hide how painfully linear and rail road-y this game is. Even more than before.
It's design feels super outdated with itself and at odds with its gameplay, you can slide and double jump and can climb walls when the game tells you too and have a grappling hook but all the levels are super linier and you're never truly allowed to use your abilities in many meaningful and fun ways. There's invisible walls everywhere, if you dare go a bit to the right when you're supposed to go to the left well...BACK TO THE LAST CHECKPOINT BITCH!
Don't even get me started on the quick time events. Not exactly a "quick" time event but the infamous Press F to Pay Respects thing shows how much this game thinks you're a fucking moron for playing it (and AW I am a moron but for reasons outside of me having this game on steam), to the game you can't feel bad unless the game tells you. What's next? Press F to Feel Sad? I wouldn't put it past them.
The game also introduced loot boxes into CoD...so thats also another thing to hold against this game.
Buuut there is a reason this isn't a 1-3/10 so lets talk about some positives. Map design is alright, theres a nice variety ig.
The game looks a billion times better than Ghosts and they seemed to put a lot of effort into the game especially with it still looking fairly good even 7 years later unlike Ghosts which would have looked bad if it came out in 2011. Gunplay is also pretty great, which yeah should be standard for this series but it is a positive nonetheless. So the game is kinda fun. Grenades are pretty fun and useless.
Back to the negatives, this game is painfully easy, played my 2nd playthrough on veteran and barely had any issues, whenever I died it was because I was playing like a dumbass not because the game was hard or anything.
All in all, game sucks but I found myself enjoying it slightly more than BO2 and way more than Ghosts, so why is it not a 5 or above?
Well again it did introduce loot boxes and for as good as the F meme is, it does show how little respect this series has for its players at this point so why should I give it a score that it doesn't deserve?
2013
Call of Duty Ghosts is...special.
This is a game which sets itself up as a more stealthy title yet one of the first things you do in the game is drive into the enemy base with a truck while you blow everything up, the first actual stealth mission is mission 8 and even then that goes to hell in usual CoD fashion.
A game with the unironic prompt of “Press F to bark”. One where your character meets up with the ghosts and works with them once and then says that he and his brother are determined to become Ghosts now, like what? Yall didnt even know the fuckers actually existed till today and now you want to be one of them because they let you tag along?
One where the US has an orbital fucking missile launcher that can kill tens of millions in seconds and guess what happens...it gets hijacked and then the bad guys (I don’t even know who the fuck those guys are at the start of the game tbh) use it to kill 27 million people in a few secs, set orbital missile launcher also fires directly at your home town yet you, your brother and father make it somehow despite you seeing the laser hit, I guess if everyone else had just run, jumped and drove a car for a bit they could have survived as well.
It’s a game where ALL of South America invades the US. One where the bad guys are unironically called ‘The Federation’. One where the selling point is A FUCKING DOG. One with dozens of tutorials for gadgets/gimmicks you only use once, they get a small tutorial and then they’re out of the game. One with voice acting so weak that when your brother finds out that your father was a part of the Ghosts the whole time he sounds like he always knew and is being sarcastic.
A game in which a weakened US= access to a ton of tanks, helicopters, drones, rocket launchers and also a ton of men.
One where they thought it was a good idea to make the map a lot bigger yet not increase the player count for matches and make the kill time super small so you just kinda run around looking for enemies for 2 minutes then you either die as soon as you see the guy or they die as soon as they see you.
This game also looks terrible even for 2013, it’s too grey looking and the textures often look really low quality and unfinished even on the highest settings. Game also has frequent frame drops despite my pc being powerful enough to run it without issues.
The scopes are awful in this game because, in the name of realism I assume, a lot of the scopes are dirty so it's kinda hard to see the enemies at points and don’t even get me started on the sniper scopes and how they make everything surrounding the scope really fucking blurry.
This is CoD at its worst, it feels like they designed multiplayer maps first then tried to write a narrative to connect them with the singleplayer except that they gave up halfway through and we got this terrible terrible mess of a story.
It’s like a 2/10 game but I’ll raise it to a 3 because it’s kinda funny to laugh at this clusterfuck.
This is a game which sets itself up as a more stealthy title yet one of the first things you do in the game is drive into the enemy base with a truck while you blow everything up, the first actual stealth mission is mission 8 and even then that goes to hell in usual CoD fashion.
A game with the unironic prompt of “Press F to bark”. One where your character meets up with the ghosts and works with them once and then says that he and his brother are determined to become Ghosts now, like what? Yall didnt even know the fuckers actually existed till today and now you want to be one of them because they let you tag along?
One where the US has an orbital fucking missile launcher that can kill tens of millions in seconds and guess what happens...it gets hijacked and then the bad guys (I don’t even know who the fuck those guys are at the start of the game tbh) use it to kill 27 million people in a few secs, set orbital missile launcher also fires directly at your home town yet you, your brother and father make it somehow despite you seeing the laser hit, I guess if everyone else had just run, jumped and drove a car for a bit they could have survived as well.
It’s a game where ALL of South America invades the US. One where the bad guys are unironically called ‘The Federation’. One where the selling point is A FUCKING DOG. One with dozens of tutorials for gadgets/gimmicks you only use once, they get a small tutorial and then they’re out of the game. One with voice acting so weak that when your brother finds out that your father was a part of the Ghosts the whole time he sounds like he always knew and is being sarcastic.
A game in which a weakened US= access to a ton of tanks, helicopters, drones, rocket launchers and also a ton of men.
One where they thought it was a good idea to make the map a lot bigger yet not increase the player count for matches and make the kill time super small so you just kinda run around looking for enemies for 2 minutes then you either die as soon as you see the guy or they die as soon as they see you.
This game also looks terrible even for 2013, it’s too grey looking and the textures often look really low quality and unfinished even on the highest settings. Game also has frequent frame drops despite my pc being powerful enough to run it without issues.
The scopes are awful in this game because, in the name of realism I assume, a lot of the scopes are dirty so it's kinda hard to see the enemies at points and don’t even get me started on the sniper scopes and how they make everything surrounding the scope really fucking blurry.
This is CoD at its worst, it feels like they designed multiplayer maps first then tried to write a narrative to connect them with the singleplayer except that they gave up halfway through and we got this terrible terrible mess of a story.
It’s like a 2/10 game but I’ll raise it to a 3 because it’s kinda funny to laugh at this clusterfuck.
Hot take time: Black Ops 2 is fucking shit.
While playing Black Ops 2 there was a point where I realized I wasn't really playing BO2 as much as I was watching it. The game would introduce this sweet new gadget (gimmick) and then a minute later it's all but gone forever and the whole time I was using it I was more or less just watching a cutscene of my guy using it while sometimes pressing a or d.
Perfect example would be the wingsuit, you use it once then it's gone for the rest of the game, or the invisibility cloak thing which also appears in one mission then it's gone forever.
All the things the game introduces would make for solid features/games on their own (except the tour defense stuff, man FUCK that garbage) but in black ops 2 they are nothing more than glorified quick time events (the part where where you're climbing walls with your magic gloves or whatever springs to mind) or small boring gimmick’s that don't really offer much outside of spectacle.
The whole game feels too railroad-y, you move a bit then press f and watch a cutscene of your character doing something, the contextual button prompts feel like they're just there to make sure you're awake (press d to search thing on computer WOAH great gameplay there lads!).
But aren't all CoD games like that? I hear you ask. Well kinda but it's never been this apparent, we've jumped like 60 years into the future and yet the setpieces have gotten infinitely worse than in black ops and even the mw series as stale as that got eventually which makes it more apparent that we aren’t really playing the game half the time.
I don't like the future setting in this game, it only feels like an excuse to give us more of these pointless gadgets to fuck around with for a bit.
And the story is just a big miss, first of all, its awfully predictable, Mason's death comes to mind, like really? He suddenly goes off comms, then suddenly in like the 80s we're lead to believe we're about to assassinate the main villain thats still alive in 2025? And the whole game builds up to that moment in a way that makes it less of a mystery and more of a...just show the fucking cutscene I pieced together what happened 3 missions ago skip the bullshit.
Secondly, the multiple perspectives type of storytelling is really getting old here, especially when the devs don't even seem interested in one of those perspectives (the 80s one with the guys from bo1).
The characters are forgettable at best if I'm being honest, none of the deaths of betrayals really hit me (off topic but its convenient that every betrayal comes from a black guy eh) and I don’t even remember the name of the main guy tbh.
They try to make a charismatic villain which you can sympathise with and sure, having literally everyone in his family be murdered at different parts of his life is one way to do it...but it can't really justify the fact that he wants to kill millions in the way the devs seemed to want too, it's not much of a grey area, good guys do good, bad guys do bad, that's about as deep as the morality really gets. Like when you play as the villain you run around and chop people head's off with a sword, is that suppose to make him seem like anything but a crazy fuck?
Anyways enough about the story, how's the gameplay? Kinda meh, this engine doesn't feel like it's been made for futuristic guns so the game kinda half assed it, it takes more than to give us shiny looking modern guns and make the hit markers blue to make the game feel futuristic Black Ops 2.
I don't find the gunplay as enjoyable as the one in BO1 despite them being identical, like every part where you play as Mason/Woods, the gunplay is identical to BO1, so why the fuck does it feel so much worse? Maybe its the way enemies too way harder than before making the guns feel weaker idk.
The multiplayer isn't much to write home about, it's about as vanilla as it gets, sure the pick 10 system is good, but personally I prefer the old one (can't fault them for trying at least ONE new thing). Outside of that, it lacks the insanity of MW2, the interesting currency based progression of BO1 or the (at the time) innovation of mw1, making for an entirely mediocre experience for me personally. Maybe it's just because at this point the 10 people still playing BO2 are too good at the game so I got my ass kicked a lot idk.
What about zombies?
Eh...I played it with a friend and we got bored quickly tbh, maybe it's just not for me idk, heard the dlc maps are good but FUCK that, this game is 9 years old ain't nobody buying the still expensive DLC at this point.
In conclusion, it's pretty overrated and more than a bit of a letdown coming off of BO1, everyone points at this game as the last good CoD game but by that standard it’s scary to think about how the next few games will play out.
While playing Black Ops 2 there was a point where I realized I wasn't really playing BO2 as much as I was watching it. The game would introduce this sweet new gadget (gimmick) and then a minute later it's all but gone forever and the whole time I was using it I was more or less just watching a cutscene of my guy using it while sometimes pressing a or d.
Perfect example would be the wingsuit, you use it once then it's gone for the rest of the game, or the invisibility cloak thing which also appears in one mission then it's gone forever.
All the things the game introduces would make for solid features/games on their own (except the tour defense stuff, man FUCK that garbage) but in black ops 2 they are nothing more than glorified quick time events (the part where where you're climbing walls with your magic gloves or whatever springs to mind) or small boring gimmick’s that don't really offer much outside of spectacle.
The whole game feels too railroad-y, you move a bit then press f and watch a cutscene of your character doing something, the contextual button prompts feel like they're just there to make sure you're awake (press d to search thing on computer WOAH great gameplay there lads!).
But aren't all CoD games like that? I hear you ask. Well kinda but it's never been this apparent, we've jumped like 60 years into the future and yet the setpieces have gotten infinitely worse than in black ops and even the mw series as stale as that got eventually which makes it more apparent that we aren’t really playing the game half the time.
I don't like the future setting in this game, it only feels like an excuse to give us more of these pointless gadgets to fuck around with for a bit.
And the story is just a big miss, first of all, its awfully predictable, Mason's death comes to mind, like really? He suddenly goes off comms, then suddenly in like the 80s we're lead to believe we're about to assassinate the main villain thats still alive in 2025? And the whole game builds up to that moment in a way that makes it less of a mystery and more of a...just show the fucking cutscene I pieced together what happened 3 missions ago skip the bullshit.
Secondly, the multiple perspectives type of storytelling is really getting old here, especially when the devs don't even seem interested in one of those perspectives (the 80s one with the guys from bo1).
The characters are forgettable at best if I'm being honest, none of the deaths of betrayals really hit me (off topic but its convenient that every betrayal comes from a black guy eh) and I don’t even remember the name of the main guy tbh.
They try to make a charismatic villain which you can sympathise with and sure, having literally everyone in his family be murdered at different parts of his life is one way to do it...but it can't really justify the fact that he wants to kill millions in the way the devs seemed to want too, it's not much of a grey area, good guys do good, bad guys do bad, that's about as deep as the morality really gets. Like when you play as the villain you run around and chop people head's off with a sword, is that suppose to make him seem like anything but a crazy fuck?
Anyways enough about the story, how's the gameplay? Kinda meh, this engine doesn't feel like it's been made for futuristic guns so the game kinda half assed it, it takes more than to give us shiny looking modern guns and make the hit markers blue to make the game feel futuristic Black Ops 2.
I don't find the gunplay as enjoyable as the one in BO1 despite them being identical, like every part where you play as Mason/Woods, the gunplay is identical to BO1, so why the fuck does it feel so much worse? Maybe its the way enemies too way harder than before making the guns feel weaker idk.
The multiplayer isn't much to write home about, it's about as vanilla as it gets, sure the pick 10 system is good, but personally I prefer the old one (can't fault them for trying at least ONE new thing). Outside of that, it lacks the insanity of MW2, the interesting currency based progression of BO1 or the (at the time) innovation of mw1, making for an entirely mediocre experience for me personally. Maybe it's just because at this point the 10 people still playing BO2 are too good at the game so I got my ass kicked a lot idk.
What about zombies?
Eh...I played it with a friend and we got bored quickly tbh, maybe it's just not for me idk, heard the dlc maps are good but FUCK that, this game is 9 years old ain't nobody buying the still expensive DLC at this point.
In conclusion, it's pretty overrated and more than a bit of a letdown coming off of BO1, everyone points at this game as the last good CoD game but by that standard it’s scary to think about how the next few games will play out.
Modern Warfare 3 is essentially Modern Warfare 2 but again...and yet worse, much worse.
I don't think you could possibly replicate the magic of MW2 because that game found the sweet spot between a hilariously dumb story and a fun and exciting fps game.
But how do you follow it up? IW came up with an answer: Do it again...no different from before. Like the games even look identical to one another, 2 years apart and this game just looks like an expansion pack to MW2. I think MW2 may even look better graphically speaking somehow.
The only things saving this game from being just bad are:
1. the ending is pretty satisfying
2. spec ops is pretty fun even if its way worse than in mw2 (way too trial and error imo)
3. survival mode is fun
and 4. the set pieces still work sometimes.
The game plays like a list of cliches from the genre, slow motion, random explosions, unbelievably dumb plot (Russia invades Europe! All of it! At once! While also the president is missing...and he was about to declare peace...who the fuck send the russian army to invade Europe?), that one sniping part, characters dying for no reason, the shocking moment (woah a kid dies), too many turret sections to count, obligatory AC-130 part that makes me thank Spec Ops the line even more for showing how fucking awful using that type of weaponry actually is, instead of treating it as a momentary power fantasy (cough cough mw3), also racism.
I mean c'mon you go to Africa in one mission and kill like a thousand black people just to find out it was all for nothing cuz Makarov wasn't even there...alright IW why is this shit even included? It's literally just a random detour that goes nowhere and feels just like a poor excuse to shoot up some foreigners that aren't Russian.
Anyways another issue I had with this game is that I NEVER knew who the fuck I was playing as, sometimes you're Yuri, sometimes you're random American guy nr48210, you play as the Russian president's body guard in one mission, also Price in the last mission, prb some other people I forgot.
The game does a poor job at giving you context, it's more of a disconnected series of set pieces than a coherent story and it makes the game feel like it simply doesn't care enough to give you a good story, the only part that matters is at the end when Makarov dies, rest is just kinda filler when it comes to the story.
Also for some reason, at the end of the game, they just decide to kill off a lot of characters because they clearly had no idea how to tie up their character arcs since nobody has any so the best they could think off is just killing them.
Idk looking back, while I did enjoy mw3 for being mw2 but different (well not that different, well actually its just mw2), the more I think about it, the less I like it.
The ending might be badass but the rest of the game is just kinda trying too hard to capture something it can't possibly hope to catch and no amount of dumb shit will make up for it...well ok maybe the Eiffel tower collapsing almost makes up for it. Almost.
I don't think you could possibly replicate the magic of MW2 because that game found the sweet spot between a hilariously dumb story and a fun and exciting fps game.
But how do you follow it up? IW came up with an answer: Do it again...no different from before. Like the games even look identical to one another, 2 years apart and this game just looks like an expansion pack to MW2. I think MW2 may even look better graphically speaking somehow.
The only things saving this game from being just bad are:
1. the ending is pretty satisfying
2. spec ops is pretty fun even if its way worse than in mw2 (way too trial and error imo)
3. survival mode is fun
and 4. the set pieces still work sometimes.
The game plays like a list of cliches from the genre, slow motion, random explosions, unbelievably dumb plot (Russia invades Europe! All of it! At once! While also the president is missing...and he was about to declare peace...who the fuck send the russian army to invade Europe?), that one sniping part, characters dying for no reason, the shocking moment (woah a kid dies), too many turret sections to count, obligatory AC-130 part that makes me thank Spec Ops the line even more for showing how fucking awful using that type of weaponry actually is, instead of treating it as a momentary power fantasy (cough cough mw3), also racism.
I mean c'mon you go to Africa in one mission and kill like a thousand black people just to find out it was all for nothing cuz Makarov wasn't even there...alright IW why is this shit even included? It's literally just a random detour that goes nowhere and feels just like a poor excuse to shoot up some foreigners that aren't Russian.
Anyways another issue I had with this game is that I NEVER knew who the fuck I was playing as, sometimes you're Yuri, sometimes you're random American guy nr48210, you play as the Russian president's body guard in one mission, also Price in the last mission, prb some other people I forgot.
The game does a poor job at giving you context, it's more of a disconnected series of set pieces than a coherent story and it makes the game feel like it simply doesn't care enough to give you a good story, the only part that matters is at the end when Makarov dies, rest is just kinda filler when it comes to the story.
Also for some reason, at the end of the game, they just decide to kill off a lot of characters because they clearly had no idea how to tie up their character arcs since nobody has any so the best they could think off is just killing them.
Idk looking back, while I did enjoy mw3 for being mw2 but different (well not that different, well actually its just mw2), the more I think about it, the less I like it.
The ending might be badass but the rest of the game is just kinda trying too hard to capture something it can't possibly hope to catch and no amount of dumb shit will make up for it...well ok maybe the Eiffel tower collapsing almost makes up for it. Almost.
Black Ops is the last truly great Call Of Duty game in my eyes, it proves that CoD can do more with it's story campaign than provide stupid over the top setpieces by having a more creative, character driven story that keeps you on your toes as you're not sure who to believe, whats real and whats not until the end of the game and even then there's some questions left unanswered.
It's the fastest game in the series, yes the pace moves faster than MW2 if you could believe that, but it is more grounded at the same time.
It's still a game full of over the top moments but they don't go the modern warfare route where it takes you out of the story.
The gunplay is fantastic, as good as MW2's gunplay if not better, this is the game where Treyarch truly came into their own with the Call Of Duty series, this isn't trying to copy what Infinity Ward did but rather it does it's own thing and gives IW a run for their money as their formula would run dry very very soon.
It's the fastest game in the series, yes the pace moves faster than MW2 if you could believe that, but it is more grounded at the same time.
It's still a game full of over the top moments but they don't go the modern warfare route where it takes you out of the story.
The gunplay is fantastic, as good as MW2's gunplay if not better, this is the game where Treyarch truly came into their own with the Call Of Duty series, this isn't trying to copy what Infinity Ward did but rather it does it's own thing and gives IW a run for their money as their formula would run dry very very soon.
Modern Warfare 2 is trash...and I fucking love it.
This game looks at all the gritty realism and grounded elements from the other games and goes fuck that! MORE EXPLOSIONS.
This game is set piece after set piece after set piece and it never slows down until the credits. This is the beginning of the end for Call Of Duty as a respectable series but it is still by all accounts, an enjoyable game.
No Russian, as noted in my MW review, is shit and filled with plot holes. How come the Russians never looked into the other shooters that were very much spotted by security cameras? How come they didn’t look into who the American was before declaring war? That guy was an undercover CIA agent, a whole war could have been avoided had they looked into it...but WHATEVER, here’s your shitty shocking moment to start the plot.
The plot of the game being Russia invades America is so damn weak but the way it takes itself so seriously despite how over the top and dumb it is makes it kinda funny. Call Of Duty took a turn for the worse with this game but by all accounts this game is so ridiculous that it becomes super fun, on your first playthrough you don’t know what other crazy shit the devs have come up with.
The multiplayer is the biggest clusterfuck I’ve ever seen. It’s such unbalanced trash. It’s like the perfect example of what happens when you try to make a game in which even a 2 week old baby could get a killstreak. It’s almost a spectacle. Man and if you’re playing it modded it somehow gets even worse (better*). Playing nuketown gungame on mw2 never felt so good, that's what I’ll say.
Spec Ops is also a really fun gamemode to play with friends, definitely the most underrated aspect of mw2, wish it became a staple of the series like Zombies but sadly only 2 other games in the series have this mode and neither are as good as it is here.
Overall, MW2 is a mess but it’s an extremely enjoyable mess whose multiplayer I’ll keep coming back too for no particularly good reason other than that its dumb mindless fun. Rule of cool wins with this game.
This game looks at all the gritty realism and grounded elements from the other games and goes fuck that! MORE EXPLOSIONS.
This game is set piece after set piece after set piece and it never slows down until the credits. This is the beginning of the end for Call Of Duty as a respectable series but it is still by all accounts, an enjoyable game.
No Russian, as noted in my MW review, is shit and filled with plot holes. How come the Russians never looked into the other shooters that were very much spotted by security cameras? How come they didn’t look into who the American was before declaring war? That guy was an undercover CIA agent, a whole war could have been avoided had they looked into it...but WHATEVER, here’s your shitty shocking moment to start the plot.
The plot of the game being Russia invades America is so damn weak but the way it takes itself so seriously despite how over the top and dumb it is makes it kinda funny. Call Of Duty took a turn for the worse with this game but by all accounts this game is so ridiculous that it becomes super fun, on your first playthrough you don’t know what other crazy shit the devs have come up with.
The multiplayer is the biggest clusterfuck I’ve ever seen. It’s such unbalanced trash. It’s like the perfect example of what happens when you try to make a game in which even a 2 week old baby could get a killstreak. It’s almost a spectacle. Man and if you’re playing it modded it somehow gets even worse (better*). Playing nuketown gungame on mw2 never felt so good, that's what I’ll say.
Spec Ops is also a really fun gamemode to play with friends, definitely the most underrated aspect of mw2, wish it became a staple of the series like Zombies but sadly only 2 other games in the series have this mode and neither are as good as it is here.
Overall, MW2 is a mess but it’s an extremely enjoyable mess whose multiplayer I’ll keep coming back too for no particularly good reason other than that its dumb mindless fun. Rule of cool wins with this game.
World At War is easily my favorite WW2 shooter, Treyarch took what Infinity Ward was doing with the first few CoD games and elevates it while also taking notes from IW’s last game making for the best WW2 centric campaign in the series... and one of the most forgettable multiplayers in the series.
Truth be told, there isn’t much I could say about this game because this game is just a mix of the old games with MW pacing and structure. I like how brutal the game is, it makes you feel like just another soldier better than the old games since you aren’t quite as powerful (on difficulties that aren’t veteran that is) as you are in those games. The guns feel just right, they feel old and clunky but in a good way, if that makes sense, like they’re WW2 guns ofc they wouldn’t be as efficient as an mp5 or whatever.
I quite enjoyed the Russian sections due to Reznov being easily the most memorable and likeable character in any of the WW2 CoD games. The missions in which you play as the Americans are also alright.
The game just kinda speaks for itself, if you’re looking for a great WW2 shooter, this game is it. Doesn’t really offer anything new to the series besides the zombies mode truth be told, it just does things better than those old cod games which makes it a really enjoyable game.
Truth be told, there isn’t much I could say about this game because this game is just a mix of the old games with MW pacing and structure. I like how brutal the game is, it makes you feel like just another soldier better than the old games since you aren’t quite as powerful (on difficulties that aren’t veteran that is) as you are in those games. The guns feel just right, they feel old and clunky but in a good way, if that makes sense, like they’re WW2 guns ofc they wouldn’t be as efficient as an mp5 or whatever.
I quite enjoyed the Russian sections due to Reznov being easily the most memorable and likeable character in any of the WW2 CoD games. The missions in which you play as the Americans are also alright.
The game just kinda speaks for itself, if you’re looking for a great WW2 shooter, this game is it. Doesn’t really offer anything new to the series besides the zombies mode truth be told, it just does things better than those old cod games which makes it a really enjoyable game.
This game pretty much changed everything for first person shooters and set the template for how multiplayer games would work moving forward.
Play any multiplayer game from before this game and after and it speaks for itself really.
The multiplayer for this game even today is so much fun, it's fast paced, there's a lot of guns and they're all mostly fun to use, all the maps are great and memorable and the progression is really satisfying. The perks also help make every class feel different from each other, customizing your class and perfecting it works really well since you do have to put some thought into what you want to use to help your playstyle but it's not to the point where you get bored and just use the default classes.
What about the single player though?
Just as good, if not better. Modern Warfare is when the series started it's shift into being the game equivalent to a big dumb action movie but here it was still somewhere in between, making for a grounded yet a bit over the top story that gives you nonstop highs.
The game is split between 2 perspectives, the run n gun action focused American side and the stealthy and dirty British side. The game deviates from CoD's normal formula by instead of giving you 3 missions with the Americans then they're out of the game then 3 with the British then the game's over, it switches back and forth, making for a more varied experience with great pacing that is never boring.
One thing that this game gets that a lot of the other ones don't get is that building up context to the big action sequence makes it far more effective than just blasting explosions everywhere in the name of cool.
Now a days a lot of sequences in this game can at first feel dated and overdone due to how glorified things like using an AC-130 to bring 'death from above' (heh get it) to enemies, the obligatory sniping sections and the equally obligatory 'shocking' moment (nuke scene) but in this game they're done masterfully.
The AC-130 mission works because (at least at the time) it was done to be as realistic as possible and how quiet the mission is gives it a very eerie atmosphere, almost making it disturbing.
One of the reasons the nuke scene works and say No Russian doesn't is because Shock and Awe is very much the centerpiece of the game, every mission in which you play as the Americans slowly builds up to it and when the mission starts with you in a helicopter mowing down enemies with a grenade launcher you're supposed to feel invincible, when one of your ally planes crashes at the end of the mission you go to rescue the survivors, you feel like an unstoppable hero then when the nuke hits, it brings you back to reality. The good guys don't always win and the way the game makes you watch as your character slowly dies of radiation is easily the most memorable and impactful moment of the whole series.
What it isn't, is a forced and plot whole ridden terrible attempt at making you go what the fuck? that only exists to give free publicity to the game once dumb people take the bait...looking at you No Russian.
All Ghillied Up is one of the best missions in the series, a tense and perfectly scripted stealthy mission.
Another favorite of mine has to be the first mission on the boat, sure you can criticize it for basically playing itself for the first half but the pacing and level design is too good for me to care.
The pre mission briefings during the loading was an almost brilliant solution to the question of, how can we give context and tell the player what’s going on without interrupting the game constantly to give exposition, sadly Infinity Ward’s next installments started to lean too much on them to tell the story to the point where, by skipping them, you could say that the whole game is just a disconnected series of random setpieces and meaningless shootouts and...well you’d be right.
Ultimately when looking back on Modern Warfare, it’s easy to see it in the same light as Far Cry 3, when it came out, it was unique and interesting, started many trends...sadly all of those trends ended up being quite awful for video games and it’s easy to forget that the originator actually did all of those things right. It’s the only CoD game I’d call a must play, sure I loved playing through some of the others but if you had to play one call of duty game to see what it’s all about, this game is it.
Play any multiplayer game from before this game and after and it speaks for itself really.
The multiplayer for this game even today is so much fun, it's fast paced, there's a lot of guns and they're all mostly fun to use, all the maps are great and memorable and the progression is really satisfying. The perks also help make every class feel different from each other, customizing your class and perfecting it works really well since you do have to put some thought into what you want to use to help your playstyle but it's not to the point where you get bored and just use the default classes.
What about the single player though?
Just as good, if not better. Modern Warfare is when the series started it's shift into being the game equivalent to a big dumb action movie but here it was still somewhere in between, making for a grounded yet a bit over the top story that gives you nonstop highs.
The game is split between 2 perspectives, the run n gun action focused American side and the stealthy and dirty British side. The game deviates from CoD's normal formula by instead of giving you 3 missions with the Americans then they're out of the game then 3 with the British then the game's over, it switches back and forth, making for a more varied experience with great pacing that is never boring.
One thing that this game gets that a lot of the other ones don't get is that building up context to the big action sequence makes it far more effective than just blasting explosions everywhere in the name of cool.
Now a days a lot of sequences in this game can at first feel dated and overdone due to how glorified things like using an AC-130 to bring 'death from above' (heh get it) to enemies, the obligatory sniping sections and the equally obligatory 'shocking' moment (nuke scene) but in this game they're done masterfully.
The AC-130 mission works because (at least at the time) it was done to be as realistic as possible and how quiet the mission is gives it a very eerie atmosphere, almost making it disturbing.
One of the reasons the nuke scene works and say No Russian doesn't is because Shock and Awe is very much the centerpiece of the game, every mission in which you play as the Americans slowly builds up to it and when the mission starts with you in a helicopter mowing down enemies with a grenade launcher you're supposed to feel invincible, when one of your ally planes crashes at the end of the mission you go to rescue the survivors, you feel like an unstoppable hero then when the nuke hits, it brings you back to reality. The good guys don't always win and the way the game makes you watch as your character slowly dies of radiation is easily the most memorable and impactful moment of the whole series.
What it isn't, is a forced and plot whole ridden terrible attempt at making you go what the fuck? that only exists to give free publicity to the game once dumb people take the bait...looking at you No Russian.
All Ghillied Up is one of the best missions in the series, a tense and perfectly scripted stealthy mission.
Another favorite of mine has to be the first mission on the boat, sure you can criticize it for basically playing itself for the first half but the pacing and level design is too good for me to care.
The pre mission briefings during the loading was an almost brilliant solution to the question of, how can we give context and tell the player what’s going on without interrupting the game constantly to give exposition, sadly Infinity Ward’s next installments started to lean too much on them to tell the story to the point where, by skipping them, you could say that the whole game is just a disconnected series of random setpieces and meaningless shootouts and...well you’d be right.
Ultimately when looking back on Modern Warfare, it’s easy to see it in the same light as Far Cry 3, when it came out, it was unique and interesting, started many trends...sadly all of those trends ended up being quite awful for video games and it’s easy to forget that the originator actually did all of those things right. It’s the only CoD game I’d call a must play, sure I loved playing through some of the others but if you had to play one call of duty game to see what it’s all about, this game is it.
2005
The 2nd game in the COD series is your typical sequel, it takes what worked and amplifies it while changing or removing things that didn't work in the original.
But ultimately, while its a better game in every way I do find it more forgettable and less interesting than the first one, still 3 campaigns in this one, same factions, Cpt Price appears again which made me realize theres only 2 mainline COD entries from Infinity Ward that don't feature him as a main character which...is kinda sad when you think about it.
Anyways, story is once again nothing to write home about not that anybody cares about the story in a formulaic ww2 shooter.
The levels are a bit by the numbers, yeah there's the parts where you snipe, where you drive a tank, dozens of DEFEND THE AREA sections which I started to hate, you name it, this game has it.
But that's not much of a negative, sure its formulaic but it is a good formula for this game and given the good-but-not-great gunplay and the more open/less liniar level design of certain missions, they do a lot to save the game from feeling really bland.
Most of what I said about COD1 also applies here.
There's no health packs here which is nice, regenerating health works a lot better for this type of game even if it makes you sorta op when you can take 15 bullets, lie on your ass for 10 secs and then get up and be completely fine but whatever, its fun.
They also removed quick saving (only checkpoints this time, though they're a lot more frequent so its no big deal) so you can't F5 your way through harder sections of the game for better or for worse.
That's kinda it when it comes to cod2, its an intense but rather formulaic shooter that builds onto the original in some expected but nice ways but not enough to make it great when coming into it these days.
What I'll say to end the review, the best and worst of the series has yet to come and the series is only just about to truly start.
But ultimately, while its a better game in every way I do find it more forgettable and less interesting than the first one, still 3 campaigns in this one, same factions, Cpt Price appears again which made me realize theres only 2 mainline COD entries from Infinity Ward that don't feature him as a main character which...is kinda sad when you think about it.
Anyways, story is once again nothing to write home about not that anybody cares about the story in a formulaic ww2 shooter.
The levels are a bit by the numbers, yeah there's the parts where you snipe, where you drive a tank, dozens of DEFEND THE AREA sections which I started to hate, you name it, this game has it.
But that's not much of a negative, sure its formulaic but it is a good formula for this game and given the good-but-not-great gunplay and the more open/less liniar level design of certain missions, they do a lot to save the game from feeling really bland.
Most of what I said about COD1 also applies here.
There's no health packs here which is nice, regenerating health works a lot better for this type of game even if it makes you sorta op when you can take 15 bullets, lie on your ass for 10 secs and then get up and be completely fine but whatever, its fun.
They also removed quick saving (only checkpoints this time, though they're a lot more frequent so its no big deal) so you can't F5 your way through harder sections of the game for better or for worse.
That's kinda it when it comes to cod2, its an intense but rather formulaic shooter that builds onto the original in some expected but nice ways but not enough to make it great when coming into it these days.
What I'll say to end the review, the best and worst of the series has yet to come and the series is only just about to truly start.
2003
So...I got a 2 week break from school for no reason in particular and I've got nothing to do right now, so what better way to spend those 2 weeks than to go through every call of duty game, well I could think of some, many if given enough time actually.
But I do think that call of duty is kinda overhated, not like it’s some great series or anything but I do find myself enjoying a lot of them despite their many many flaws and it is interesting to check out a series that changed so dramatically so many times yet is also ‘the same every year’, like how does that even work?
How can a series that spawned ww2 shooters, modern shooters, futuristic shooters, one semi scifi weird one and some more shit be “samey”? Well let’s find out...also i should say that I won’t be able to play mw2019 since I don’t own it and can’t pirate it unlike everything before bo4 (also no bo4 review, no sg to speak off in that one + we all know its shit) and lets be honest, pirating a COD game isn’t as much of a crime as it is to sell them for prices this high even after so many years (every cod game after and including bo2 is still 60$ with bo1 also being 40$ even though its like 11 years old)
So yeah let’s actually start this review now.
Call of Duty is a decent ww2 shooter...thats it.
Well ok there's a bit more to be said, it's one of those games thats kinda janky and painfully outdated in certain parts but it also has its own little charm that makes it enjoyable even if me and my friends were laughing more at the game than with it a lot of the time.
Let's start by saying that there isn't much to be said about the story, it's just really forgettable but I found it funny when motherfucking Captain Price himself showed up as a main character in the story, being featured in basically every mission in the middle section before being killed off screen which is kinda weird and more than a bit funny when you think about how he's basically the most known character from this whole series and it's not particularly close, yet he dies in the first game he's featured in. Obvs different Cpt Price but still I like to imagine that it's the same guy from the mw series and he just doesn't age at all for some reason.
The story is split between 3 campaigns, you play as, yup you guessed! Americans, British and Russians. The only 3 that matter to video game devs wanting to make ww2 shooters though I guess at the time it was fresh to see 3 different pov's in a ww2 game so I'll excuse it.
There's a bit of variety between close and long range combat in the story to keep it a bit fresh but that doesn't mean that you won't just use the mp40 the whole way since its the only gun you'll find ammo for consistently outside of like what, 2 missions? Both of which being the ones in which you drive a tank.
Nowadays playing through the game feels like going through a checklists of cliche things that happen in ww2 games but at the time I assume the game felt a bit more fresh when it came out and it's clear the devs knew what they were doing since they're the same guys behind the old Medal Of Honor games that I’ve heard are like at least ok.
The level design is mostly tight, levels are liniar in fashion and the game kinda turns into a corridor shooter whenever you enter a building but it is fun to just go rambo on everyone since there’s a chance enemies will drop health packs which should keep you at full hp while everyone in the room and the next room are spraying everything they got at you.
Speaking of which, I actually like the fact that your health doesn't regenerate and u have to rely on health packs, makes certain situations more tense even if I desperately missed it when I had to defend an area for 4-5 bloody minutes with like what, 5 med kits?
The game was turning into max payne during those where I just F5'd my way through that shit since checkpoints don’t come around often during these painful ‘defend the area’ parts.
Gunplay is pretty good, the guns feel nice to use, especially the snipers. Also it was clear the game wasn’t meant for 120 fov because you can see that a lot of the reload animations are just the dude taking out and putting back his clip with set fov, no reason to mention this other than me and my friends finding it hilarious.
Game is like 4-5 hours long, pretty short but there’s also little filler in the game’s missions I guess so it’s excusable. I’d say the best campaign was the British one and I’m not saying that only because of Cpt Price though it is mostly because of him. Just felt like that one had the most memorable missions though you’d be forgiven for not even noticing that you fight for 3 different factions throughout the game as there isn’t much difference between them in the game, at least between the American and British, with the Russians you can see how much more aggressive they were and how they would willingly kill one of their own doing something as simple as trying to retreat.
The ending is pretty much identical to the one from WAW but you aren’t the one...ugh let’s not spoil WAW since that one's really good and worth playing, carrying the thing to the top of the building or whatever. Real specific on my part.
Anyways, that’s all I had to say, I enjoyed my time with the first COD game though it’s more interesting in the context of what the series became rather than as it’s own game, if you get what I mean.
But I do think that call of duty is kinda overhated, not like it’s some great series or anything but I do find myself enjoying a lot of them despite their many many flaws and it is interesting to check out a series that changed so dramatically so many times yet is also ‘the same every year’, like how does that even work?
How can a series that spawned ww2 shooters, modern shooters, futuristic shooters, one semi scifi weird one and some more shit be “samey”? Well let’s find out...also i should say that I won’t be able to play mw2019 since I don’t own it and can’t pirate it unlike everything before bo4 (also no bo4 review, no sg to speak off in that one + we all know its shit) and lets be honest, pirating a COD game isn’t as much of a crime as it is to sell them for prices this high even after so many years (every cod game after and including bo2 is still 60$ with bo1 also being 40$ even though its like 11 years old)
So yeah let’s actually start this review now.
Call of Duty is a decent ww2 shooter...thats it.
Well ok there's a bit more to be said, it's one of those games thats kinda janky and painfully outdated in certain parts but it also has its own little charm that makes it enjoyable even if me and my friends were laughing more at the game than with it a lot of the time.
Let's start by saying that there isn't much to be said about the story, it's just really forgettable but I found it funny when motherfucking Captain Price himself showed up as a main character in the story, being featured in basically every mission in the middle section before being killed off screen which is kinda weird and more than a bit funny when you think about how he's basically the most known character from this whole series and it's not particularly close, yet he dies in the first game he's featured in. Obvs different Cpt Price but still I like to imagine that it's the same guy from the mw series and he just doesn't age at all for some reason.
The story is split between 3 campaigns, you play as, yup you guessed! Americans, British and Russians. The only 3 that matter to video game devs wanting to make ww2 shooters though I guess at the time it was fresh to see 3 different pov's in a ww2 game so I'll excuse it.
There's a bit of variety between close and long range combat in the story to keep it a bit fresh but that doesn't mean that you won't just use the mp40 the whole way since its the only gun you'll find ammo for consistently outside of like what, 2 missions? Both of which being the ones in which you drive a tank.
Nowadays playing through the game feels like going through a checklists of cliche things that happen in ww2 games but at the time I assume the game felt a bit more fresh when it came out and it's clear the devs knew what they were doing since they're the same guys behind the old Medal Of Honor games that I’ve heard are like at least ok.
The level design is mostly tight, levels are liniar in fashion and the game kinda turns into a corridor shooter whenever you enter a building but it is fun to just go rambo on everyone since there’s a chance enemies will drop health packs which should keep you at full hp while everyone in the room and the next room are spraying everything they got at you.
Speaking of which, I actually like the fact that your health doesn't regenerate and u have to rely on health packs, makes certain situations more tense even if I desperately missed it when I had to defend an area for 4-5 bloody minutes with like what, 5 med kits?
The game was turning into max payne during those where I just F5'd my way through that shit since checkpoints don’t come around often during these painful ‘defend the area’ parts.
Gunplay is pretty good, the guns feel nice to use, especially the snipers. Also it was clear the game wasn’t meant for 120 fov because you can see that a lot of the reload animations are just the dude taking out and putting back his clip with set fov, no reason to mention this other than me and my friends finding it hilarious.
Game is like 4-5 hours long, pretty short but there’s also little filler in the game’s missions I guess so it’s excusable. I’d say the best campaign was the British one and I’m not saying that only because of Cpt Price though it is mostly because of him. Just felt like that one had the most memorable missions though you’d be forgiven for not even noticing that you fight for 3 different factions throughout the game as there isn’t much difference between them in the game, at least between the American and British, with the Russians you can see how much more aggressive they were and how they would willingly kill one of their own doing something as simple as trying to retreat.
The ending is pretty much identical to the one from WAW but you aren’t the one...ugh let’s not spoil WAW since that one's really good and worth playing, carrying the thing to the top of the building or whatever. Real specific on my part.
Anyways, that’s all I had to say, I enjoyed my time with the first COD game though it’s more interesting in the context of what the series became rather than as it’s own game, if you get what I mean.
Chaos Theory a lot of the time feels like playing a horror game where you're the monster/killer, you take out all the lights around 2 guards, whistle at them to get their attention then circle around and pick one off and see the other one turn around and notice his absence before freaking out, being seconds away from him also being taken out from behind.
It feels amazing to do that kind of shit. though...if I'm being honest the real star of the game are the interrogations, they are amazing, these are some of the funniest guards I've seen in a game. One time a guard told me everything he knew without hesitation then claimed he was the biggest coward ever and told me that he pissed himself which was hilarious. Another time I saw 2 guards talking about a certain ninja that did some stuff in Georgia in 2004, one guard even claiming he was attacked by set ninja. Either way he can now claim he was attacked twice by a ninja as the second I grabbed and interrogated him he started going on about how he knew there were ninjas there and Sam was really confused by the whole thing and when threatening to kill him the guard just said that it'd be cool to be killed by a ninja. One time a guard thought the whole thing was a training exercise and Sam went along and used that as a way to get info lol.
I could go on but you really have to experience this game for yourself as it's such a huge leap forward from the first game that I don't see any reason to go back at this point.
All the annoying things from the first game have all been either fixed or gotten rid off completely and the level design has never been better. Every level is designed to be done in multiple ways, oftentimes exploring rewards you with secret entries that will make your life easier or maybe a side objective, sometimes items or just a guard with important info for you. You can do every mission without killing any guards, I think the same was true of the first one but it was clear that sometimes you kinda had to kill the guards to make your life way easier, here it's only a matter of planning ahead what you'll do as you have a lot more gadgets at your disposal to get past the guards. The game does a good job at making the game get harder as it goes with new enemy types that serve as counters to you with thermal vision, making it way harder to sneak past them but not so hard that they become annoying/unfair, the amount of turrets has been toned the fuck down from the last game where they were useless in all but one area, I think I only saw like 2 in the whole game.
I liked how you can choose to either leave or save 2 pilots from an explosion at one point despite your orders. There isn’t any reward nor do you ever hear from those pilots again but I kinda liked that tbh.
Chaos Theory in every way lives up to the hype and stands the test of the time, unlike with the og there weren’t any moments where I thought yeah this hasn’t aged well or wow this really feels like a 2000s game huh.
It’s just back to back great levels, not every level is perfect and amazing but out of 10 missions, the worst level simply being really good (bathhouse) speaks to the game’s quality. Cargo Ship and the Bank mission were my fav’s in the game as to me they felt the most open with Bank even giving you 2 ways of entering the bank itself, either through the front door or from above, repelling down from the roof.
There's some really tense moments in the game. In one of the missions I had to access a server but the door that would lead into the server was stuck due to a blackout I assume and some people were also stuck just outside of the server room. After lookin around for another way to get in I managed to find a vent that let me enter from above, once I accessed the server, seconds later the power went back on and I only had a few secs to get out so I had to use the rope i used to climb down to get back up as lights were slowly coming back on around me and those people were approaching, it created for a really tense moment where I didn't know whether or not I was gonna make it or if I would have had to restart from last quicksave (last quicksave was like 7 minutes beforehand btw). Obviously that's just an example and one that was obviously scripted to happen but there's plenty of non scripted tense moments, having guards walk past you in the dark as you think about whether you are too close to them or not, interrogating someone and seeing another guard come close to you and overhear, wondering if it'd be worth to knock the guard out now or try and move and look for a better spot to knock him out so you can deal with the other guard without having the body seen, etc etc.
I’m looking forward to trying out the coop at some point with a friend even though the way to get it to work is a bit complicated from what I’ve seen but I’ve also heard nothing but positive things about it so it’ll prb be worth the trouble. This is most definitely a game that I will come back and replay countless times.
It feels amazing to do that kind of shit. though...if I'm being honest the real star of the game are the interrogations, they are amazing, these are some of the funniest guards I've seen in a game. One time a guard told me everything he knew without hesitation then claimed he was the biggest coward ever and told me that he pissed himself which was hilarious. Another time I saw 2 guards talking about a certain ninja that did some stuff in Georgia in 2004, one guard even claiming he was attacked by set ninja. Either way he can now claim he was attacked twice by a ninja as the second I grabbed and interrogated him he started going on about how he knew there were ninjas there and Sam was really confused by the whole thing and when threatening to kill him the guard just said that it'd be cool to be killed by a ninja. One time a guard thought the whole thing was a training exercise and Sam went along and used that as a way to get info lol.
I could go on but you really have to experience this game for yourself as it's such a huge leap forward from the first game that I don't see any reason to go back at this point.
All the annoying things from the first game have all been either fixed or gotten rid off completely and the level design has never been better. Every level is designed to be done in multiple ways, oftentimes exploring rewards you with secret entries that will make your life easier or maybe a side objective, sometimes items or just a guard with important info for you. You can do every mission without killing any guards, I think the same was true of the first one but it was clear that sometimes you kinda had to kill the guards to make your life way easier, here it's only a matter of planning ahead what you'll do as you have a lot more gadgets at your disposal to get past the guards. The game does a good job at making the game get harder as it goes with new enemy types that serve as counters to you with thermal vision, making it way harder to sneak past them but not so hard that they become annoying/unfair, the amount of turrets has been toned the fuck down from the last game where they were useless in all but one area, I think I only saw like 2 in the whole game.
I liked how you can choose to either leave or save 2 pilots from an explosion at one point despite your orders. There isn’t any reward nor do you ever hear from those pilots again but I kinda liked that tbh.
Chaos Theory in every way lives up to the hype and stands the test of the time, unlike with the og there weren’t any moments where I thought yeah this hasn’t aged well or wow this really feels like a 2000s game huh.
It’s just back to back great levels, not every level is perfect and amazing but out of 10 missions, the worst level simply being really good (bathhouse) speaks to the game’s quality. Cargo Ship and the Bank mission were my fav’s in the game as to me they felt the most open with Bank even giving you 2 ways of entering the bank itself, either through the front door or from above, repelling down from the roof.
There's some really tense moments in the game. In one of the missions I had to access a server but the door that would lead into the server was stuck due to a blackout I assume and some people were also stuck just outside of the server room. After lookin around for another way to get in I managed to find a vent that let me enter from above, once I accessed the server, seconds later the power went back on and I only had a few secs to get out so I had to use the rope i used to climb down to get back up as lights were slowly coming back on around me and those people were approaching, it created for a really tense moment where I didn't know whether or not I was gonna make it or if I would have had to restart from last quicksave (last quicksave was like 7 minutes beforehand btw). Obviously that's just an example and one that was obviously scripted to happen but there's plenty of non scripted tense moments, having guards walk past you in the dark as you think about whether you are too close to them or not, interrogating someone and seeing another guard come close to you and overhear, wondering if it'd be worth to knock the guard out now or try and move and look for a better spot to knock him out so you can deal with the other guard without having the body seen, etc etc.
I’m looking forward to trying out the coop at some point with a friend even though the way to get it to work is a bit complicated from what I’ve seen but I’ve also heard nothing but positive things about it so it’ll prb be worth the trouble. This is most definitely a game that I will come back and replay countless times.
Splinter Cell is at it's best when you take enemies into the dark before knocking them down, seeing as your character seemingly disappears into the shadows and the only thing you can see are those iconic NVG.
Thankfully you do that quite a lot in the game itself. This really is one of those classics that still holds up after all of this time, mostly holds up... yeah not every element holds up, the game at times is bad at telling you shit, yeah thanks game for not telling me that I can disarm mines that was cool.
Also the 'parkour'/climbing mechanics are very inconsistent in both what you can climb on and whether or not Sam will climb it or go nope rather die rn and I have to say I am not a big fan of the more combat heavy sections in the last few missions, like the guns are not very accurate and for as realistic as the game wants to be, if a guard wears a fucking hat it will not go down in one headshot which is a baffling choice for a game like this but whatever.
And...that's kinda it, most of the gameplay still holds up, I like how you can increase/decrease your speed by using the scroll wheel on your mouse, it felt more natural than I expected. Being in the dark, hugging a wall as a guard goes by you is still pretty intense.
The story isn't remarkable but it's prb the closest a Tom Clancy game has gotten to actually being like one of his books since the game is very heavy on the politics behind what you're doing which is also refreshing as all hell for a Ubisoft game. Sam Fisher as a character is likeable enough and serves the game really well with his just following orders mind-set even if he doesn't quite get what's going on at all times.
While I know the linearity of the game is an issue for a lot of people, for me it was a plus as it meant that no matter where I was going, I was taking the correct route and not accidently making the game super hard on myself without knowing, which isn't to say that this happens a lot in non linear games but I can 100% see it happening in this game if every mission had 3 really different ways of doing it and the game is allowed to be more cinematic this way.
Idk what else to say its like 4am rn and I just beat the game, it was really fun, I'd rate it higher but the elements that didn't hold up were really annoying at times and I feel like the next few games will only expand and improve on this game's formula so I'll most likely end up enjoying those more.
Still it's a pretty great stealth game and a classic in it's own right. Worth a shot if you like stealth games and are interested in the series.
Thankfully you do that quite a lot in the game itself. This really is one of those classics that still holds up after all of this time, mostly holds up... yeah not every element holds up, the game at times is bad at telling you shit, yeah thanks game for not telling me that I can disarm mines that was cool.
Also the 'parkour'/climbing mechanics are very inconsistent in both what you can climb on and whether or not Sam will climb it or go nope rather die rn and I have to say I am not a big fan of the more combat heavy sections in the last few missions, like the guns are not very accurate and for as realistic as the game wants to be, if a guard wears a fucking hat it will not go down in one headshot which is a baffling choice for a game like this but whatever.
And...that's kinda it, most of the gameplay still holds up, I like how you can increase/decrease your speed by using the scroll wheel on your mouse, it felt more natural than I expected. Being in the dark, hugging a wall as a guard goes by you is still pretty intense.
The story isn't remarkable but it's prb the closest a Tom Clancy game has gotten to actually being like one of his books since the game is very heavy on the politics behind what you're doing which is also refreshing as all hell for a Ubisoft game. Sam Fisher as a character is likeable enough and serves the game really well with his just following orders mind-set even if he doesn't quite get what's going on at all times.
While I know the linearity of the game is an issue for a lot of people, for me it was a plus as it meant that no matter where I was going, I was taking the correct route and not accidently making the game super hard on myself without knowing, which isn't to say that this happens a lot in non linear games but I can 100% see it happening in this game if every mission had 3 really different ways of doing it and the game is allowed to be more cinematic this way.
Idk what else to say its like 4am rn and I just beat the game, it was really fun, I'd rate it higher but the elements that didn't hold up were really annoying at times and I feel like the next few games will only expand and improve on this game's formula so I'll most likely end up enjoying those more.
Still it's a pretty great stealth game and a classic in it's own right. Worth a shot if you like stealth games and are interested in the series.
1996
God damn is this game fun, the new free update remaster thing brings this game to the next level with the visuals and the killer soundtrack from Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and all the expansions being offered for free aaaand amazing optimization on modern hardware with all the options you'd possibly need included.
The fact the game is still only 10$ on steam and a lot less when grabbing it from key selling websites makes this a steal.
Now lets talk about the game because in a lot of ways this is the last classic to come out of the original ID team and its a fantastic send-off for that glory era of the company. This game is 25 and yet hasn't aged a day gameplay wise imo, the movement and combat are really fast, in some ways even faster than in Doom.
I wouldn't say this game is better than Doom but it does fix the one singular issue that I have with it and it's that whenever you aren't shooting its just walking around looking for stupid keycards while trying not to fall asleep, now its...well the same thing but with the improved movement and the higher speed, the time it takes to find that damn keycard is much shorter and when simply walking around is this fun (especially with bunny hopping) you tend to not mind it as much.
The game feels unique even now with its dark fantasy aesthetic and I think the fact that each episode was made by a different person gives each episode a different feel and makes the level design feel distinct between each other. I like the emphasis on having tougher enemies with the trade-off being that there's a lot less than in their previous games.
Idk what much else to say because this is one of those games that speaks for itself, ugh only complaints are that sadly there weren't many bosses (only 2) and the last one is like...c'mon how the fuck was I supposed to figure that one out without a google search?
But even then the boss fight didn't last that long once I figured it out.
All in all, quake rocks, if u haven't played it then now it's the perfect time to jump in and see what this game is all about.
The fact the game is still only 10$ on steam and a lot less when grabbing it from key selling websites makes this a steal.
Now lets talk about the game because in a lot of ways this is the last classic to come out of the original ID team and its a fantastic send-off for that glory era of the company. This game is 25 and yet hasn't aged a day gameplay wise imo, the movement and combat are really fast, in some ways even faster than in Doom.
I wouldn't say this game is better than Doom but it does fix the one singular issue that I have with it and it's that whenever you aren't shooting its just walking around looking for stupid keycards while trying not to fall asleep, now its...well the same thing but with the improved movement and the higher speed, the time it takes to find that damn keycard is much shorter and when simply walking around is this fun (especially with bunny hopping) you tend to not mind it as much.
The game feels unique even now with its dark fantasy aesthetic and I think the fact that each episode was made by a different person gives each episode a different feel and makes the level design feel distinct between each other. I like the emphasis on having tougher enemies with the trade-off being that there's a lot less than in their previous games.
Idk what much else to say because this is one of those games that speaks for itself, ugh only complaints are that sadly there weren't many bosses (only 2) and the last one is like...c'mon how the fuck was I supposed to figure that one out without a google search?
But even then the boss fight didn't last that long once I figured it out.
All in all, quake rocks, if u haven't played it then now it's the perfect time to jump in and see what this game is all about.