Call of Schmooty

Call of Duty can kiss me ass. That’s right I said it. I have a thorough dislike of Call of Duty for very logical, and I hope understandable reasons.

Call of Duty is a series of first person shooters that came out in 2003 as a means for a small time company called Infinity ward to cash in on Steven Spielberg’s highly successful “Medal of Honor” series of First person shooters. Both games take place during the Second World War, and while Medal of honor tried to create its own story within the era, Call of Duty tended to simulate pivotal battles, fulfilling historians wishes to be “Private Jimmy in the foxhole.”

All of that is well and good, and Call of Duty 1 and two were fantastic games in their own right, with lots to offer the shooter fan. It was right around the third entry in the franchise that something began to happen to the series that was a microcosm of Shooter gaming in general. What happened?

Xbox Live happened.

Call of Duty 3 was a tipping point in my ability to enjoy the franchise. When it comes to shooters I am more of a single player kind of guy. M I find the realm of on line first person games to be way to competitive for my tastes. Further I can not put on a headset on online gaming without be blasted by kids halfway through puberty calling me racist, sexist, homophobic, or politically charged names. yes I have been called a liberal on Xbox Live.

Does this bother me at all? A little. What do I do about it? I log off and stick to single player. Which brings me back to Call of Duty 3. COD 3 was not a bad single player game per say. Much how I was excited in the previous installment to play as a Russian at Stalingrad, or the Brits in North Africa, in COD 3 I was actually thrilled that you got to be smack dab in the middle of Canada’s vital but often underplayed role in the European Theater of World War II. The same goes for the Polish Army post Blitzkrieg. But the single player campaign, while suitably long, just was not doing it for me. It seemed that despite the 4 playable difficulties it still played like a racer at an arcade. Play on easy or hard.

So I gladly uninstalled COD 3 on my computer and sold it on ebay, got most of my money back and never game the franchise a second thought. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare passed me by without much fanfare, and while I thought the idea was interesting, I felt that all of the assets a modern solider had would make any first person shooter far to easy to play. I am sorry but what is the point of having dark levels AND giving me night vision goggles? Eventually I did pick up modern warfare at a reduced price and gave it a go, and this is where my chief complaint comes in.

I finished the single player campaign of that game in a weekend. I am not talking about a hardcore 12 hours at a time with only 3 hours of sleep a night weekend. I mean I popped it in the Playstation, sat back with an orange juice and some crêpes, and was about 2/3rds of the way done by lunch time. I was teased with what I saw as all sorts of story telling potential and awesome plot points. I mean for fucks sake YOU WITNESS A NUCLEAR DETONATION! But then said nuclear detonation is glossed over and barley talked about again, and you never even see that particular region (playfully dubbed notiraqistan) in the rest of the game. Fuck that noise.

See this brings me to my big point. Online Multiplayer has degraded the ability of Shooters to act as a narrative medium, when they have the potential to be one of the most power storytelling methods in gaming. Instead we have developers focusing on photorealistic graphics, and reflex oriented gameplay mechanics. Guys, those have been taken care of. The gore level is just about perfect in both realistic shooters and in Horror oriented shooters (F.E.A.R. THAT’S A FUN GAME!). We need a little work on the science fiction end though. As great of a story as Halo is, with its music and well tuned mechanics, lets face facts, staining the soil in purple ink is not good for alien gore.


It does seem that the “real war” inspired shooters is reaching a plateau. Because almost everything the allies have ever accomplished in WWII has been done, and no one thinks you can responsibly make a game where you play as the Axis powers, WWII is going by the wayside. Call of Duty is making a shift to the cold war and 21st century eras, The Halo Era is pretty much over, and Medal of Honor is set to become more of a Tom Clancy Oriented special operations genre. Meanwhile a lot of nerds are going to be waiting for the next big thing in science fiction shooting.

Which brings me to Transformers War for Cybertron…. Next time