Quickie CoD4/MW2 Thoughts...

Why do I play the CoD series?

Call of Duty series of games offer the best compromise between realism and gameplay. Back in the day, I played the original Operation Flashpoint on PC, messing around with the mission editor. It was a relatively short dalliance since, much like real life, one bullet and you're incapacitated or dead. I wasn't hardcore enough to die 50 times trying to figure out what the hell I was doing wrong in that game. The Call of Duty games aren't perfect: I think both the Infinity Ward and Treyarch flavors of the game ramp up the difficulty by just adding grenades and bullets. Joking references to the "Olympic grenade-throwing team" pepper the forums for both developers. The game objectives are sometimes vague, at least to me, and the AI is problematic at times. Once in Call of Duty 2, Captain Price failed to follow me into a Nazi-occupied house; I killed all the Nazis, but the level was broken because Price, once all the enemies were dead, wouldn't come into the house. And, of course, the final objective for the level was to get debriefed by him. Pulling his ass into the house by his mutton-chops wasn't an option unfortunately.

Right now, I'm playing the single player campaign for Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, and the AI in that isn't bad. You can direct your AI squad to covered positions, and they'll pretty much sling lead at the enemy automagically, if you pick the spot right. What grinds my grain about that Brothers in Arms is that the aiming mechanics seem hosed. Shooting at a Nazi from 2 feet away with your Garand isn't a guaranteed kill. In fact, if you don't empty your clip into his goose-stepping ass, he'll stroll right up and give you a migraine with the butt of his KAR98. The Call of Duty games, all of them, seem pretty true to life as far as hitting a target is concerned. From my military service, I can relate to that; point at it, put your front sight on it, and you'll hit the damn thing. Now, the Call of Duty enemies have a sneaky habit of being mostly dead & then getting back up to put bullets in your ass after you turn your back. But it's a small quibble compared to the Brothers in Arms deal where you have to win a lottery to get a kill shot on those Nazi bastards.

What about multiplayer?

I didn't play much CoD multiplayer. I enjoyed the original Call of Duty's single player campaign tremendously. I only played a few games of Xbox CoD multiplayer on CoD2, but I was into Halo at the time, getting into Halo 2 hard, playing with my brother, the uber-player, Reibochief, and my bro Matt64. At the time, I was playing with the Smartjoy Frag. We moved on to Halo 3, and I upgraded to the majorly fudged up XFPS sniper, which seriously made me hate Halo 3. A lot. And then came CoD4, which I played on the PC for months before breaking down and buying it for the Xbox 360. Not only was CoD4 more forgiving than Halo 3 as far as the XFPS was concerned, but the XIM1 came along, giving me a more PC-like experience on the Xbox 360 CoD4. After that, I was a CoD4 fanatic.

It was with CoD4 that I seriously got back into the forums again. (The first time was with the Planet Half-life forums where I was known as =Joker=, playing the orginal HL DM, Team Fortress Classic, and the superb CoD4-like Front Line Force mod.) I played some HL2 DM along the way, but I disliked that the weapons didn't seem to have any bite to them. A whole submachine gun magazine was not enough to kill most anyone I ran across, but that's just my sucky aim. I stuck with CoD4 multiplayer until W@W came out. I didn't think I was going to like W@W, but I was surprised to like it more than CoD4, at least as far as multiplayer was concerned. The single player game was a bit meh, but the multiplayer was a better experience for me. The longer distances in the map made cover/concealment selection more important than twitch shooting. Also, a lot of the crap which I'd disliked about CoD4's MP was fixed. I was chiefly torqued out by CoD4's unrestricted teamkilling. For a while it was absolutely epidemic. It seemed I couldn't enter a match without some chortling pre-teen RPGing the crap out of the whole team. With W@W, they could do that only 3 times, and they were gone. It was multiplayer bliss for me.

Recently, as noted in earlier blog entries, I've switched back to CoD4. I'm trying to get my mojo back for the release of MW2. Still don't have it back, but I'm still looking for it. :)