I don’t normally bother with E3. As the game industry’s biggest get-together of the year, there’s a disturbing amount of froth on display; bikinied models, shiny publicity booths and half-brained peripherals take up much more of the Los Angeles Convention Centre than the games themselves. And even if you do stumble across something that doesn’t have tits or a motion sensor, there’s almost zero chance that you won’t have seen it before. Sequels are E3’s byword. Year after year we’re subjected to a predictable line-up of insipid lookalikes – if you want to save yourself the trouble of going to E3, just take every game you already own and scrawl a number onto the box.
There are sometimes a few new IPs – this year we had Watch Dogs, The Last of Us and Dishonored – but generally the Expo leans toward existing franchises. E3 2012 contained more sequels than a Police Academy boxset. There was Borderlands 2, Crysis 3, Lost Planet 3, Dead Space 3, Halo 4, Hitman 5, Resident Evil 6 and Tomb Raider 9, to name but a few. Even the scant brand new games looked remarkably familiar: iPhones and motorways aside, Watch Dogs bears a striking resemblance to Assassin’s Creed. The Last of Us, on the other hand, is showing signs of Uncharted; sure there are fewer wisecracks and more violence, but the platforming elements and buddy-cop patter have a distinctly Drake-ish feel.
So all in all, E3 2012 seemed a very typical affair: none of the most exciting developers (Rockstar, Valve) had bothered to turn up, and almost every game on show was as to be expected. Content to write it off as another disaster, I only had to watch the Black Ops II trailer to confirm my suspicions that yep, video games were doomed. But then something bizarre happened: as I was watching three blokes with laser guns argue about whose turn it was to save the President, instead of getting the urge to fry my PS3’s circuit board with my own sick, I got a weird compulsion to buy the game. Against all reason, this looked really good.
What the hell was going on? For all the years I’d spent shaking my fist at videogame sequels, here I was in absolute awe of the sequeliest sequel of them all. It’s not as if it looked like anything new; take away the fancy scopes and flying turrets and Black Ops II may as well be set in the nineteen-sixties. Bad guys appear, you shoot the bad guys, the bad guys die – occasionally something explodes. Everything about Call of Duty that gets my dander up was present and correct: stupid dialogue? Check. Speed ramping? Check. Endless shooting? Check. This was CoD by numbers, and I’d grown tired of it three games ago.
But none of these things were bothering me this time; if anything, they were getting me riled up. Where Modern Warfare’s patriotic drivelling used to make me wince, now I was pumping my fists and nodding my head: hell yeah we need to get the President outta here. Let’s rock ‘n’ roll! Whenever another truck exploded, or a goon got his face snipered off, I felt a pang of excitement; watching communists die by the dozen had made me queasy in the old CoDs, but now it just looked cool.
I wondered if that paintballing weekend had done more psychological damage than I had realised; maybe years of simulated violence had left me numb to virtual blood lust. Here was Call of Duty in all its wickedness, and for the first time ever, I was smiling. And like a .50 calibre bullet to the arm, it hit me: this isn’t real.
See, what always bugged me about CoD’s gung-ho was that it took real-life wars and turned them into sport. From Nazi Germany, to Castro’s Cuba, the Vietnamese jungle and the Afghan desert, the Call of Duty series has dumbed down and blown-up some of the most important and tragic events in human history: when I play a recreation of the Tet Offensive, I expect a certain amount of conscience. Instead, I get a shotgun that can shoot fire.
Although it takes some broad swings at current affairs, Call of Duty doesn’t have much time for analysis. You’re expected to shoot young men and poor people as if they were the mutants in Doom; with levels set in Brazilian favelas and African villages, I feel uncomfortable having fun with CoD. Dropping an airstrike on five young men with AK-47s just makes me feel like a monster.
But Black Ops II is set in the future. EMP grenades, mechanised armour, robots – it’s pure fantasy, and I don’t have to feel guilty about indulging in it. Modern Warfare and Black Ops wanted it both ways: there were silly, high-concept action beats throughout, but also quotes from Bertrand Russell and Gore Vidal whenever you died. It meant that Call of Duty kept contradicting itself; explosive set-pieces felt out of step with the game’s seriousness of tone, but the philosophical pondering was contrary to all the rock music and nukes.
Without the jarring verisimilitude, Black Ops II is free to do what it wants. It’s CoD at its best: loud, raucous and unassuming. As long as Treyarch bin their Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, and avoid bogging the game down with naff General Shepherd-esque soliloquising, Black Ops II could be the best Call of Duty yet. The mechanics are wearing thin, but not since Sgt. Jackson got irradiated have we seen a war shooter with such gusto.
For me, Black Ops II couldn’t have appeared at a better time. I’d about given up on the games industry: the E3 sequel parade had me convinced that I’d never be surprised by a triple-A game ever again. But for a franchise like Call of Duty – that from a financial stand-point has no cause to make any sudden moves – to change direction so totally shows that perhaps there’s hope after all.
I end the article by saying that for the CoD series especially to make such a big jump is impressive; I know there are other games set in the future.
And I haven’t been duped – I’m cautiously optimistic. Call of Duty does have a track record of redecorating rather than rebuilding, but I’m not gonna stamp all over something that I haven’t played just because of that.
Do they ignore technical issues, or do they just have better things to do than pander to their bratty fanbase?
The word pandering seems to suggest the idea of triviality in regards to the issue.
There is nothing trivial about large knifing hit boxes or inherently flawed weapon make ups.
Like I said there is a deep dark abyss separating the way I perceive the game and the way you do.
We will never agree.
Technical issues that interfere greatly with gameplay, which is the core and foundation of any game, should never, ever be justifiably ignored when creating a new game that they expect people to dole out 60$ for.
So no, its not pandering to a bratty fanbase but to acknowledge and change obvious flaws within the game. It is literally the least they could do with the amount of people that buy their games yearly.
And think that’s what matters most? That’s the first thing they be focused on?
I think getting bogged down in the critical quagmire of pixelcounts and framerates is an atypical response to whichever new COD game has been released this, or any year. As Ed says, games are cultural, not technological. If the greatest flaw we can find is hitbox sizes, then we may as well scrap the film industry for daring to have different aspect ratios. These are a means to an end, not the end themselves.
Similarly, the jump from the failed seriousness of BLOPS and World at War to the hihg-concept James Cameron-esque silliness promised by BLOPS2 is laudable and inspired. It feels like what they’ve wanted to do all along. They’ve got the war out of their system, and can now go where they wanted. A film critic (I forget the name) once pointed out that he would ‘rather watch good rubbish, than bad art.’ It feels like they’re making good rubbish. I couldn’t be happier with this direction.
Now both of you have simplified what we are talking about. The core mechanics of the gameplay are inherently flawed and have been for years. They should have been fixed by now. The only reason I focus on them is the fact that they are not fixed. If the gameplay worked well, I would most definitely be excited about what Black Ops 2 is bringing to the table. But the fact remains that all we are looking forward to is the same very flawed gameplay in a new story.
Games are cultural most definitely. But to ignore the technical side or trivialize it is to reject what gaming is. People are there to PLAY the game. If they cannot play the game in a fun and exciting way, no amount of story, aesthetic, or setting can fix it.
And the greatest flaw we can find is not just in hitboxes, that was just an example. An example which still has incredible ramifications when changed even slightly. One quick example of the effect is here, http://www.hltv.org/news/8335-csgo-hitboxes-explained. There are a lot more problems than just that in balancing issues, server and connection issues, matchmaking issues, and dlc issues. There is a lot going on that needs to be addressed.
There are some inherent things within the game that need to be fixed first. I just cannot believe the confidence and arrogance they have had in making new games on a yearly basis for someone to buy. Well, I can, people buy into the promise of something new with the flashy new things promised every year.
No, gameplay is not the end all be all, but it is the foundation of what every game is. Gameplay should support the story. Story and aesthetic should not be able to cover the cracks in the foundation
Is that what you think? Really?
Like I said before, there is a disconnect between what we’re saying and how you are interpreting it.
You guys are misrepresenting the issue, perhaps deliberately.
The fact that James reduced our argument to that of pixel counts and frame rates is clear sign that he has no grasp of what our issue actually is, in addition, your apparent siding with him makes me think that you were debating this whole time without actually knowing what we were saying.
Everything we have mentioned were issues that have plagued the community, these aren’t things that are murmured under the breath by a minority. It’s been plaguing the series for years and yet it seems that these things still won’t get fixed.
Being excited for the game due to time and setting change doesn’t really make sense to me as I cannot imagine a player from Call of Duty claiming that that’s what will make them buy the game, seeing as how those things were pretty much non issues in the evaluation of the past games. But if u are, thats on u, but u cannot say that people who are more interested in the amelioration of issues that have plagued the series for several years are not picking.
If something has been flawed for years and there seems to be no end in sight for those inherent flaws, why would anyone give a fuck regarding the “improvement” of that were never a concern in the first place?
That other guys analogy of hit boxes and film makers aspect ratio is so out of touch and nonsensical I don’t even know where to begin.
And, yes, Andrew is right. Story and aesthetic cannot cover up inherent flaws within the game, that’s impossible.
The flaws are out there for a reason, EVERYONE hates them. Once they play the game they are going to notice these flaws within an instant as these flaws are 5+ years old. There’s no amount of story or setting change that can change that.
Well, in that case…
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