Tag Archives: Call of Duty

Blog: Like the Old Days – 01/22/20

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Sometimes games strive to endear themselves to you through a healthy smattering of nostalgia, which usually yields mixed results at best.  But some games exist solely for the purpose of reigniting old flames you thought had died in you long ago.  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a prime example of the latter.

For context, the original Modern Warfare came out in 2007 when my friends and I had all graduated from high school.  It was the perfect time for a game like that to keep us all together and talking considering we wouldn’t be forced to be in the same place for five days a week.  It was a nightly ritual that involved us playing long into the night and talking to one another.  It isn’t a unique story by any means, but it’s one that I look back on fondly.

Fast forward to today where everyone is scattered about and doing their own thing.  I bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare out of some weird longing mixed with the general hype I’d heard since it released.  Within the first few minutes of playing it, I immediately was flooded with memories of those long nights we would spend together online, and how important that was to me.

Nowadays my gaming buddies and I have drastically different tastes in games, making it hard to sync up on a purchase we can all enjoy, so I knew this game wouldn’t appeal to them.  But I picked it up anyway, just for my own curiosity.  It’s still incredibly fun and chaotic just like I remembered it, except this time around I’m flying solo.  That sounds sadder than I intended it to, but it’s no less true.

There’s still something satisfying and endlessly replayable about the core mechanics and progression in the Call of Duty games that few other titles have matched.  While I may not have my friends in my ear, cracking jokes and complaining about how “cheap” the enemies tactics are, I still get that endorphin rush of just running laps around a map and blasting my enemies away getting killed constantly.

Yet for as much fun as I’m having playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, it still feels like half of an experience without friends to play with.  I know I’ll never get those late night game sessions back and quite frankly, I don’t think I really want them.  Hell, I can barely stay awake past 11 o’clock these days let alone play a game until 2 in the morning.  But there’s something about Call of Duty that makes me wish I could.  I guess that’s the power of a good nostalgia trip.

Blog: Combat Specialization – 01/16/19

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On the last day of the winter sale EA was running, a friend of mine decided to pick up the poorly titled, Battlefield 1.  This was great timing considering our friend group has been looking for something new to play, and this seemed like a cheap way to get us all together once again.  Despite me having some of my most memorable online experiences with previous Battlefield entries, upon jumping back into action I quickly realized that I think I actually hate the Battlefield games.

Battlefield, like most other competitive shooters, lives and dies by the quality of their maps.  The things I like about a multiplayer map is when it’s designed in such a way that every play style is viable on it, but can always be countered.  A sniper should be as effective and vulnerable as the player running laps around the map with a shotgun.  I know that’s easier said than done, but my point is that I value not making someone feel bad for playing the way they want to.

However in Battlefield, the matches I end up playing are usually swayed by air superiority and effective sniping, whereas everything else never feels as important or effective.  I’ve never felt quite as useless as when I pick a shotgun in one of these grand battles that Battlefield operates in.  I’m not great at sniping and even worse at driving in these games, but they seem to be the only real way to make a difference in any given match.

When I compare Battlefield to something like the Call of Duty series, I find I have more fun with the latter because it favors faster gameplay in more tightly constructed environments.  That isn’t a qualitative statement as much as it’s a preferential one.  I like getting back into the action fast and being able to see my enemy (for the most part) before I’m dispatched and ultimately reborn, cursed to endure that cycle until the timer runs out.  Both games can be eternally frustrating, but I have much more fun with Call of Duty than Battlefield for this and other reasons.

titanfall2

In theory, I should love Battlefield.  These grand scaled battles that occupy various forms of combat simultaneously, a large player count and destructible environments should be a slam dunk for me, but it always ends up leaving me feeling more frustrated than satisfied.  If only there was some sort of shooter on the market that was able to blend the fast and frenetic action of Call of Duty with the scale and scope of Battlefield.  Oh wait, it’s called Titanfall 2, the game I was thinking about is Titanfall 2, and it’s phenomenal and didn’t deserve to be buried the way it was when Battlefield 1 came out.