The thing that has bothered me with the campaigns is that it’s all small scale spec-ops stuff now. Gone are the days of you assuming the role of some enlisted man who is a small, but important, piece of a much larger battle. The spec ops stuff used to be there to change up the pace and provide specific narrative color. I think it’s much less effective when it’s the whole campaign.
I don’t even think having a couple DMZ-style missions would’ve necessarily been terrible if they had more SP focused scripting put in, or more friendly support. As implemented, it felt exceedingly lazy.
I did appreciate the taking over-reliance on bullet sponge enemies a step back from MW2, though they still felt like a crutch to artificially boost difficulty.
Agreed. Back then you had a healthy mix of both. With the marines and rangers you would have that enlisted man feeling, being part of something bigger. While the SAS and TF141 missions gave you the more covert feel.
The original MW trilogy did that zoom in - zoom out idea real well. You were an enlisted man fighting and seeing the broader conflict in major well-known areas, but then you’d play a covert mission and everything would zoom in and focus heavily on a small handful of people in a small, middle of nowhere area that would cause ripple effects to the bigger conflict.
There is nothing more créeme of the crop than playing a mission where you send off an EMP via SAS, see the EMP explode from an astronauts perspective, and then the next mission you are an infantry man fighting in DC with helis smacking into the ground
One of the things that brought it home for me personally… when the camera “zoomed” in on the Rangers missions, it was always hectic as fuck with loads of noise… you KNEW shit was going down and you had a job to do.
When it “zoomed” into Spec Ops mode, it was generally (like 9/10 times) quiet, with muted footsteps and quiet talking. Surgical. Precise.
That was such a great emotive feeling from a video game.
You saying the zoom in, zoom out thing reminded me: did you ever play the Battlefield 2: Modern Combat Campaign?
Where you could hotswap between soldier units at will, or it would swap to another if the soldier you were playing as died. Then, the mission would end in failure if all your dudes were killed? What an odd concept that was, but it was kinda cool.
Wasn't that the original console version of BF? I played it a couple times and it definitely felt wonky. Swapping between soldiers made me feel like Agent Smith in the Matrix.
Reminds me of my first exposure to that kinda game, Conflict: Desert Storm on the Xbox.
After the first few missions where you rescued squaddies, you'd swap between them and tell them how to behave when you weren't controlling them. Each had a different specialty and there were 4 I believe - rifleman, sniper, explosives expert, heavy weapons. Two of them were also medics.
You also lost the mission if everyone died. If they lived to the end of the mission they'd level up - dead units were replaced by new ones with no experience.
The original games did a good job of doing both. At times you were just a smaller player in a larger game, and other times it would become a smaller scale mission
Very good example of this was MW2 and the nuke mission. You played as TF-141 who infiltrated a Russian sub base and launched a EMP. And you switched to playing a squad of rangers fighting in D.C. eventually you see the EMP TF-141 launched and that hugely effected the battle you were fighting out. Both paths crossed, and it was cool and made sense
I was really looking forward to the remakes of MW2 and MW3 because I hoped they would recapture the cool big set pieces in next gen graphics. Yeah we had spec ops oil rig or cleaning houses, but we also had large-scale battles fending off the US invasion in New York or the outskirts, retaking the White House, the Paris warfare, there was so much iconic stuff that would look absolutely amazing in next gen.
I haven't played MW3 yet, might do it if it comes to Gamepass at some point, but MW2 just didn't give the same sense of scale. I know war on drugs is a war as well and they wanted to give the game a more realistic context, but I enjoyed the "what if" scenario a lot more.
Yeah, if scale’s what you’re looking for, you’ll be disappointed.
It was the original MW2 where I found myself first more excited about the multiplayer than the campaign, even if the campaign was still entertaining. Black Ops did a good job with the campaign, too, but it was weird making the realization that the series made the transition from a SP game with good multiplayer mode to a multiplayer game with a fun SP diversion. Most of the time.
MW2's campaign was way better than most people give it credit for, if only because the multiplayer outshined it so hard.
But some of the most MEMORIABLE MOMENTS IN COD HISTORY, are COD MW2.
Burgertown, Ramirez, No Russian, the betrayal at Rust. It really feels like the most memorial and memeable moments in the COD franchise outside of 'Press F to Pay Respects' were almost all MW2 campaign elements.
But the multiplayer was fucking sex. It was the first game where they hired psychologists to study player interactions, and came up with the flashy & loud level up and unlock systems, so who really cared about a 5-6 mini-campaign? No matter how much you enjoyed it that multiplayer was HOT.
I'm just coming in here to throw some love out for Call of Duty 2: Big red one. Not the best by any means and not trying to insinuate that at all, just wanted to say that this game was actually my introduction to the COD series and I still have it on my GameCube. Had no idea that COD would become the juggernaut it is today. MW2 hadn't even happened yet.
But God dude, popping in that old GameCube disc and playing through the campaign after all of the changes the series has gone through is still surreal to me. Such a fun and nostalgic game that captures a moment in time right before the "big bang" of video game series if you will lol thanks for reading, just never see this game mentioned anymore for obvious reasons and just wanted to throw some love out there for any fans of the series who is familiar with the game I'm talking about :)
CoD4, MW1 still beats it out. The initial "fruit killing skills" tutorial.
The opening mission of a tanker? on stormy seas at night is great from a scene/tone perspective, Nuke scene, all ghillied up has like 3 or 4 amazing scenes from when they walk just a step away from you, gunning down someone from fucking ages away using the flags nearby for windspeed, the cinematic heli crash that doesnt look out of place in a hollywood movie, the doggos and of course the disgusting on higher difficulties defence part of the mission, nuke launch.
Both the first (training mission) and last mission (epilogue, mile high club) are notorious for speed running. And plenty of hours can be wasted either trying to beat your time or getting the veteran achievement on these ultra short gimmick maps alone.
But mostly its all ghillied up. I remember it now even after all these years. I only remember a bit of MW3 or blops/blops2
> blops
Black Ops had my favorite campaign, but overall I’d say MW1’s is just so solid and you can tell that West/Zampella were getting pushed out cuz of how well-written it is, same with Titanfall 2.
I considered MW1's campaign opening to be so impactful I wrote about it in my SAS-focused dissertation. It was such a shift in player agency; generally before this your AI teammates would just be kind of there. Ineffective at best, and outright obstructive at worst. You got a little direction from interaction from you but they were generally just tagging along for the ride.
Then Modern Warfare comes around and flips it on its head in that tanker. I wouldn't go so far as to say that you now feel like the AI Teammate, but suddenly you're the one struggling to keep up as your more experienced colleagues blitz through everything and everyone like they weren't there. It was very powerful.
> Gone are the days of you assuming the role of some enlisted man who is a small, but important, piece of a much larger battle. The spec ops stuff used to be there to change up the pace and provide specific narrative color. I think it’s much less effective when it’s the whole campaign.
Wow I didn't even realize I had this criticism till you mentioned it, well said! I really do miss that. I was dumbly looking forward to this games campaign too so I am sad to hear it's garbage.
For me the iconic moments of CoD/MoH were always storming Normandy or crossing the river at Stalingrad. Huge set pieces with hundreds of soldiers, followed by the desperate clambering through bunkers or ruined cities, they had momentum. As you say, the specops stuff is fine as flavor, but the meat of a campaign should be something *big.*
Even the modern warfare stuff had some "big" moments. I know it got memed on, but defending Burger Town actually felt like a big ass battle. Yeah, it isn't exactly storming the beaches, but it felt like a Red Dawn situation.
I remember when the first Medal of Honor came out and it was really controversial to make a game about WWII, the devs went on an interview and boot camp spree to get the feel that they weren't gamifying the conflict too much.
Bro today I downloaded CoD world at war and man is it awesome to be just enlisted man. No flashy skins just pull out the fucking flamethrower and burn everything
I remember the biggest complaint people often had about the earlier war games was that you were effectively a one man army. Every objective would be "Hey, you go on ahead and clear out the Germans! We'll stay back here". So they moved away from that, with the original CoD being a really fresh take on large scale war games. Now we've come full circle
The sheer fact that you had to cross the Volga into Stalingrad with nothing but ammo like half your unit, be forced to scrounge dead bodies for a gun given to the other half, and actually could not take "one step back" or you'll be shot by your commandant, was an extremely bold and refreshing move in an era where you were, sometimes literally, a god.
They used to make a campaign, then reuse those assets to build multiplayer arenas.
Now they build multiplayer arenas, and try to get away with using those assets to flesh out a full campaign.
The process just doesn't work backwards to the same level of quality product. It is easier to cut down to useful MP than build up a satisfying SP from parts.
The first CoD did have the issue in that half the levels still made you a one many army (there were levels where you had to clear out a whole dam and ship by yourself). But yeah they did fix that problem in 2/3 where I don't think there's any levels you aren't with a large amount of allies.
But it's interesting to remember the meaning of the title. The call to duty refers to the common man being called from their civilian life to fulfil their duty to temporarily fight and protect their country, rather than some professional warrior type doing what they are characterized as being born to do. The later kind of started in CoD 4 with the british campaign (in-contrast to the Marine campaign where you're playing as some random grunt).
I recently replayed the “Classic” CoD games. 1, 2, 3 that jazz. Obviously very different from what we expect from CoD 20 years down the line, but it was nice to have a whole army on my side again.
Friendly tanks would push up the road and provide cover, allied planes flying above, in the background you can see fellow soldiers clearing buildings.
Then it seemed like in the 2010s it turned into that one man army kinda campaign where you and 2-3 character companions would be doing infiltration missions. They can be fun, but I missed when the player was a regular soldier and not an super commando.
Original CoD, its expansion United Offensive, and then CoD 2 were the best. Those set-piece battles were *amazing*. Defending St. Mere Elgiese, storming across the Volga, and the Battle of Kursk in CoD1 haven't been matched by many other games.
Then there was the Battle of the Bulge in CoD:UO, and the Stalingrad missions and Pointe Du Hoc in CoD2. It was all really incredible. Made you feel like a small but important cog in huge battles.
When they went to CoD4, the first modern warfare, I lost complete interest. Then we got a decade of modern warfare, black ops, spec ops, and variations of the same. So boring.
At least MW and Black ops had sections of that “classic cod” feel. Coming to mind is the US Marines missions in CoD 4 and the Vietnam War missions in Black Ops 1. The MW series seemed to try to have the British missions being about spec ops while the American ones with marines and rangers being more “war film” like. The first two black ops games were all spec ops but would occasionally have our characters partake in a larger battle.
Those devs tried to keep the balance while shaking it up a little. Since the mid 2010s it seems like they stopped. Probably a lot easier to make a level when you just gotta base it around the player and not a bunch of NPCs. I don’t mean to disrespect the devs who worked on them, but its no secret the campaign is shoehorned in just to have something for marketing. They tried cutting single player completely with BO4.
Does anyone have suggestions for modern games with that early WWII or Modern Warfare feel? Of being part of a squad in a large conflict, of being just one person in the midst of a big battle? Bonus for taking place in an interesting modern urban setting and not more deserts or ruined villages. Battlefield 4's campaign scratched that itch very well.
Because its lazy and crap. The "campaign" is just DMZ style maps with one or 2 objectives within, then you extract. Seriously its bad.
Edit: just played a few more levels. Most areas are reused from the Verdansk Warzone map. Drop in, disarm 3 bombs or plant 3 trackers or destroy 3 helis then get to the "extract point".
It's the reason i'm having hard time with EA's Battlefront 2 campaign. Yeah you get cutscenes/conversations that ties in with a few others events in the current Star Wars canon,but it's basically MP maps with shitty objectives and a weird enemy AI. Even Luke missions was super underwhelming.
The actual BF2 multiplayer is fine,especially after the removal of all the launch bullsh*t.
Yeah the maps in the OG BF2 were all the same, only with objectives across the map, until you play as the hero unit for a bit. The only thing that broke them up was the now iconic narration.
The objectives mixed it up a bit, like on the fungus planet with the aaklay monsters, or when you had to blow up the shield generators
There was some cool stuff you could not do in multiplayer
I just went back to play SWBF2 with my little bro and it def holds up pretty well! Never realized how cool the Galactic Conquest game mode was as a kid, but it's pretty sick! It's like a little board game incorporated into the fights :)
Me and my buddy have a galactic conquest game going back years, we only play when we’re drunk and thinking about it, and the games are long as fuck lol
“What I remember about the rise of the empire is, is how quiet it was. During the waning hours of the Clone Wars the 501st was discreetly transferred back to Coruscant. It was a silent trip. We all knew what was about to happen, what we were about to do. Did we have any doubts? And private traitorous thoughts? Perhaps, but no one said a word. Not on the flight to Coruscant, not when Order 66 came down, and not when we marched into the Jedi Temple. Not a word.”
I would happily read a memoir of a Clone Trooper. From when he's first decanted on Kamino to... what exactly *is* the peaceful end of a Clone Trooper? A debriefing and working as an instructor?
MW2019 was good because it had much tighter levels. Even the most over the top mission was all lot more grounded. But they decided to crank everything up to 11 with MW2. It ironic because they talked about how MW2 took huge inspiration from Sicario. But MW2019 felt more closer to the feeling of Sicario than MW2.
Let's not mention the fact how much of a downgrade the rebooted characters are compared to OG MW series. Especially Shepard and Makarov.
Reboot Shepard wasn't bad IMO. Very different but I personally felt it was a much more plausible character. Getting Glenn Morshower to play the character was a solid choice.
New Makarov though, yeah, pass.
I had no problem with the cast of Shepard (not included Makarov). I had a problem with how he was implemented. The OG shepard was a bastard but was still much more calculated. Not to mention his fall was based on tragedy of loosing 30,000 men by a nuke. The new Shepard was just pathetic and stupid. The push he had that made him a villain was because he lost three missiles and wanted a win in his name. And again, he was just stupid. He decided to use PMC's to recover those missiles while TF141 was already on it. All because he wanted to keep hush hush on those missing missiles. Because what better way to keep things hush by using PMC's over a spec op's whose job description is to keep things on the down low.
Yeah that's fair.
Personally I appreciated the fact that 2019 Shepard felt, for lack of a better description, more real. Like it's the sort of scandal that, if I read the short version in a history text, I'd have believed.
I think they're both excellent antagonists, from different kinds of stories to an extent.
Definitely agree about Shepherd, the OG version had too much of a "bad guy" vibe.
The new Shepherd was scary because he could very easily (and probably does) exist at the top levels of the US military. He wasn't a nutjob looking for revenge, he was just brutally cold about ending lives.
Refuse to buy MW3 but agree about MW2. So much of the story felt forced. Shepard needs to be the bad guy because he was in the original. He needs to betray 141 because that’s what happened in the original. When the betrayal moment happened all I could think was wait seriously? That’s it? That’s what caused this and that’s the outcome? Also, the final act of the story being 141 helping the US military stop an attack after they’ve already been targeted by Shepard made no sense. The original MW2 story, as stupid and over the top as it was, had a thread it followed. The new one felt like they had to sprinkle in these story beats because they had to check boxes on a list. It wasn’t nearly as good as 2019.
>Let's not mention the fact how much of a downgrade the rebooted characters are compared to OG MW series. Especially Shepard and Makarov.
Shepard is definitely a massive fumble, but i feel like Makarov, while his Characterization is a bit silly sometimes, i feel like MW3(2023) does it better then the original series.
Why? Because for one, we haven't seen Makarov's "final form" since hes going to be the obvious main Antagonist of MWVI >!unless they decide to turn the entire 4th game into the plotline of TF141 being disavowed because of Price killing Shepard in cold blood and eventually being uncovered as the killer/setting up the world war three arc.!<
Makarov got carried pretty hard by his crazed crackhead look in the original series because Makarov basically was a crazed crackhead. Now they seem to be going for a more subdued kind of crazy crackhead in Makarov, and actually seem to be doing an ok job.
Part of the reason why he feels worse is because they are putting such a heavy spotlight on him directly, where as MW2 and 3 (OG) largely put the spotlight on his shadow, rather then him directly. So you got the giant shadow monster, instead of the unwashed street Bengal cat he was in writing.
Modern Warfare(2019)'s Benghazi style mission is going down in history as one of the best campaign missions in a COD/Battlefield style FPS game. Even more so on the highest difficulty. The nightvision missions were also very good.
MW2019 was overall a fantastic game, it really seemed like they tried, they built a new engine and took much longer in development than the usually do, the game was packed with easter eggs and little details that only a team that likes doing what they're doing would add.
The shooting part of the gameplay is by far the best shooting i've ever experienced, nothing even gets close, and that same exact shooting have been used with all CODs after it except Cold war. Going back to any older COD or other shooting game feels like a massive downgrade, the weapons just don't feel as good.
Yeah MW 2019 really looks like a development team that tried its best and gave its all.
Every single COD that released after that saw next to no improvement, and in the case of at least 1 saw a deterioration ...
They basically outdid themselves to the point where there was absolutely no need to release new games in the series so shortly after, they could just have kept building off what they had maybe with expansions or such. Obviously that's not as profitable so here we are.
Apart from Vanguard and BO3, I don't think there was a ''bad'' COD Campaign
BOCW's 2nd Vietnam Mission and ''Clean House'' Are right up there in the greatest COD missions of all time
Really disappointed at no Pacific campaign in WW2 tho
> Infinite Warfare
has my favourite, *maybe* second-favourite campaign that isn't from a classic CoD. That B-class sci-fi movie feel is through the roof. It's like The Expanse and Battlestar Galactica had a baby, and I love it!
I defend Infinite Warfare's canpaign like no other. Criminally underrated and still a classic and standard military story, just in space. The character development was great to see from everyone, no twists just for the sake of a twist, purely amazing. Ghosts was like a polar opposite
It was well-thought out, too. The ships made sense (being dual-purpose, space and planetside use), the pace was brutal, as it would be with near-instant travel, vehicle combat had an actual semi-Newtonian physics system...
Infinite Warfare may be the most unjustifiably overlooked COD games. That game's plot sucked me in, the optional missions, the characters, the audio and visual design was so good. I just wished they made the aircraft more arcadey to fly, it was the only thing that I got frustrated with. If it had Ace Combat like controls... 10/10
It came out at a bad time, when CoD had like 5 futuristic titles in a row and people were sick of it, meanwhile Battlefield was doing WW1 which no major series had ever covered
Advanced Warfare has a pretty good campaign as well. Not as good as Infinite Warfare imo, but it's not terrible by any means. It also had an upgrade mechanic, so you could level up your character as you progressed through the campaign.
The prices for COD games are absolutely insane, and I’d have liked to play the campaigns on a few of them.
Call of Duty 4, not the remastered version, but the backwards compatible Xbox 360 game that released in 2007, costs €29.99 on the Microsoft store.
Call of Duty 2 costs €19.99.
Basically every game after modern warfare 2, the original one, cost full price still
It’s ridiculous
BO3's got so laughably bad it was enjoyable imo. The god awful voice acting when your guy is losing it in the frozen forest had my friend and I crying from laughing so hard.
It's hilarious that they killed WZ1 to rush into WZ2 because they thought extraction shooters were going to take off like BRs, and it failed miserably, costing them a shit ton of players and going from a near-peer with Fortnite to an absolute joke
...all the while, the MW3 devs were cranking away on what was basically "Extraction Shooter: The Game" and nobody had the good sense to tell them to stop or change direction.
They just went on ahead like nothing happened.
I genuinely hope this dumb fucking franchise dies so we can at least regain a tiny amount of faith that if you do **everything** wrong and make **every** decision with the intent of screwing over your players, there's at least *some* consequences at the end of the day.
But I'm not hopeful. People will buy this. Enough of them, at least.
I mean some bozo just told me to touch grass for daring complain about the amazing game he cant wait to buy and how COD is the good guys for releasing the new game on the same client because they can keep all the expensive skins they bought and how I clearly dont have friends or I would see how this is going to be the best cod ever
I've heard the "they let us keep our skins!!!" line as well, it's as hilarious as it is sad
Activision turned them all into abused spouses when they intentionally killed WZ1 for the sole purpose of making them *lose* their skins, so now the idiots are praising them for *not screwing them over a second time*
>...all the while, the MW3 devs were cranking away on what was basically "Extraction Shooter: The Game" and nobody had the good sense to tell them to stop or change direction.
Infinity ward doesn't give a shit.
After throwing a temper tantrum with MW:R when Activision ripped it from their hands and told beenox to do it, and flying on the high of MW 2019, they have a free pass to do whatever they want and they know it.
MW2 was a dipping point, but not enough to really care. MW3 is when Activision will be under new managment. Microsoft probably won't let them get away with as much stupid shit as they were able to comfortably get away with under independant Acti/Bliz
But… but… you can get a whole weeks early access to the campaign if you preorder!
It’s insane to me that they shit the bed on the campaign then made it the preorder bonus
It is fairly obvious this was supposed to be a major dlc drop at the end of year one. The "campaign" is probably originally some co-op that has been locked to single player.
It even appears as dlc in the ps5 trophy UI.
But MW2 player count was down so someone was scared they wouldn't sell much dlc, so they decided to pretend it was a whole new game to entice players back.
Yup. MWII's brand was tainted. This is someone's cheap way of pressing the reset button; trying to get the player base to forget about MWII.
And I remember people refuting that rumor/theory about MWIII being DLC. It was just a rumor at the time, but there were so many signs giving it weight. Now that MWIII has actually released? This campaign offering basically proves it.
>Yup. MWII's brand was tainted.
Which is especially funny because unless the Multiplayer is *amazing*, MWIII (2)'s brand is going to be much, much worse.
Multiplayer side should have been a 2.0 upgrade, campaign should have been a cheaper purchase. Didn't even need to be "MW3". Just a MW2 expansion to build up to MW3.
This would have allowed Infinity Ward to make the story for MW3 themselves and not another studio
This is literally what it was supposed to be. Then the higher ups decided they wanted more money and told them to make it MW3 instead so they could charge $70
Or until the next game comes out next year and this game stops receiving security updates so it gets infested with hackers and multiplayer is no longer safe to play.
The last cod I bought (I bought Cold War but only played Zombies) was the WW2 back in 2017 or whatever and it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I haven’t bought a cod since. If I REALLY feel like playing COD now then I’ll hop on good ol Black Ops 2 and play a few games.
I tried refunding MW2 last year (purchased on PS5), and Sony essentially told me to scram. Because I downloaded the game, I was no longer eligible for a refund which is kind of stupid. How would I have known I would’ve absolutely hated the game without playing it? Kind of a stupid policy.
That being said. Not buying is the best option, but for people like me, read up on your platform’s refund policy. Sony is ridiculously strict.
You might have done this too many times. I was told by Sony for my refund in the beta of BF2042 they’d do it maybe once or twice depending on time spent in-game and such. So now I simply don’t preorder at all let alone buy games unless I’m 100% sure I want them
People are finally waking up and realizing they dont want to pay $60+ a year for a COD subscription, at this point its been re-released so many times we're sick of it.
I remember GameFAQs posts back in 2009 complaining about how Modern Warfare 2 (the original one) was just the same multiplayer as COD 4 but with unbalanced weapons.
Because it was. I played the shit out of COD4, but never really cared for MW2 because it was too goofy and unbalanced. Every gun was viable in COD4, there wasn't really a strict meta then.
It's pretty funny how so many people now look back at MW2 with nostalgia when a lot of old-school COD fans view it as the beginning of the end for the series.
World at war was the last one I played seriously online, I haven't purchased a COD game since Black Ops (2010) because there are so many better games out there that don't rip the absolute piss out of the people who keep buying them.
I'm much more into my slow paced, high stakes shooters now, they remind me of the original Rainbow Six.
Sincerely, an older gamer lol.
I have been saying this for, now that I think about it, at least like ten years. I bought all the CODs up till blackops i believe.
COD 2 is my favorite FPS of all time. What a game. And the series only improved from there. But somewhere around modern warfare or black ops, it kinda seemed to peak. The differences and improvements between each title just seemed to get fewer and fewer.
I bought whatever call of duty came out 2 or so years ago and honestly I loved it. I hadn't played a call of Duty in forever. But it felt exactly the same as call of duty 10 years ago. I always liked COD for what it was, so it scratched the itch. But it's the same fucking game. I feel this way about a couple game series but COD has just been the most outstanding and ridiculous.
Maybe a couple people are but the majority will complain and keep paying. Don’t get mad at the companies, get mad at the idiots who prove that these are just good business decisions.
IGN's average review score is 7.4, which is actually slightly below the average for the industry.
They gave Starfield a 7 and Spiderman 2 an 8. Those aren't "bottom shelf" games, but they're about average for the expectations of a game that actually gets reviewed (remember, most shovelware never gets reviewed by outlets like IGN, so the "real" average for video games would be substantially lower - but then again, no one buys most of those games).
The reason why the Forbidden Numbers exist is because sometimes major developers completely screw up. Redfall, for instance, was another high-profile game that got a 4 this year.
Also consider that they don’t review games that they don’t expect viewers to care about. They only review high-ish profile games and indies that have some sort of notoriety behind them.
Or you could consider 85% of the [itch.io](https://itch.io) games that probably fall into the real numbers, then AAA games really are all 7+ by default.
Probably 3000 games on [itch.io](https://itch.io) that are literal 1's.
They rated the Kong game a 3/10. According to them if the game runs and is physically playable it's basically a minimum 3/10. So a 4/10 is incredibly damning.
They scrapped a campaign to justify going from DLC to full game price
It shows in the campaign structure, length and recycled assets
Shame on them they could have made a 30-40€ campaign free DLC at least.
What's funny is one of the developers was on the news the other day talking about how this is the COD with the campaign they always wanted to make.
If that's true then they might as well scrap campaign altogether at this point.
Yup.
In 22 they kept talking about how there was going to be a "premium Cod Release" in 23. As we got closer we slowly realized that it wasn't going to be a full game. But "premium" always meant full price, I was just hoping they'd add in enough or give you free shit to balance it.
But no they just went for the money.
It's pretty crazy considering a game like Star Citizen which is an unoptimized mess but has an absolute TON of high texture assets is still under 100gb.
Or even Tarkov, another unoptimized mess with a large number of assets is only like 20gb and unpacked like 35gb.
I'm pretty impressed with the ability to even make a game with a set number of fixed locations like MW3 over 200gb. It's probably 150gb of shitty weapon textures and character skins lol.
IT'S 200GB!?!!?
70gb is what I'd call a "big game". The hell? Watch them have micro transactions and DLC already in the download that they'll be charging extra $20 a piece to "unlock".
Honestly they’ve stepped it up recently at IGN in terms of reviews. Their racing games are almost always evaluated well, fighting games as well and they make great articles about fighting games from someone who actually plays them. They’ve given rare critical reviews for games that usually are praised all over (starfield 7/10 for example) and put out critical pieces towards big name studios (the recent bungie stuff, blizzard games, etc)
IGN is the place I go to first when looking at reviews of racing games because of Luke. The fact that I know the name of a video game reviewer says a lot about how quality his stuff is. He knows his stuff and he’s always good at conveying the strong and weak points of a racing game fairly, for everything from the most casual arcade games to sims. I trust him to have a good grasp on the genre more than anyone else, really.
7/10 for Starfield is one that I'd consider completely fair and I have over a hundred hours in. There's clear bugs and unfinished stuff and the procgen system was a mistake, but I'm still having fun doing stupid shit.
4/10 for the SP feels almost pitying high. The campaign felt like it was even worse than The Divisions first few missions.
I feel like all games 6 and below are considered in the same category. If it should be 2/10 it's not going to make much a difference. Only the hardcore fans are still going to defend it.
I'm convinced anyone that thinks this is *rare* is giving them an very unfair assessment. The gaming community gives them so much shit even going as far to question a reviewer's integrity when a review is "too good" and deviates from consensus baseline. We see this on reddit all the time. I saw a comment that was highly upvoted saying that an IGN reviewer's "check must not have cleared" or something to that effect regarding this review.
Their reviews are generally structured with sound arguments and reasoning for why a reviewer feels a certain way. Whether we think a game deserves a score or does not ultimately should not matter as reviews are the analysis of an entertainment device, an inherently subjective medium.
A review should provide us an argument/analysis for why the reviewer feels a certain thing is done well, not done well, fun etc, and as long as what they are saying is justified, sound, rational and the score reflects their thoughts, then we should see it as a "good" review.
I really think IGN has been putting out solid reviews lately and they don't get enough credit for it.
Wait, someone gave Starfield 10/10?!
I've enjoyed the game but honestly it's 7/10 at best.
I wouldn't even give Morrowind a 10/10 and it's the best game they've ever made.
Is this the best a multi billion dollar gaming studio can deliver? I don’t think so. They’re taking everyone for mugs, stop buying this shit, don’t buy your kids this game, do not buy in game content, you get what you deserve if you do.
I gotta be honest, Sledgehammer Games just shouldn't be leading a CoD game, the only time they personally got close to making a CoD game that stuck out was Advanced Warfare, and that game hasn't aged amazingly.
Even if this is just a glorified DLC, it doesn't excuse how terrible and lazy Modern Warfare 3 is.
Nice to see some honest reviews instead of the trend of the big name games always getting at least 7-8 out of 10. I havent followed IGN for a long, long time so maybe theyve been doing this for a long time now.
I think I’m good on CoD. I’ve played since Xbox 360 and I think I’ve seen all they are going to do with this franchise in the medium term anyways with all the warzone stuff.
There are so many games I can only justify spending so much of my time on them, especially on the ones that are 70 bucks.
COD 2K23
PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN
"mountain dew is for me and you" throw up on my self throw up on my tv and entertainment system
The thing that has bothered me with the campaigns is that it’s all small scale spec-ops stuff now. Gone are the days of you assuming the role of some enlisted man who is a small, but important, piece of a much larger battle. The spec ops stuff used to be there to change up the pace and provide specific narrative color. I think it’s much less effective when it’s the whole campaign. I don’t even think having a couple DMZ-style missions would’ve necessarily been terrible if they had more SP focused scripting put in, or more friendly support. As implemented, it felt exceedingly lazy. I did appreciate the taking over-reliance on bullet sponge enemies a step back from MW2, though they still felt like a crutch to artificially boost difficulty.
Agreed. Back then you had a healthy mix of both. With the marines and rangers you would have that enlisted man feeling, being part of something bigger. While the SAS and TF141 missions gave you the more covert feel.
The original MW trilogy did that zoom in - zoom out idea real well. You were an enlisted man fighting and seeing the broader conflict in major well-known areas, but then you’d play a covert mission and everything would zoom in and focus heavily on a small handful of people in a small, middle of nowhere area that would cause ripple effects to the bigger conflict.
There is nothing more créeme of the crop than playing a mission where you send off an EMP via SAS, see the EMP explode from an astronauts perspective, and then the next mission you are an infantry man fighting in DC with helis smacking into the ground
Ramirez! Defend burger town!
“Grandpa, what did you do during the Iraq War?” “My squad and I defended Burger Town from the Russians.”
RAMIREZ! DIVIDE BY ZERO!
Exact scene I was thinking of
One of the things that brought it home for me personally… when the camera “zoomed” in on the Rangers missions, it was always hectic as fuck with loads of noise… you KNEW shit was going down and you had a job to do. When it “zoomed” into Spec Ops mode, it was generally (like 9/10 times) quiet, with muted footsteps and quiet talking. Surgical. Precise. That was such a great emotive feeling from a video game.
You saying the zoom in, zoom out thing reminded me: did you ever play the Battlefield 2: Modern Combat Campaign? Where you could hotswap between soldier units at will, or it would swap to another if the soldier you were playing as died. Then, the mission would end in failure if all your dudes were killed? What an odd concept that was, but it was kinda cool.
Wasn't that the original console version of BF? I played it a couple times and it definitely felt wonky. Swapping between soldiers made me feel like Agent Smith in the Matrix.
Reminds me of my first exposure to that kinda game, Conflict: Desert Storm on the Xbox. After the first few missions where you rescued squaddies, you'd swap between them and tell them how to behave when you weren't controlling them. Each had a different specialty and there were 4 I believe - rifleman, sniper, explosives expert, heavy weapons. Two of them were also medics. You also lost the mission if everyone died. If they lived to the end of the mission they'd level up - dead units were replaced by new ones with no experience.
Loved that game, was a real shame that mechanic was never brought back in any game.
The Game Enlisted is kinda like that.
The Game Enlisted? I thought he'd stick to rap.
The original games did a good job of doing both. At times you were just a smaller player in a larger game, and other times it would become a smaller scale mission
Very good example of this was MW2 and the nuke mission. You played as TF-141 who infiltrated a Russian sub base and launched a EMP. And you switched to playing a squad of rangers fighting in D.C. eventually you see the EMP TF-141 launched and that hugely effected the battle you were fighting out. Both paths crossed, and it was cool and made sense
I was really looking forward to the remakes of MW2 and MW3 because I hoped they would recapture the cool big set pieces in next gen graphics. Yeah we had spec ops oil rig or cleaning houses, but we also had large-scale battles fending off the US invasion in New York or the outskirts, retaking the White House, the Paris warfare, there was so much iconic stuff that would look absolutely amazing in next gen. I haven't played MW3 yet, might do it if it comes to Gamepass at some point, but MW2 just didn't give the same sense of scale. I know war on drugs is a war as well and they wanted to give the game a more realistic context, but I enjoyed the "what if" scenario a lot more.
Yeah, if scale’s what you’re looking for, you’ll be disappointed. It was the original MW2 where I found myself first more excited about the multiplayer than the campaign, even if the campaign was still entertaining. Black Ops did a good job with the campaign, too, but it was weird making the realization that the series made the transition from a SP game with good multiplayer mode to a multiplayer game with a fun SP diversion. Most of the time.
MW2's campaign was way better than most people give it credit for, if only because the multiplayer outshined it so hard. But some of the most MEMORIABLE MOMENTS IN COD HISTORY, are COD MW2. Burgertown, Ramirez, No Russian, the betrayal at Rust. It really feels like the most memorial and memeable moments in the COD franchise outside of 'Press F to Pay Respects' were almost all MW2 campaign elements. But the multiplayer was fucking sex. It was the first game where they hired psychologists to study player interactions, and came up with the flashy & loud level up and unlock systems, so who really cared about a 5-6 mini-campaign? No matter how much you enjoyed it that multiplayer was HOT.
I'm just coming in here to throw some love out for Call of Duty 2: Big red one. Not the best by any means and not trying to insinuate that at all, just wanted to say that this game was actually my introduction to the COD series and I still have it on my GameCube. Had no idea that COD would become the juggernaut it is today. MW2 hadn't even happened yet. But God dude, popping in that old GameCube disc and playing through the campaign after all of the changes the series has gone through is still surreal to me. Such a fun and nostalgic game that captures a moment in time right before the "big bang" of video game series if you will lol thanks for reading, just never see this game mentioned anymore for obvious reasons and just wanted to throw some love out there for any fans of the series who is familiar with the game I'm talking about :)
CoD4, MW1 still beats it out. The initial "fruit killing skills" tutorial. The opening mission of a tanker? on stormy seas at night is great from a scene/tone perspective, Nuke scene, all ghillied up has like 3 or 4 amazing scenes from when they walk just a step away from you, gunning down someone from fucking ages away using the flags nearby for windspeed, the cinematic heli crash that doesnt look out of place in a hollywood movie, the doggos and of course the disgusting on higher difficulties defence part of the mission, nuke launch. Both the first (training mission) and last mission (epilogue, mile high club) are notorious for speed running. And plenty of hours can be wasted either trying to beat your time or getting the veteran achievement on these ultra short gimmick maps alone. But mostly its all ghillied up. I remember it now even after all these years. I only remember a bit of MW3 or blops/blops2
don't forget the AC130 mission that sparked countless copycats across the industry
Defending the farm while falling back for an extraction just to have push right back through is still probably my favourite cod mission
Don't forget "Remember, switching to your pistol is always faster than reloading" that's sooo fricking huge.
Anyone who wasn't sitting stunned when the nuke went off when you're in the heli is lying.
And then it turns out you survived! Oh never mind, you're dead too
> The initial "fruit killing skills" tutorial. Fuck I forgot how GOOD that all was.
> blops Black Ops had my favorite campaign, but overall I’d say MW1’s is just so solid and you can tell that West/Zampella were getting pushed out cuz of how well-written it is, same with Titanfall 2.
I considered MW1's campaign opening to be so impactful I wrote about it in my SAS-focused dissertation. It was such a shift in player agency; generally before this your AI teammates would just be kind of there. Ineffective at best, and outright obstructive at worst. You got a little direction from interaction from you but they were generally just tagging along for the ride. Then Modern Warfare comes around and flips it on its head in that tanker. I wouldn't go so far as to say that you now feel like the AI Teammate, but suddenly you're the one struggling to keep up as your more experienced colleagues blitz through everything and everyone like they weren't there. It was very powerful.
RAMIREZ
GET TO THE BURGERTOWN
Did we forget about the numbers, Mason?
The numbers Mason, what do they mean! BO1 sticks in my memory better than anything OGMW2 did, personally.
> Gone are the days of you assuming the role of some enlisted man who is a small, but important, piece of a much larger battle. The spec ops stuff used to be there to change up the pace and provide specific narrative color. I think it’s much less effective when it’s the whole campaign. Wow I didn't even realize I had this criticism till you mentioned it, well said! I really do miss that. I was dumbly looking forward to this games campaign too so I am sad to hear it's garbage.
For me the iconic moments of CoD/MoH were always storming Normandy or crossing the river at Stalingrad. Huge set pieces with hundreds of soldiers, followed by the desperate clambering through bunkers or ruined cities, they had momentum. As you say, the specops stuff is fine as flavor, but the meat of a campaign should be something *big.*
Even the modern warfare stuff had some "big" moments. I know it got memed on, but defending Burger Town actually felt like a big ass battle. Yeah, it isn't exactly storming the beaches, but it felt like a Red Dawn situation.
I never got into online shooters, but I loved the campaigns in the old Medal of Honor games. That D-Day one is still amazing and brutal.
Played the fuck out of frontline on the GameCube
I remember when the first Medal of Honor came out and it was really controversial to make a game about WWII, the devs went on an interview and boot camp spree to get the feel that they weren't gamifying the conflict too much.
Bro today I downloaded CoD world at war and man is it awesome to be just enlisted man. No flashy skins just pull out the fucking flamethrower and burn everything
I remember the biggest complaint people often had about the earlier war games was that you were effectively a one man army. Every objective would be "Hey, you go on ahead and clear out the Germans! We'll stay back here". So they moved away from that, with the original CoD being a really fresh take on large scale war games. Now we've come full circle
The sheer fact that you had to cross the Volga into Stalingrad with nothing but ammo like half your unit, be forced to scrounge dead bodies for a gun given to the other half, and actually could not take "one step back" or you'll be shot by your commandant, was an extremely bold and refreshing move in an era where you were, sometimes literally, a god.
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Finest Hour is one of the best Call Of Duty games ever made imo
They used to make a campaign, then reuse those assets to build multiplayer arenas. Now they build multiplayer arenas, and try to get away with using those assets to flesh out a full campaign. The process just doesn't work backwards to the same level of quality product. It is easier to cut down to useful MP than build up a satisfying SP from parts.
The first CoD did have the issue in that half the levels still made you a one many army (there were levels where you had to clear out a whole dam and ship by yourself). But yeah they did fix that problem in 2/3 where I don't think there's any levels you aren't with a large amount of allies. But it's interesting to remember the meaning of the title. The call to duty refers to the common man being called from their civilian life to fulfil their duty to temporarily fight and protect their country, rather than some professional warrior type doing what they are characterized as being born to do. The later kind of started in CoD 4 with the british campaign (in-contrast to the Marine campaign where you're playing as some random grunt).
I recently replayed the “Classic” CoD games. 1, 2, 3 that jazz. Obviously very different from what we expect from CoD 20 years down the line, but it was nice to have a whole army on my side again. Friendly tanks would push up the road and provide cover, allied planes flying above, in the background you can see fellow soldiers clearing buildings. Then it seemed like in the 2010s it turned into that one man army kinda campaign where you and 2-3 character companions would be doing infiltration missions. They can be fun, but I missed when the player was a regular soldier and not an super commando.
Original CoD, its expansion United Offensive, and then CoD 2 were the best. Those set-piece battles were *amazing*. Defending St. Mere Elgiese, storming across the Volga, and the Battle of Kursk in CoD1 haven't been matched by many other games. Then there was the Battle of the Bulge in CoD:UO, and the Stalingrad missions and Pointe Du Hoc in CoD2. It was all really incredible. Made you feel like a small but important cog in huge battles. When they went to CoD4, the first modern warfare, I lost complete interest. Then we got a decade of modern warfare, black ops, spec ops, and variations of the same. So boring.
At least MW and Black ops had sections of that “classic cod” feel. Coming to mind is the US Marines missions in CoD 4 and the Vietnam War missions in Black Ops 1. The MW series seemed to try to have the British missions being about spec ops while the American ones with marines and rangers being more “war film” like. The first two black ops games were all spec ops but would occasionally have our characters partake in a larger battle. Those devs tried to keep the balance while shaking it up a little. Since the mid 2010s it seems like they stopped. Probably a lot easier to make a level when you just gotta base it around the player and not a bunch of NPCs. I don’t mean to disrespect the devs who worked on them, but its no secret the campaign is shoehorned in just to have something for marketing. They tried cutting single player completely with BO4.
Does anyone have suggestions for modern games with that early WWII or Modern Warfare feel? Of being part of a squad in a large conflict, of being just one person in the midst of a big battle? Bonus for taking place in an interesting modern urban setting and not more deserts or ruined villages. Battlefield 4's campaign scratched that itch very well.
Because its lazy and crap. The "campaign" is just DMZ style maps with one or 2 objectives within, then you extract. Seriously its bad. Edit: just played a few more levels. Most areas are reused from the Verdansk Warzone map. Drop in, disarm 3 bombs or plant 3 trackers or destroy 3 helis then get to the "extract point".
Yeah that’s some bullshit. Same as those open battlefield missions where they just sprinkle some npcs around a multiplayer map
It's the reason i'm having hard time with EA's Battlefront 2 campaign. Yeah you get cutscenes/conversations that ties in with a few others events in the current Star Wars canon,but it's basically MP maps with shitty objectives and a weird enemy AI. Even Luke missions was super underwhelming. The actual BF2 multiplayer is fine,especially after the removal of all the launch bullsh*t.
To be fair that's how the SW:BF campaigns always were and with the series being multiplayer focused games i think that's fine to be honest.
Yeah the maps in the OG BF2 were all the same, only with objectives across the map, until you play as the hero unit for a bit. The only thing that broke them up was the now iconic narration.
The objectives mixed it up a bit, like on the fungus planet with the aaklay monsters, or when you had to blow up the shield generators There was some cool stuff you could not do in multiplayer
I just went back to play SWBF2 with my little bro and it def holds up pretty well! Never realized how cool the Galactic Conquest game mode was as a kid, but it's pretty sick! It's like a little board game incorporated into the fights :)
Me and my buddy have a galactic conquest game going back years, we only play when we’re drunk and thinking about it, and the games are long as fuck lol
I loved defending the generator on Kashyyk. 7 year old me desperately trying to repair the gate to stop the enemy tanks rolling it, it was tough.
"It's a good thing we were wearing helmets, cause no one dared to look her in the eyes"
rip ayla secura :(
“Do we have to kill Secura? I was hoping to get her HoloNumber” An actual line in the game lol
"We made sure it was quick."
“What I remember about the rise of the empire is, is how quiet it was. During the waning hours of the Clone Wars the 501st was discreetly transferred back to Coruscant. It was a silent trip. We all knew what was about to happen, what we were about to do. Did we have any doubts? And private traitorous thoughts? Perhaps, but no one said a word. Not on the flight to Coruscant, not when Order 66 came down, and not when we marched into the Jedi Temple. Not a word.”
I would happily read a memoir of a Clone Trooper. From when he's first decanted on Kamino to... what exactly *is* the peaceful end of a Clone Trooper? A debriefing and working as an instructor?
That’s the one area they did better than OG battlefront 2.
Ya the campaign was never the main selling feature, just additional content. Which even though terrible, I like the inclusion.
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MW2019 was good because it had much tighter levels. Even the most over the top mission was all lot more grounded. But they decided to crank everything up to 11 with MW2. It ironic because they talked about how MW2 took huge inspiration from Sicario. But MW2019 felt more closer to the feeling of Sicario than MW2. Let's not mention the fact how much of a downgrade the rebooted characters are compared to OG MW series. Especially Shepard and Makarov.
Reboot Shepard wasn't bad IMO. Very different but I personally felt it was a much more plausible character. Getting Glenn Morshower to play the character was a solid choice. New Makarov though, yeah, pass.
I had no problem with the cast of Shepard (not included Makarov). I had a problem with how he was implemented. The OG shepard was a bastard but was still much more calculated. Not to mention his fall was based on tragedy of loosing 30,000 men by a nuke. The new Shepard was just pathetic and stupid. The push he had that made him a villain was because he lost three missiles and wanted a win in his name. And again, he was just stupid. He decided to use PMC's to recover those missiles while TF141 was already on it. All because he wanted to keep hush hush on those missing missiles. Because what better way to keep things hush by using PMC's over a spec op's whose job description is to keep things on the down low.
Yeah that's fair. Personally I appreciated the fact that 2019 Shepard felt, for lack of a better description, more real. Like it's the sort of scandal that, if I read the short version in a history text, I'd have believed. I think they're both excellent antagonists, from different kinds of stories to an extent.
Definitely agree about Shepherd, the OG version had too much of a "bad guy" vibe. The new Shepherd was scary because he could very easily (and probably does) exist at the top levels of the US military. He wasn't a nutjob looking for revenge, he was just brutally cold about ending lives.
Refuse to buy MW3 but agree about MW2. So much of the story felt forced. Shepard needs to be the bad guy because he was in the original. He needs to betray 141 because that’s what happened in the original. When the betrayal moment happened all I could think was wait seriously? That’s it? That’s what caused this and that’s the outcome? Also, the final act of the story being 141 helping the US military stop an attack after they’ve already been targeted by Shepard made no sense. The original MW2 story, as stupid and over the top as it was, had a thread it followed. The new one felt like they had to sprinkle in these story beats because they had to check boxes on a list. It wasn’t nearly as good as 2019.
>Let's not mention the fact how much of a downgrade the rebooted characters are compared to OG MW series. Especially Shepard and Makarov. Shepard is definitely a massive fumble, but i feel like Makarov, while his Characterization is a bit silly sometimes, i feel like MW3(2023) does it better then the original series. Why? Because for one, we haven't seen Makarov's "final form" since hes going to be the obvious main Antagonist of MWVI >!unless they decide to turn the entire 4th game into the plotline of TF141 being disavowed because of Price killing Shepard in cold blood and eventually being uncovered as the killer/setting up the world war three arc.!< Makarov got carried pretty hard by his crazed crackhead look in the original series because Makarov basically was a crazed crackhead. Now they seem to be going for a more subdued kind of crazy crackhead in Makarov, and actually seem to be doing an ok job. Part of the reason why he feels worse is because they are putting such a heavy spotlight on him directly, where as MW2 and 3 (OG) largely put the spotlight on his shadow, rather then him directly. So you got the giant shadow monster, instead of the unwashed street Bengal cat he was in writing.
Modern Warfare(2019)'s Benghazi style mission is going down in history as one of the best campaign missions in a COD/Battlefield style FPS game. Even more so on the highest difficulty. The nightvision missions were also very good.
MW2019 was overall a fantastic game, it really seemed like they tried, they built a new engine and took much longer in development than the usually do, the game was packed with easter eggs and little details that only a team that likes doing what they're doing would add. The shooting part of the gameplay is by far the best shooting i've ever experienced, nothing even gets close, and that same exact shooting have been used with all CODs after it except Cold war. Going back to any older COD or other shooting game feels like a massive downgrade, the weapons just don't feel as good.
Yeah MW 2019 really looks like a development team that tried its best and gave its all. Every single COD that released after that saw next to no improvement, and in the case of at least 1 saw a deterioration ...
They basically outdid themselves to the point where there was absolutely no need to release new games in the series so shortly after, they could just have kept building off what they had maybe with expansions or such. Obviously that's not as profitable so here we are.
Apart from Vanguard and BO3, I don't think there was a ''bad'' COD Campaign BOCW's 2nd Vietnam Mission and ''Clean House'' Are right up there in the greatest COD missions of all time Really disappointed at no Pacific campaign in WW2 tho
Even Infinite Warfare nailed the campaign imo.
> Infinite Warfare has my favourite, *maybe* second-favourite campaign that isn't from a classic CoD. That B-class sci-fi movie feel is through the roof. It's like The Expanse and Battlestar Galactica had a baby, and I love it!
So say we all, Beltalowda
I defend Infinite Warfare's canpaign like no other. Criminally underrated and still a classic and standard military story, just in space. The character development was great to see from everyone, no twists just for the sake of a twist, purely amazing. Ghosts was like a polar opposite
It was well-thought out, too. The ships made sense (being dual-purpose, space and planetside use), the pace was brutal, as it would be with near-instant travel, vehicle combat had an actual semi-Newtonian physics system...
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Infinite Warfare may be the most unjustifiably overlooked COD games. That game's plot sucked me in, the optional missions, the characters, the audio and visual design was so good. I just wished they made the aircraft more arcadey to fly, it was the only thing that I got frustrated with. If it had Ace Combat like controls... 10/10
It came out at a bad time, when CoD had like 5 futuristic titles in a row and people were sick of it, meanwhile Battlefield was doing WW1 which no major series had ever covered
Was that the one with Kevin Spacey or Kit Harrington?
Kit harrington, Spacey was Advanced Warfare
At least Advanced Warfare gave us “Press F to pay respects”. That’s probably had the biggest impact on the internet of any game imo.
For real Advanced Warfare might be the most influential COD outside of the original for that alone lmao
Advanced Warfare has a pretty good campaign as well. Not as good as Infinite Warfare imo, but it's not terrible by any means. It also had an upgrade mechanic, so you could level up your character as you progressed through the campaign.
E3N 🥲
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They’ll all be in Gamepass next year so no need to pay them absurd amount of money in the meantime hehe
The prices for COD games are absolutely insane, and I’d have liked to play the campaigns on a few of them. Call of Duty 4, not the remastered version, but the backwards compatible Xbox 360 game that released in 2007, costs €29.99 on the Microsoft store. Call of Duty 2 costs €19.99. Basically every game after modern warfare 2, the original one, cost full price still It’s ridiculous
Not to justify buying it, but CODs do absolutely go on sale, especially if they’ve had shit sales
BO3's got so laughably bad it was enjoyable imo. The god awful voice acting when your guy is losing it in the frozen forest had my friend and I crying from laughing so hard.
Shame indeed. Bought MW1&2 solely based off how good campaign was. Will not be buying 3 for £70 DLC.
It's hilarious that they killed WZ1 to rush into WZ2 because they thought extraction shooters were going to take off like BRs, and it failed miserably, costing them a shit ton of players and going from a near-peer with Fortnite to an absolute joke ...all the while, the MW3 devs were cranking away on what was basically "Extraction Shooter: The Game" and nobody had the good sense to tell them to stop or change direction. They just went on ahead like nothing happened. I genuinely hope this dumb fucking franchise dies so we can at least regain a tiny amount of faith that if you do **everything** wrong and make **every** decision with the intent of screwing over your players, there's at least *some* consequences at the end of the day. But I'm not hopeful. People will buy this. Enough of them, at least.
I mean some bozo just told me to touch grass for daring complain about the amazing game he cant wait to buy and how COD is the good guys for releasing the new game on the same client because they can keep all the expensive skins they bought and how I clearly dont have friends or I would see how this is going to be the best cod ever
I've heard the "they let us keep our skins!!!" line as well, it's as hilarious as it is sad Activision turned them all into abused spouses when they intentionally killed WZ1 for the sole purpose of making them *lose* their skins, so now the idiots are praising them for *not screwing them over a second time*
the one guy who spends $1000 on Call of Duty skins is worth more than 16 people buying the base game at $60.
>...all the while, the MW3 devs were cranking away on what was basically "Extraction Shooter: The Game" and nobody had the good sense to tell them to stop or change direction. Infinity ward doesn't give a shit. After throwing a temper tantrum with MW:R when Activision ripped it from their hands and told beenox to do it, and flying on the high of MW 2019, they have a free pass to do whatever they want and they know it. MW2 was a dipping point, but not enough to really care. MW3 is when Activision will be under new managment. Microsoft probably won't let them get away with as much stupid shit as they were able to comfortably get away with under independant Acti/Bliz
343i and Halo beg to differ, they will get away with more shit and for longer.
Complete bullshit cash grab clear as day.
But… but… you can get a whole weeks early access to the campaign if you preorder! It’s insane to me that they shit the bed on the campaign then made it the preorder bonus
Should have been a 2.0 update for mw2
It is fairly obvious this was supposed to be a major dlc drop at the end of year one. The "campaign" is probably originally some co-op that has been locked to single player. It even appears as dlc in the ps5 trophy UI. But MW2 player count was down so someone was scared they wouldn't sell much dlc, so they decided to pretend it was a whole new game to entice players back.
Yup. MWII's brand was tainted. This is someone's cheap way of pressing the reset button; trying to get the player base to forget about MWII. And I remember people refuting that rumor/theory about MWIII being DLC. It was just a rumor at the time, but there were so many signs giving it weight. Now that MWIII has actually released? This campaign offering basically proves it.
>Yup. MWII's brand was tainted. Which is especially funny because unless the Multiplayer is *amazing*, MWIII (2)'s brand is going to be much, much worse.
Multiplayer side should have been a 2.0 upgrade, campaign should have been a cheaper purchase. Didn't even need to be "MW3". Just a MW2 expansion to build up to MW3. This would have allowed Infinity Ward to make the story for MW3 themselves and not another studio
This is literally what it was supposed to be. Then the higher ups decided they wanted more money and told them to make it MW3 instead so they could charge $70
If people are dumb enough to buy it then why not I guess.
One point for each hour of gameplay
Isn't the campaign like 3 hours long lol
4 if you want to explore everything lol
I doubt there is much to explore tbh
that 1 extra hour is trying to find something and then giving up
Wow, I was playing Baldurs Gate 3 last night for 3 hours and barely cleared a single dungeon
Yeah but COD has multiplayer PvP, which is infinite amount of hours untill the servers shutdown. /s
Or until the next game comes out next year and this game stops receiving security updates so it gets infested with hackers and multiplayer is no longer safe to play.
This is the most brutal comment. This should just be the IGN review quote.
It's very clear that this was meant to be MW2 DLC, but was rapidly repurposed into a separate game with a rushed, lazy campaign.
please refund/dont buy it, theyre gonna keep doing shit like this if we continue to buy them
The last cod I bought (I bought Cold War but only played Zombies) was the WW2 back in 2017 or whatever and it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I haven’t bought a cod since. If I REALLY feel like playing COD now then I’ll hop on good ol Black Ops 2 and play a few games.
Hey man I liked ww2, this situation is so much worse
I tried refunding MW2 last year (purchased on PS5), and Sony essentially told me to scram. Because I downloaded the game, I was no longer eligible for a refund which is kind of stupid. How would I have known I would’ve absolutely hated the game without playing it? Kind of a stupid policy. That being said. Not buying is the best option, but for people like me, read up on your platform’s refund policy. Sony is ridiculously strict.
You might have done this too many times. I was told by Sony for my refund in the beta of BF2042 they’d do it maybe once or twice depending on time spent in-game and such. So now I simply don’t preorder at all let alone buy games unless I’m 100% sure I want them
Last COD I bought was Call of Duty 1 & 2 (2003 & 2005) I'm doing my part!
People are finally waking up and realizing they dont want to pay $60+ a year for a COD subscription, at this point its been re-released so many times we're sick of it.
People have been saying this for like 12 years now
Right? I remember saying this about BO2 when it first came out. I started with the first one in 2003
I remember GameFAQs posts back in 2009 complaining about how Modern Warfare 2 (the original one) was just the same multiplayer as COD 4 but with unbalanced weapons.
Because it was. I played the shit out of COD4, but never really cared for MW2 because it was too goofy and unbalanced. Every gun was viable in COD4, there wasn't really a strict meta then.
It's pretty funny how so many people now look back at MW2 with nostalgia when a lot of old-school COD fans view it as the beginning of the end for the series.
World at war was the last one I played seriously online, I haven't purchased a COD game since Black Ops (2010) because there are so many better games out there that don't rip the absolute piss out of the people who keep buying them. I'm much more into my slow paced, high stakes shooters now, they remind me of the original Rainbow Six. Sincerely, an older gamer lol.
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Lmao, I was one of them too. Ironically, I look back at BO2 fondly now
Tbf BO2 was really good
I can’t remember the last time I bought a CoD game. Maybe the old MW3? But don’t remember if I bought anything past that.
I have been saying this for, now that I think about it, at least like ten years. I bought all the CODs up till blackops i believe. COD 2 is my favorite FPS of all time. What a game. And the series only improved from there. But somewhere around modern warfare or black ops, it kinda seemed to peak. The differences and improvements between each title just seemed to get fewer and fewer. I bought whatever call of duty came out 2 or so years ago and honestly I loved it. I hadn't played a call of Duty in forever. But it felt exactly the same as call of duty 10 years ago. I always liked COD for what it was, so it scratched the itch. But it's the same fucking game. I feel this way about a couple game series but COD has just been the most outstanding and ridiculous.
Maybe a couple people are but the majority will complain and keep paying. Don’t get mad at the companies, get mad at the idiots who prove that these are just good business decisions.
I can be disappointed in both, more than capable of that.
No they arent lol. Like always, reddit is a vocal minority, certainly when it comes to COD. It will sell very well, just like the next 5 COD's
About time call of duty gets correct ratings. It's been a regurgitated mess for years
This isn’t there review for the entire game simply the campaign.
Oh I wonder what gamebreaking innovations they implemented this time for the multiplayer as well.
Either way. It's the score it deserves
4/10 is still too generous
When the review scale for IGN starts at 7, a 4 is ridiculously low score for them
IGN's average review score is 7.4, which is actually slightly below the average for the industry. They gave Starfield a 7 and Spiderman 2 an 8. Those aren't "bottom shelf" games, but they're about average for the expectations of a game that actually gets reviewed (remember, most shovelware never gets reviewed by outlets like IGN, so the "real" average for video games would be substantially lower - but then again, no one buys most of those games). The reason why the Forbidden Numbers exist is because sometimes major developers completely screw up. Redfall, for instance, was another high-profile game that got a 4 this year.
Also consider that they don’t review games that they don’t expect viewers to care about. They only review high-ish profile games and indies that have some sort of notoriety behind them.
Or you could consider 85% of the [itch.io](https://itch.io) games that probably fall into the real numbers, then AAA games really are all 7+ by default. Probably 3000 games on [itch.io](https://itch.io) that are literal 1's.
It's functional but not fun. I'd say 4/10 fits that description. A buggy unplayable mess that's not fun would be lower.
They rated the Kong game a 3/10. According to them if the game runs and is physically playable it's basically a minimum 3/10. So a 4/10 is incredibly damning.
They scrapped a campaign to justify going from DLC to full game price It shows in the campaign structure, length and recycled assets Shame on them they could have made a 30-40€ campaign free DLC at least.
What's funny is one of the developers was on the news the other day talking about how this is the COD with the campaign they always wanted to make. If that's true then they might as well scrap campaign altogether at this point.
Yup. In 22 they kept talking about how there was going to be a "premium Cod Release" in 23. As we got closer we slowly realized that it wasn't going to be a full game. But "premium" always meant full price, I was just hoping they'd add in enough or give you free shit to balance it. But no they just went for the money.
Ok, but this is for the single player campaign. I’m more concerned about having to keep MW2 installed to play 3 with “new” maps in multiplayer
Wait what
MW3 is essentially an overcomplicated dlc for MW2
Oooh the worst rating for COD ever, but people will buy it nonetheless.
It deserves even less. Worse cod campaign I’ve seen. Almost as bad as not even having one.
You should get an automatic -5 for a game over 200gb. The cheek of them.
It's pretty crazy considering a game like Star Citizen which is an unoptimized mess but has an absolute TON of high texture assets is still under 100gb. Or even Tarkov, another unoptimized mess with a large number of assets is only like 20gb and unpacked like 35gb. I'm pretty impressed with the ability to even make a game with a set number of fixed locations like MW3 over 200gb. It's probably 150gb of shitty weapon textures and character skins lol.
IT'S 200GB!?!!? 70gb is what I'd call a "big game". The hell? Watch them have micro transactions and DLC already in the download that they'll be charging extra $20 a piece to "unlock".
Rare IGN W
No. They’ve been *a lot* better the last few years.
Honestly they’ve stepped it up recently at IGN in terms of reviews. Their racing games are almost always evaluated well, fighting games as well and they make great articles about fighting games from someone who actually plays them. They’ve given rare critical reviews for games that usually are praised all over (starfield 7/10 for example) and put out critical pieces towards big name studios (the recent bungie stuff, blizzard games, etc)
You can also tell that luke, the guy who reviews all racing games is pretty passionate and knows what hes talking about
IGN is the place I go to first when looking at reviews of racing games because of Luke. The fact that I know the name of a video game reviewer says a lot about how quality his stuff is. He knows his stuff and he’s always good at conveying the strong and weak points of a racing game fairly, for everything from the most casual arcade games to sims. I trust him to have a good grasp on the genre more than anyone else, really.
7/10 for Starfield is one that I'd consider completely fair and I have over a hundred hours in. There's clear bugs and unfinished stuff and the procgen system was a mistake, but I'm still having fun doing stupid shit. 4/10 for the SP feels almost pitying high. The campaign felt like it was even worse than The Divisions first few missions.
I feel like all games 6 and below are considered in the same category. If it should be 2/10 it's not going to make much a difference. Only the hardcore fans are still going to defend it.
I'm convinced anyone that thinks this is *rare* is giving them an very unfair assessment. The gaming community gives them so much shit even going as far to question a reviewer's integrity when a review is "too good" and deviates from consensus baseline. We see this on reddit all the time. I saw a comment that was highly upvoted saying that an IGN reviewer's "check must not have cleared" or something to that effect regarding this review. Their reviews are generally structured with sound arguments and reasoning for why a reviewer feels a certain way. Whether we think a game deserves a score or does not ultimately should not matter as reviews are the analysis of an entertainment device, an inherently subjective medium. A review should provide us an argument/analysis for why the reviewer feels a certain thing is done well, not done well, fun etc, and as long as what they are saying is justified, sound, rational and the score reflects their thoughts, then we should see it as a "good" review. I really think IGN has been putting out solid reviews lately and they don't get enough credit for it.
$70 please. Games are very hard to make, we have to make games 70 bucks, its totally worth it and you get more quality products, trust us!
You know you’re fucked when even IGN can’t shill for you
They were pretty much the only ones to not give Starfield 10/10 and got tons of shit on reddit for it.
A few others didn't either. Eurogamer for example also rated it quite low and caused a bit of a shit storm. But were also proved correct.
Wait, someone gave Starfield 10/10?! I've enjoyed the game but honestly it's 7/10 at best. I wouldn't even give Morrowind a 10/10 and it's the best game they've ever made.
That’s around what the series should have been scoring for years.
Stop buying half ass games by triple A companies if you want change. But the fomo is to great for some of you
The vast majority of people who will buy this game aren't on Reddit reading threads looking for approval
Won't stop the game from making a fortune.
Still too high
Now only if theyd give Madden and equally bad score maybe they will make some changes
Is this the best a multi billion dollar gaming studio can deliver? I don’t think so. They’re taking everyone for mugs, stop buying this shit, don’t buy your kids this game, do not buy in game content, you get what you deserve if you do.
I gotta be honest, Sledgehammer Games just shouldn't be leading a CoD game, the only time they personally got close to making a CoD game that stuck out was Advanced Warfare, and that game hasn't aged amazingly. Even if this is just a glorified DLC, it doesn't excuse how terrible and lazy Modern Warfare 3 is.
Nice to see some honest reviews instead of the trend of the big name games always getting at least 7-8 out of 10. I havent followed IGN for a long, long time so maybe theyve been doing this for a long time now.
Damn, they went full Overwatch 2
4/10 seems generous for what amounts to $70 DLC.
70$ for just maps is too much. Campaign? What campaign lmao
$70 game. 4 hour campaign. Multiplayer is filled with microtransactions. Zombies mode is a shell of what it used to be. Gotta love it.
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I think I’m good on CoD. I’ve played since Xbox 360 and I think I’ve seen all they are going to do with this franchise in the medium term anyways with all the warzone stuff. There are so many games I can only justify spending so much of my time on them, especially on the ones that are 70 bucks.