As I'm sure I'm not alone on this, I would like to say I'm a bit leery about impending release of Call of Duty 5. Of the Call of Duty series, I've only played Call of Duty 1, 2, 3, and 4, but I've never played any of the side-story things that they did such as Finest Hour or Big Red One. Of the ones I have played, I can safely say that 3 was the one that perhaps didn't feel right in the canon.
The first in the series was an impressive effort for visceral cinematic gaming, and while it didn't feel like you were in war, it felt like you were in a war movie, which is probably the more preferable of either sensation. The second kicked it up a notch on next generation consoles and was still reminiscent of the excitement of the first, with fairly good multiplayer system for the Xbox 360, perhaps one of the earliest MP games relased for Live on the 360. Three I received as a gift for Christmas, presumably because I asked for it, and playing it didn't quite have that same feel as the first two. The campaign lacked that balance of drama and action that I think the first two did so well (with I suppose minimal story) and CoD3's single player had perhaps a bit too much, such as a few cutscenes that felt like they were tagged on to help flesh out the characters--something I think unnecessary for a Call of Duty game. Multiplayer, though adding drivable vehicles, the War mode, class-based abilities, and, thank Christ, online split-screen, still felt like it was missing something or maybe it simply had too much of something.
Call of Duty 4 brought on a return to form with a simpler narrative than CoD3 with a far more effective delivery (such as crawling through the wreckage from a nuke) and it was able to seamlessly integrate this drama into the game; I challenge someone to say that tension wasn't raised during the "All Ghillied Up" sequence of Call of Duty 4. Multiplayer was deep but simple, where you could select your class or create your own, assuming you had leveled up enough to create any worthy weapons classes. The setting had even changed to modern day, hence I suppose the "Modern Combat" moniker.
While I'm sure it might be easy to point out that the difference lies simply in the developer choice, I'd rather not make Treyarch look like a bad guy. They're making an effort to put out a fun, hour-consuming game that we all can enjoy but I'm thinking they might be approaching development from a wrong angle. Don't get me wrong--I'm all about innovation and I think the more innovative a game, the better, but innovation is not simply changing a game series. When a game is developed in a series, you can't change too much or it won't fit. I think Infinity Ward took a less-is-more approach with CoD1, 2, and 4, but I think Treyarch is confusing adding more bells and whistles with improvement. Four-player co-op sounds exciting for Call of Duty 5, but I've never seen the campaigns for CoD games to be necessary for a cooperative gameplay element.
Again, I don't want to completely rag on Treyarch. I'm actually pretty excited with what they've done so far for the Quantum of Solace game and I'm hopeful that it'll at least take the industry a step back to a time where decent games were produced from movie franchises.
The first in the series was an impressive effort for visceral cinematic gaming, and while it didn't feel like you were in war, it felt like you were in a war movie, which is probably the more preferable of either sensation. The second kicked it up a notch on next generation consoles and was still reminiscent of the excitement of the first, with fairly good multiplayer system for the Xbox 360, perhaps one of the earliest MP games relased for Live on the 360. Three I received as a gift for Christmas, presumably because I asked for it, and playing it didn't quite have that same feel as the first two. The campaign lacked that balance of drama and action that I think the first two did so well (with I suppose minimal story) and CoD3's single player had perhaps a bit too much, such as a few cutscenes that felt like they were tagged on to help flesh out the characters--something I think unnecessary for a Call of Duty game. Multiplayer, though adding drivable vehicles, the War mode, class-based abilities, and, thank Christ, online split-screen, still felt like it was missing something or maybe it simply had too much of something.
Call of Duty 4 brought on a return to form with a simpler narrative than CoD3 with a far more effective delivery (such as crawling through the wreckage from a nuke) and it was able to seamlessly integrate this drama into the game; I challenge someone to say that tension wasn't raised during the "All Ghillied Up" sequence of Call of Duty 4. Multiplayer was deep but simple, where you could select your class or create your own, assuming you had leveled up enough to create any worthy weapons classes. The setting had even changed to modern day, hence I suppose the "Modern Combat" moniker.
While I'm sure it might be easy to point out that the difference lies simply in the developer choice, I'd rather not make Treyarch look like a bad guy. They're making an effort to put out a fun, hour-consuming game that we all can enjoy but I'm thinking they might be approaching development from a wrong angle. Don't get me wrong--I'm all about innovation and I think the more innovative a game, the better, but innovation is not simply changing a game series. When a game is developed in a series, you can't change too much or it won't fit. I think Infinity Ward took a less-is-more approach with CoD1, 2, and 4, but I think Treyarch is confusing adding more bells and whistles with improvement. Four-player co-op sounds exciting for Call of Duty 5, but I've never seen the campaigns for CoD games to be necessary for a cooperative gameplay element.
Again, I don't want to completely rag on Treyarch. I'm actually pretty excited with what they've done so far for the Quantum of Solace game and I'm hopeful that it'll at least take the industry a step back to a time where decent games were produced from movie franchises.
