The Problems of Call of Duty

The reveal trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 launched the other day. And after watching it, reading a little about it, especially the lack of a single player campaign, I have to say Call of Duty has some problems and it's probably going to sound like an old man yelling at a cloud again.

The first issue is the lack of a campaign, or the lack of a story when there is one. The high point of the Call of Duty franchise was undoubtably Modern Warfare. It was such a fan favorite, it got remastered for Playstation 4 and XBox One. Part of this had to have been the great campaign mode. It also had a solid multiplayer mode and was set in a mostly realistic world. After this, we dove into the future of warfare with privatized militaries led by Kevin Spacey (a move I'm sure everyone regrets.) And then into space, fight Jon Snow, who turns out knew a lot. But the campaigns were short and not worth it. They focused on celebrity casting rather than telling a good story.

The second issue, is the need to constantly be moving into the future tech of warfare. I get it to a certain point, in order to sell more games, you have to make something worth buying. Which means you need a new product that's not just the same thing, you need new advancements to attract more people to buy them. But there's a percentage of people out there - like myself that prefer a straight up shooter. We don't need fancy tech, barricades out of nothing, exo skeletons that let you do a double jump like a 90s platformer. Look at the success of Call of Duty: WWII. It was great and there were no extras, just straight shooting.

The third issue, is nothing about the nature of the game itself, but the community. I'm kind of sick of multiplayer games because of the other players. The trash talking filled with swearing and racial slurs, mostly uttered by children. And yes, a lot of these kids beat me, and that's fine. I'm not old, but I'm old enough that I don't have the time to spend hours playing online, honing my skills, the way that anyone still in school has time to do. I'm just sick of playing and hearing kids ask there mom for 5 more minutes and then they'll start their homework.

Maybe I am aging out of multiplayer games in favor of more solo experiences like Far Cry 5 and Assassin's Creed Origins and the upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2. I doubt I'll ever age out of games completely, but at some point, I'll stop multiplayer completely. How do I know? I watched the Black Ops 4 trailer and felt zero excitement.