My review of the game and Platinum

[coolwali]

Hello Everyone. I recently platinumed MW2 and want to give my thoughts on it.

Overall, it's not a hard platinum. Just mostly tedious (minus one trophy which is actually really tough). Half the trophies are "complete X mission" and "complete X mission in veteran difficulty". So about veteran difficulty, like Uncharted's crushing difficulty, it doesn't compliment the game and isn't hard in that it requires skill but patience + trial and error. Barring the occasional death loop, you can get through every encounter. It just takes a long time because you die after being exposed to 0.2 seconds of gunfire so you're spending most of your time behind cover and occasionally popping out to take the odd potshots. And given the large number of enemies and overly linear level design, you have few other options. I'm glad this game has a master volume control because I can use PS4's Spotify App to listen to podcasts as I play much easier (as an aside, does anyone know why the Bright Sessions volume is all over the place?). COD games aren't tactical shooters like Metro or old Rainbow 6. They're bombastic and cool popcorn entertainment. Like Uncharted, you're supposed to constantly be like "that's cool". But you're less likely to enjoy the cool set pieces and scenarios when you're constantly dying and having to repeat sections. It's telling that in the Pit, getting a good time has the game recommend veteran difficulty to you. The implication being that your fast-paced play is what Veteran demands while being slow is for easier difficulties. But you'll be dead in the field if you try bring so aggressive. That's why recruit difficulty is the best for COD games. You're free to run around and use every weapon and tactic you see which can be quite fun.

 

Another hard trophy is "Immortal" that you get by completing every mission without dying or having to use a checkpoint. Most missions are straightforward but some like Cliffhanger have so much unskippable cutscenes and a final jetski chase that's easy to fail which means a lot of retries and boredom. But there's no indication of what missions you've completed like this so you better remember if you accidentally loaded a checkpoint. Having to keep replaying missions magnifies every little issue like the unskippable cutscenes, the cool and kinda boring stealth and set pieces etc. I had to replay the campaign for a 3rd time when this didn't pop the first time.

 

The absolute hardest trophy was "student surpasses the master" which requires you to beat the Pit's best time of 19.7 seconds. The challenge here is that it requires a near-perfect memorization of the course and execution. You need to get at least 140% accuracy (shoot multiple targets with a single bullet) to knock around 6 seconds off your time. But the Pit randomizes the location of the targets every run so you have to react to where the new targets spawn and somehow set up a bunch of multi-kills fast enough. And this is assuming the targets are lined up well so fast multi-kills are possible in the first place. The best trick is to keep restarting the entire mission until your first Pit run has good RNG then keep reloading a checkpoint to try getting a good run since this preserves the original seed. I kept getting 20.00 seconds with the best possible RNG until I somehow got 18.7. I personally believe this trophy is too strict. Make it 24 seconds and remove the other Pit trophy.

There is a set of collectibles and trophies for collecting them. I'm not too fond of these as they require an online guide. The rest are pretty cool. Blowing up a Helicopter with a grenade, destroy the BRs without a predator drone, complete a breach with 4 perfect shots, kill 5 enemies in a row with different weapons, a post credits fight were what I'd like to see more off. Fun little challenges sprinkled throughout missions.

 

All in all, it's an easy Plat so might be worth going for. Have some other entertainment on hand because you're going to be doing a lot of repeats and should have something to alleviate the frustration?

If I designed the trophies for this game, I'd remove Student, Immortal and all the Veteran ones and replace them with specific challenges in levels. For example, get 4 headshots in Second Son using a red dot sight weapon, complete Exodus without personally shooting a single person with a regular gun, complete a mission with 4 challenge tweaks on, win a game of Rock Paper Scissors etc

As for the game itself though, I'd give it a 6.8 with a "somewhat recommended" score. It's fun at times but has some things holding it back. On the gameplay front, even on recruit difficulty, the gameplay isn't that interesting. Level design is overly linear and you're given very few ways to play around or flank opponents. The game does have cool set pieces but they're not that exciting to actually play through especially on repeat playthroughs. MW2019 addressed this with more varied levels. AW and BO3 addressed this by giving the player more tools to play around with. MW2 feels archaic even by 2009 standards. Games like Resistance at least had more varied level design and weapons.

 

The story and characters are also quite lacking. I dislike COD's habit of making characters you control silent because it limits their character and the interactions you can have with others. The only times Soap and Price are cool is when I'm not playing as them so they are free to be themselves. The consequence of this approach means most player characters have nothing to them as characters. What can you tell me about Roach as a character? Or Allen? Or Ramerez? Or Frost? They're all interchangeable. So when the story kills one off or tries to make them important, it falls flat since I'm not invested in them and they seem replaceable. When Soap brings the Helicopter around and risks it running out of fuel just to save Roach, I'm wondering where was this concern for Worm, or Ozone, Scarecrow, or any of the other people that accompanied them that can die on missions and rarely even get a "X is down". Why is my player character special? Why should I care about him? If Ozone was the player character instead of Roach, would there even be a difference?

 

This extends to other characters not named Price, Soap and Foley. Most have very little to distinguish them from others. What can you tell me about Ghost as a character? Unless you read his prequel comic, all you'd know about him from playing this game is he's another competent soldier and a hacker and wears a mask. What makes him different from any of the other characters? I'm genuinely curious because he'd such a popular character yet has nothing to him that would warrant it. Dunn from the Rangers has shown more emotion and motivation in game and has more of a connection to the player since they chill for a bit before the Pit and he teaches the player about "switching to your sidearm is faster than reloading". Ghost has nothing next to that aside from dying with Roach. That's too late to endear me to a character.

 

Speaking of that, the Betrayal sequence was well directed. But lacked any emotion because again, I have no connection to Ghost, Roach or even Shepard. While Shepard is in the loading screens talking to other characters, we rarely get to interact with him or know him. He feels no different to Overlord. So his betrayal doesn't really feel like a betrayal because both you and the characters don't have a connection. I'd argue Advanced Warfare did this Better. Here, the player and the protagonist Mitchell got to spend time with other characters and Irons chilling. You got the sense that Mitchell looked up Irons as a father. So when he Has to turn against them, there was genuine emotion as both Irons and Mitchell had a connection and the player had one as well. They were also actual characters rather than blank slates.

 

Shepherd's motivation was also poorly explained in game. I had to go onto Quora and Stack Exchange to read essays from people on his motives and many of them even had "this wasn't explained well in game lol". This hurts the pacing of the story since the story seemingly pauses hunting Makarov to hunt a guy you hardly know doing something you don't know why and nobody even brings up until like 2 minutes before the end credits.

I think the story would have been a lot better if the player got to spend some time with Shepard so the betrayal also felt more legit. I also think he would have felt more like a threat and connected all the different threads better if it was more clear that Shepard had his hands in everything and was using both the Rangers and Task Force 141 to do his dirty work. This is kinda what the game was going for but it's not told well.

 

Graphics, sound and environments are top notch.

 

As a game, MW2 Remastered is a bit underwhelming. It lacks the multiplayer that's the whole reason 90% of people play this series. It lacks Spec Ops that generally added some gameplay variety. All it has is a campaign that has some lacklustre level design and a story where most of the cast has very little to worth investing in. I'd say get it cheap if you haven't played it yet and want a fun weekend if you want to play it casually. And free up a few more days for the plat.

 

While I'm here, I might as well talk about my thoughts about the COD games in general.

Inderdip Lohtia on Twitter already summed my thoughts on the shooting in COD games

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srcmrs

I want to add that I personally feel COD is at its best in Futuristic settings. This allows the gameplay to give the player more options for playing the game and the writers more freedom without being tied. COD, being a black and white bombastic popcorn flick, struggles with more grey aspects of the real world. So it has done stuff like in MW2019, refitting the US Crimes at the Highway of Death to the Russians, or how the new Cold War trailer removed references to Tiananmen Square. Whereas the futuristic titles are so removed from all this that they can make any one or faction completely good or bad and have it fit better in the story instead of feeling like revisionism.

 

Here's my ranking of the COD games overall. Note I won't point out Multiplayer unless I have played it and I focus on gameplay most of all.

-1 Warzone (8.0): Solid BR game. Loved the objectives and Gulag System. I feel that the loadout system is too generous.

-2 BO3 (7.8): The gameplay gives the player the most customization to play through missions with. Added modes like Parkour and Bonus Twin Stick mode is great

-3 AW and IW (7.5): Solid gameplay and decent stories

-4 MW2019 (7.3): while the story hamstrings itself in trying to be grey, the gameplay is arguably the best of the "boots on the ground" style with level design being more open ended and more measured set pieces.

BO2 (7.3): Good story and decent stuff with the different endings and setpieces.

-5 BO1, WAW and MW1 (7.0): Decent games with decent stories

Mobile: The only COD game whose multiplayer I played a decent amount besides Warzone. It's pretty solid.

-6 MW2 (6.8): See above

Ghosts and WW2 (6.8): I found the gameplay a bit boring but the attempts at characerizing the cast and set pieces were nice

-7 MW3 (6.5) A bit too bombastic in its approach, its story jumps around too much for its own good and has underdeveloped its World War 3.

-8 Strike Force and Roads to Victory (6.0) Decent Premise but lacklustre execution

-9 Declassified (5.0): It exists

Edited November 13, 2020 by coolwali
Spacing

[Kittet3]

Have you thought about making a trophy checklist and consolidating all your reviews there? Might be easier then making lots of new threads

[RevengeancePrime]

I completely disagree with your ranking of CoD titles. The futuristic games are terrible both in terms of gameplay and the story. I can't tell you the name of a single character from the stories for BO3 and AW, but I can name almost every important character from the original MW trilogy and the first Black Ops. I haven't played the MW2 campaign in something like 7 or 8 years, but I can still remember missions like Burger Town and countless moments from the story like the airport scene. Can't say the same for newer CoDs because they're forgettable and bland. MW2019 had some pretty memorable missions, but I do agree that the story was done poorly. The devs acted like they had created some kind of morally grey game that would have players questioning themselves, but it was very black and white.

 

In terms of gameplay, boots on the ground is where CoD shines and we can see that with how they've decided to go back to it with the past few titles. BO3 and AW play like a poor man's Titanfall. Specialists were an unnecessary addition and its good to see Cold War doing away with them. Mechanics like wall running and jump boosts seemed like a cool way to add verticality to the multiplayer, but it just ends up falling flat. 

[coolwali]

@ObliviousSenpai

 

1 hour ago, ObliviousSenpai said:

The futuristic games are terrible both in terms of gameplay and the story

Are they really? Because I'd argue the opposite.

 

Consider the following scenario, me and my 3 allies pull up to a part of a level designed for combat, there are 12 enemy guards on foot and 1 guy on a truck with a gun with an additional 20+ guards that will respawn. In something like Ghosts, what are my options? All I can do is hide behind cover, shoot the gunner and then shoot the remaining targets all while popping in and out of cover based on my health. There are no other tactics. Maybe I can throw grenades to mop up some of the enemies faster but as a whole, I'm just popping in and out of cover and shooting dudes with weapons that are basically interchangeable. What about the next combat encounter? And the next one? In these games, the only thing that makes a combat encounter distinct is the scenario/set-piece it is attached to and not the ways the player can play it. If you set every combat encounter in a blank void, they would have nothing unique to them. Even in game, not every encounter can have a unique gimmick or something to make them stand out which makes most combat encounters boring.

 

In contrast, if it's something like BO3, because I can double jump, the level can have walkways and high ground for me to use to get above and even behind the enemy to flank them. And because I can have superpowers, I can do things like turn invisible and melee-pinball, or become temporarily invulnerable and rush the enemies, or get above and ground pound them or whatever. This means even fights set in a blank void have the potential to be fun because the player has more ways to make every fight distinct. Combat encounters can be made more varied because the player has tools and the levels can be made to take advantage of them. And if you're worried the player might get too OP or whatever for every scenario, you can do what AW does and pre-select the abilities before every level and design encounters around that. All this is way more fun and interesting than another boring cover shooting segment with no other options, and it also suits the bombastic nature of the series.

 

As for the story, perhaps that's you but I'd also argue the futuristic titles do a much better job developing its characters. BO3's section with Taylor and "train go boom" does more to characterize him than many of the attempts of the Modern Titles. AW spends time developing Mitchell and his crew and his reletionship with Irons wheras many of the Modern titles skip past all that. Again, what can you tell me about characters like Roach? Or Ghost? Or Rameriz? Or Frost?

[RevengeancePrime]

1 hour ago, coolwali said:

@ObliviousSenpai

 

Are they really? Because I'd argue the opposite.

 

Consider the following scenario, me and my 3 allies pull up to a part of a level designed for combat, there are 12 enemy guards on foot and 1 guy on a truck with a gun with an additional 20+ guards that will respawn. In something like Ghosts, what are my options? All I can do is hide behind cover, shoot the gunner and then shoot the remaining targets all while popping in and out of cover based on my health. There are no other tactics. Maybe I can throw grenades to mop up some of the enemies faster but as a whole, I'm just popping in and out of cover and shooting dudes with weapons that are basically interchangeable. What about the next combat encounter? And the next one? In these games, the only thing that makes a combat encounter distinct is the scenario/set-piece it is attached to and not the ways the player can play it. If you set every combat encounter in a blank void, they would have nothing unique to them. Even in game, not every encounter can have a unique gimmick or something to make them stand out which makes most combat encounters boring.

 

In contrast, if it's something like BO3, because I can double jump, the level can have walkways and high ground for me to use to get above and even behind the enemy to flank them. And because I can have superpowers, I can do things like turn invisible and melee-pinball, or become temporarily invulnerable and rush the enemies, or get above and ground pound them or whatever. This means even fights set in a blank void have the potential to be fun because the player has more ways to make every fight distinct. Combat encounters can be made more varied because the player has tools and the levels can be made to take advantage of them. And if you're worried the player might get too OP or whatever for every scenario, you can do what AW does and pre-select the abilities before every level and design encounters around that. All this is way more fun and interesting than another boring cover shooting segment with no other options, and it also suits the bombastic nature of the series.

 

As for the story, perhaps that's you but I'd also argue the futuristic titles do a much better job developing its characters. BO3's section with Taylor and "train go boom" does more to characterize him than many of the attempts of the Modern Titles. AW spends time developing Mitchell and his crew and his reletionship with Irons wheras many of the Modern titles skip past all that. Again, what can you tell me about characters like Roach? Or Ghost? Or Rameriz? Or Frost?

 

I never once felt the need to use my abilities in the ways you're suggesting. They just gave me something to spam while I hung back behind cover picking off targets. This is especially true if you're playing the campaign on realistic or veteran. Missions like Ghillie in the Mist and Wolf's Den show that CoD can create interesting missions without the need to have you flying around with super powers.

 

I wouldn't say the story and gameplay is just an issue for me, but rather the majority of players. Most players don't enjoy these newer CoDs and that's why you see the devs moving away from futuristic warfare and back to boots on the ground. I think BO3 had an interesting story, but it was poorly executed. Characters like Ghost and Ramirez don't need much development because of the way MW2 handles its story. Like you said, CoD games are, "bombastic and cool popcorn entertainment." Older CoDs understand this concept and that's what helped them to craft a memorable campaign experience and by doing so, it allows a good deal of characters to remain memorable without the need to be thoroughly developed. There are of course characters like Shepard that are decently written. A lot of the newer CoDs try to take themselves too seriously and you end up with a forgettable story, which in turn makes potentially memorable characters forgettable.

[OmegaRejectz]

5 hours ago, coolwali said:

Hello Everyone. I recently platinumed MW2 and want to give my thoughts on it.

Overall, it's not a hard platinum. Just mostly tedious (minus one trophy which is actually really tough). Half the trophies are "complete X mission" and "complete X mission in veteran difficulty". So about veteran difficulty, like Uncharted's crushing difficulty, it doesn't compliment the game and isn't hard in that it requires skill but patience + trial and error. Barring the occasional death loop, you can get through every encounter. It just takes a long time because you die after being exposed to 0.2 seconds of gunfire so you're spending most of your time behind cover and occasionally popping out to take the odd potshots. And given the large number of enemies and overly linear level design, you have few other options. I'm glad this game has a master volume control because I can use PS4's Spotify App to listen to podcasts as I play much easier (as an aside, does anyone know why the Bright Sessions volume is all over the place?). COD games aren't tactical shooters like Metro or old Rainbow 6. They're bombastic and cool popcorn entertainment. Like Uncharted, you're supposed to constantly be like "that's cool". But you're less likely to enjoy the cool set pieces and scenarios when you're constantly dying and having to repeat sections. It's telling that in the Pit, getting a good time has the game recommend veteran difficulty to you. The implication being that your fast-paced play is what Veteran demands while being slow is for easier difficulties. But you'll be dead in the field if you try bring so aggressive. That's why recruit difficulty is the best for COD games. You're free to run around and use every weapon and tactic you see which can be quite fun.

 

Another hard trophy is "Immortal" that you get by completing every mission without dying or having to use a checkpoint. Most missions are straightforward but some like Cliffhanger have so much unskippable cutscenes and a final jetski chase that's easy to fail which means a lot of retries and boredom. But there's no indication of what missions you've completed like this so you better remember if you accidentally loaded a checkpoint. Having to keep replaying missions magnifies every little issue like the unskippable cutscenes, the cool and kinda boring stealth and set pieces etc. I had to replay the campaign for a 3rd time when this didn't pop the first time.

 

The absolute hardest trophy was "student surpasses the master" which requires you to beat the Pit's best time of 19.7 seconds. The challenge here is that it requires a near-perfect memorization of the course and execution. You need to get at least 140% accuracy (shoot multiple targets with a single bullet) to knock around 6 seconds off your time. But the Pit randomizes the location of the targets every run so you have to react to where the new targets spawn and somehow set up a bunch of multi-kills fast enough. And this is assuming the targets are lined up well so fast multi-kills are possible in the first place. The best trick is to keep restarting the entire mission until your first Pit run has good RNG then keep reloading a checkpoint to try getting a good run since this preserves the original seed. I kept getting 20.00 seconds with the best possible RNG until I somehow got 18.7. I personally believe this trophy is too strict. Make it 24 seconds and remove the other Pit trophy.

There is a set of collectibles and trophies for collecting them. I'm not too fond of these as they require an online guide. The rest are pretty cool. Blowing up a Helicopter with a grenade, destroy the BRs without a predator drone, complete a breach with 4 perfect shots, kill 5 enemies in a row with different weapons, a post credits fight were what I'd like to see more off. Fun little challenges sprinkled throughout missions.

 

All in all, it's an easy Plat so might be worth going for. Have some other entertainment on hand because you're going to be doing a lot of repeats and should have something to alleviate the frustration?

If I designed the trophies for this game, I'd remove Student, Immortal and all the Veteran ones and replace them with specific challenges in levels. For example, get 4 headshots in Second Son using a red dot sight weapon, complete Exodus without personally shooting a single person with a regular gun, complete a mission with 4 challenge tweaks on, win a game of Rock Paper Scissors etc

As for the game itself though, I'd give it a 6.8 with a "somewhat recommended" score. It's fun at times but has some things holding it back. On the gameplay front, even on recruit difficulty, the gameplay isn't that interesting. Level design is overly linear and you're given very few ways to play around or flank opponents. The game does have cool set pieces but they're not that exciting to actually play through especially on repeat playthroughs. MW2019 addressed this with more varied levels. AW and BO3 addressed this by giving the player more tools to play around with. MW2 feels archaic even by 2009 standards. Games like Resistance at least had more varied level design and weapons.

 

The story and characters are also quite lacking. I dislike COD's habit of making characters you control silent because it limits their character and the interactions you can have with others. The only times Soap and Price are cool is when I'm not playing as them so they are free to be themselves. The consequence of this approach means most player characters have nothing to them as characters. What can you tell me about Roach as a character? Or Allen? Or Ramerez? Or Frost? They're all interchangeable. So when the story kills one off or tries to make them important, it falls flat since I'm not invested in them and they seem replaceable. When Soap brings the Helicopter around and risks it running out of fuel just to save Roach, I'm wondering where was this concern for Worm, or Ozone, Scarecrow, or any of the other people that accompanied them that can die on missions and rarely even get a "X is down". Why is my player character special? Why should I care about him? If Ozone was the player character instead of Roach, would there even be a difference?

 

This extends to other characters not named Price, Soap and Foley. Most have very little to distinguish them from others. What can you tell me about Ghost as a character? Unless you read his prequel comic, all you'd know about him from playing this game is he's another competent soldier and a hacker and wears a mask. What makes him different from any of the other characters? I'm genuinely curious because he'd such a popular character yet has nothing to him that would warrant it. Dunn from the Rangers has shown more emotion and motivation in game and has more of a connection to the player since they chill for a bit before the Pit and he teaches the player about "switching to your sidearm is faster than reloading". Ghost has nothing next to that aside from dying with Roach. That's too late to endear me to a character.

 

Speaking of that, the Betrayal sequence was well directed. But lacked any emotion because again, I have no connection to Ghost, Roach or even Shepard. While Shepard is in the loading screens talking to other characters, we rarely get to interact with him or know him. He feels no different to Overlord. So his betrayal doesn't really feel like a betrayal because both you and the characters don't have a connection. I'd argue Advanced Warfare did this Better. Here, the player and the protagonist Mitchell got to spend time with other characters and Irons chilling. You got the sense that Mitchell looked up Irons as a father. So when he Has to turn against them, there was genuine emotion as both Irons and Mitchell had a connection and the player had one as well. They were also actual characters rather than blank slates.

 

Shepherd's motivation was also poorly explained in game. I had to go onto Quora and Stack Exchange to read essays from people on his motives and many of them even had "this wasn't explained well in game lol". This hurts the pacing of the story since the story seemingly pauses hunting Makarov to hunt a guy you hardly know doing something you don't know why and nobody even brings up until like 2 minutes before the end credits.

I think the story would have been a lot better if the player got to spend some time with Shepard so the betrayal also felt more legit. I also think he would have felt more like a threat and connected all the different threads better if it was more clear that Shepard had his hands in everything and was using both the Rangers and Task Force 141 to do his dirty work. This is kinda what the game was going for but it's not told well.

 

Graphics, sound and environments are top notch.

 

As a game, MW2 Remastered is a bit underwhelming. It lacks the multiplayer that's the whole reason 90% of people play this series. It lacks Spec Ops that generally added some gameplay variety. All it has is a campaign that has some lacklustre level design and a story where most of the cast has very little to worth investing in. I'd say get it cheap if you haven't played it yet and want a fun weekend if you want to play it casually. And free up a few more days for the plat.

 

While I'm here, I might as well talk about my thoughts about the COD games in general.

Inderdip Lohtia on Twitter already summed my thoughts on the shooting in COD games

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srcmrs

I want to add that I personally feel COD is at its best in Futuristic settings. This allows the gameplay to give the player more options for playing the game and the writers more freedom without being tied. COD, being a black and white bombastic popcorn flick, struggles with more grey aspects of the real world. So it has done stuff like in MW2019, refitting the US Crimes at the Highway of Death to the Russians, or how the new Cold War trailer removed references to Tiananmen Square. Whereas the futuristic titles are so removed from all this that they can make any one or faction completely good or bad and have it fit better in the story instead of feeling like revisionism.

 

Here's my ranking of the COD games overall. Note I won't point out Multiplayer unless I have played it and I focus on gameplay most of all.

-1 Warzone (8.0): Solid BR game. Loved the objectives and Gulag System. I feel that the loadout system is too generous.

-2 BO3 (7.8): The gameplay gives the player the most customization to play through missions with. Added modes like Parkour and Bonus Twin Stick mode is great

-3 AW and IW (7.5): Solid gameplay and decent stories

-4 MW2019 (7.3): while the story hamstrings itself in trying to be grey, the gameplay is arguably the best of the "boots on the ground" style with level design being more open ended and more measured set pieces.

BO2 (7.3): Good story and decent stuff with the different endings and setpieces.

-5 BO1, WAW and MW1 (7.0): Decent games with decent stories

Mobile: The only COD game whose multiplayer I played a decent amount besides Warzone. It's pretty solid.

-6 MW2 (6.8): See above

Ghosts and WW2 (6.8): I found the gameplay a bit boring but the attempts at characerizing the cast and set pieces were nice

-7 MW3 (6.5) A bit too bombastic in its approach, its story jumps around too much for its own good and has underdeveloped its World War 3.

-8 Strike Force and Roads to Victory (6.0) Decent Premise but lacklustre execution

-9 Declassified (5.0): It exists

You seriously put AW & Iw above it? Lmao. MW2 is easily one of the best CODs with characters that are well written and storylines that actually feel worthwhile to play. That was the exact opposite with IW. I don't know why IW gets random praise. The characters were awful, especially the main villain. The only memorable character was Ethan.

[coolwali]

@OmegaRejectz

Because AW and IW actually have gameplay more varied than "sit behind cover and pop out and shoot" and the story actually develops its characters instead of making the playable characters blank slates

@ObliviousSenpai

12 hours ago, ObliviousSenpai said:

. Missions like Ghillie in the Mist and Wolf's Den show that CoD can create interesting missions without the need to have you flying around with super powers.

These missions were still incredibly scripted, limited and relied more on the atmosphere rather than the inherant gameplay

 

12 hours ago, ObliviousSenpai said:

it allows a good deal of characters to remain memorable without the need to be thoroughly developed. There are of course characters like Shepard that are decently written. A lot of the newer CoDs try to take themselves too seriously and you end up with a forgettable story, which in turn makes potentially memorable characters forgettable.

 

COD4, BO1, WAW all took themselves very seriously and even tried to develop their cast. They were well liked. When Ghosts tried to emulate the MW games,many people disliked it

 

It seems to me more that people are nostalgic for these games and that's covering up the same issues they are pointing to all these other games. If MW2 came out for the first time today, I doubt most people would be as positive.

[RevengeancePrime]

41 minutes ago, coolwali said:

These missions were still incredibly scripted, limited and relied more on the atmosphere rather than the inherant gameplay

 

COD4, BO1, WAW all took themselves very seriously and even tried to develop their cast. They were well liked. When Ghosts tried to emulate the MW games,many people disliked it

 

It seems to me more that people are nostalgic for these games and that's covering up the same issues they are pointing to all these other games. If MW2 came out for the first time today, I doubt most people would be as positive.

 

CoD missions work far better when there's a mix of scripted and unscripted gameplay. Adding in mechanics like wall running and super powers doesn't make CoD more enjoyable. There's no reward or reason for it, especially at higher difficulties. Games like Titanfall and Doom actually implemented movement mechanics that encourage you to constantly be moving around and using everything in your arsenal. AW and BO3 just tacked on these mechanics without actually changing enemy or level design in a meaningful way. 

 

The older CoD titles are like watching a Michael Bay film. They certainly try to be serious at times, but at the end of the day all that matters are the crazy action sequences and explosions. MW2019 proves that older CoD campaigns would be received well even if they released today. The whole point of it was to recapture the magic of the original MW trilogy and it clearly worked because the majority of players love the new campaign as well as the multiplayer. MW2019 and now Cold War show that the devs were losing players with futuristic combat and they needed to return to form.

[coolwali]

@ObliviousSenpai

6 hours ago, ObliviousSenpai said:

Games like Titanfall and Doom actually implemented movement mechanics that encourage you to constantly be moving around and using everything in your arsenal. AW and BO3 just tacked on these mechanics without actually changing enemy or level design in a meaningful way. 

Um, AW and BO3 did do that. Look at that level in AW that's wide open and lets you grapple to helicopters. Or that level in AW where you can use stealth to grapple around on your own accord. Or levels in BO3 that add multiple walkways allowing you to flank your enemies. These mechanics were complemented by the level design rather than being just placed in.

 

6 hours ago, ObliviousSenpai said:

Adding in mechanics like wall running and super powers doesn't make CoD more enjoyable. There's no reward or reason for it, especially at higher difficulties.

They make shootouts less boring if you can vary it and solve problems your own way. Having another shootout with everyone behind cover as the only approach isn't exactly novel the 3000th time you do it

 

 

And again, taken further, The futuristic approach could have actually evolved COD's singleplayer by giving the player more interesting shootouts. Instead, it appears COD is going to repeat the same formula for another 7+ years

[RevengeancePrime]

20 minutes ago, coolwali said:

@ObliviousSenpai

Um, AW and BO3 did do that. Look at that level in AW that's wide open and lets you grapple to helicopters. Or that level in AW where you can use stealth to grapple around on your own accord. Or levels in BO3 that add multiple walkways allowing you to flank your enemies. These mechanics were complemented by the level design rather than being just placed in.

 

They make shootouts less boring if you can vary it and solve problems your own way. Having another shootout with everyone behind cover as the only approach isn't exactly novel the 3000th time you do it

 

And again, taken further, The futuristic approach could have actually evolved COD's singleplayer by giving the player more interesting shootouts. Instead, it appears COD is going to repeat the same formula for another 7+ years

 

AW and BO3 have these mechanics, but there's absolutely no need for me to use them during combat. I can just play them like any other CoD with the super powers and jump boosts just being another way to help me bunker down in one spot. The robots in BO3 were a decent attempt at getting you to actually move around, but overall the movement mechanics and powers are just there. You don't need to use them, they're just kind of nice to have and this is the problem with them. If the devs want to turn CoD into a momentum based shooter then they need to start taking notes from something like Doom: Eternal. 

 

The futuristic approach wasn't making CoD more interesting, it was more or less the same game now with lasers and jetpacks. What they need to do is create more unique enemy types that require varied approaches to eliminate. 

[OmegaRejectz]

13 hours ago, coolwali said:

@OmegaRejectz

Because AW and IW actually have gameplay more varied than "sit behind cover and pop out and shoot" and the story actually develops its characters instead of making the playable characters blank slates

@ObliviousSenpai

These missions were still incredibly scripted, limited and relied more on the atmosphere rather than the inherant gameplay

 

 

COD4, BO1, WAW all took themselves very seriously and even tried to develop their cast. They were well liked. When Ghosts tried to emulate the MW games,many people disliked it

 

It seems to me more that people are nostalgic for these games and that's covering up the same issues they are pointing to all these other games. If MW2 came out for the first time today, I doubt most people would be as positive.

Don’t address the main villian in Infinite Warfare being a completely worthless addition to the game & being killed off in the lamest way possible. His death didn’t even feel like he was a main character, his death didn’t feel any different than a generic no name AI. The gameplay in Infinite Warfare (campaign at least) was fairly decent, but I’m not going to pretend that the story, characters or environments were actually interesting, memorable & quality.