User Blog:
Bored of Duty

It’s the end of an era as my fanaticism with Call of Duty: Black Ops has now faded. It was good while it lasted but Black Ops has just been a phase like the previous two Call of Duty releases. It no longer has any thrill or appeal to play as I was only going on the live multiplayer to earn the next rank and get weapons that I have used before. I eventually realised that I had become bored of this pointless craze.

For many people this has turned into a real cult game whereby their everyday life has become consumed by it, and they would spend many late nights with their eyelids taped back into their foreheads just to earn the next rank. I hold nothing against people that do this and I’m sure they get many kicks out of endless Call of Duty mayhem; it’s just not for me. I still consider myself a hardcore gamer as I strive to know as much as I can about games that I like, not because I’ve racked up the most play-time or I’m at the top of any leaderboards. That isn’t what a hardcore gamer is, that’s just someone with too much time on their hands.

Let me get one thing straight; I’m not badmouthing Black Ops. It was a good game while it lasted and I was impressed with the research that went into it and continuation of the multiplayer. I was happy enough with the Black Ops storyline until the ending was unveiled and then it became ridiculous and disappointing. However; the game has no imagination at all. There is nothing unusual or creative about the game which is a major downside to me. I can’t decide whether the game is a run-and-gun Rambo style shooter which will result in you dying many times, or it’s a game focused on realism with the weapons available and setting occurring in real events. If it’s trying to be an unrealistic gore fest then play Gears of War. If it’s trying to be a mind blowing shooter in a fantasy world then play Killzone. If it’s trying to be a hyper-realistic true to life game then play Operation Flashpoint (although I wouldn’t recommend that last one).

The heart and soul of the Call of Duty series since Modern Warfare is the competitive multiplayer with the online ranking system and introduction of rewards as ranks progress. To the disagreement of many this did not however revolutionise online play. There had been many previous games that had an online ranking system, but by adding rewards Call of Duty was just the advancement of an idea and not the idea itself. I would class a game such as Halo 2 for the original Xbox as a game that revolutionised online play as it brought Xbox LIVE vast public attention in comparison to LIVE activity beforehand. This was done with introduction of guest play allowing friends on the same console to play alongside their comrade to form a team that are sitting in the same room. By doing this, Halo 2 had merged both local and online play for a much larger audience. Black Ops has tried to adopt this but with only one additional guest, so in this sense it doesn’t even match up to a game available on a previous generation of console. I always look for a game like this to have local multiplayer because I like to invite friends round to play games instead of always looking for them over the network because it’s more fun to communicate as a team, or see their reactions, or rub it in their face after I’ve just killed them, and although it can be done over a headset, it’s just not the same. This is where a game like Halo really surpasses Call of Duty with co-op in addition too, and I’m hoping I can get the same from the upcoming Gears of War 3.