The Call of Duty franchise is currently among the longest-running annual releases in gaming. Each year, players clamber excitedly to find out what the time and setting of the campaign will be, the cast for the zombies’ mode, and the new spin on multiplayer will be. As one of the major properties of publisher Activision, Call of Duty has, for years, supplied gamers with the quintessential military shooter alongside Battlefield and, at one point, Medal of Honor.
Of course, more recent modern shooters such as Wolfenstein: The New Order and DOOM now largely dwarf Call of Duty due to their unique innovations and personalities in the first-person genre. In order to keep up, Call of Duty mixes up its formula as much as possible to appease the loyal fan base of this once mighty series. These changes are represented by a series with multiple timelines over a slew of different eras. Infinity Ward’s 2007 release saw the first modern take on the series after making several World War II games, the final of which was released in 2008 by developer Treyarch.
Now in the eighth generation, a third developer, Sledgehammer, is about to release its second entry in the series after 2014’s Advanced Warfare. Though now on a 3-year development cycle per game, the Call of Duty franchise is rapidly running out of steam due to a series of dumb decisions on forced gimmicks and greedy business practices. The following list represents the most egregious of these decisions.
15 Press Button To ‘Pay Respects’
Starting with Sledgehammer’s first game, Advanced Warfare, there is a funeral scene early on, in which the player is invited to “Hold X to Pay Respects” (on the Xbox version) to a fallen comrade in the story. The awkward nature of the scene–particularly in how it is a mandatory button prompt–blew up online with the now infamous meme, “Press X to Feel”. The scene exists to artificially enhance players’ attachment to the story, but it feels too forced. It would have been enough if the game just delivered in a cutscene you could walk through. This is after a shocking moment where you lose your left arm in the previous mission. The pacing of the first missions should provide a healthy amount of shock and awe. Forcing an ‘emotional’ button prompt in a cutscene breaks the sense of disbelief the game’s first mission worked so hard to earn.
14 Lack Of Consistent Features Across Developers
At the time of writing, there are three developers that produce Call of Duty games for Activision: Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games. For a brief time, work shifted between the first two of these with each developer keeping their own continuity for stories. That being said, the only company that currently exhibits the same story universe it began with is Treyarch. Now, with each developer having a certain niche or story arc, there was an anticipated level of consistency across all titles. Thus far, however, Call of Duty has been the most inconsistent series. From beloved multiplayer modes that are removed in the following release to inconsistent storytelling mechanics, it is difficult to refer to all of these games as a Call of Duty title. Also, Call of Duty: Ghosts did an alien mode as opposed to a zombies mode. Where’s the consistency in any of this?
13 The “No Russian” Level In Modern Warfare 2
Among the biggest controversies in gaming ever, Modern Warfare 2’s “No Russian” level was and still is a really dumb idea. The story elements could have been handled in a cutscene with more class and substance than the interactive massacre of civilians. In fact, this sequence, which is entirely skippable, is a first for interactive violence towards civilians from a first-person perspective. It is both draining to play and jarring to watch, ultimately leaving a bad taste in your mouth. So, aside from the obvious, why was this a dumb idea? Simple: it was an open invitation for the public to criticize violence in gaming… and criticize they did. The overall level is dumb because it confirmed for many people that gaming triggers violent tendencies. Of course, there is no real proof of this. Particularly after recent terror attacks; it hit many close to home.
12 Short, Copy/Paste Campaigns
The campaigns of Call of Duty titles have been widely known as formulaic to say the least. Each one begins with some kind of a jarring opening sequence, then keeps trying to top itself with barely plausible situations escalating to their breaking point. This is, unfortunately, the essence of not one, not two, but all thirteen mainline entries. This trend was barely noticeable until the first Modern Warfare came along in 2007. From here, it caused a ripple effect with the developers constantly attempting to one-up each other. The guns may change, the landscape may leave orbit, but the continued similarity between campaigns feels very copy/paste thanks to a lack of breadth and a firm focus on multiplayer. Curiously enough, the developer with the most similar campaigns across the board is Infinity Ward, the creators of the franchise.
11 Killings Dogs Across Multiple Games
Okay, this is not only dumb–it’s cruel. We come to have certain expectations of what playing a first-person shooter is. Sure, it involves the slaughter of countless terrorists of varying nationalities, Nazis, vengeful Mars colonists, and even corrupt officials, but dogs? Seriously, what’s up with this? The first Modern Warfare introduced the concept of attack dogs that would usually rip out the player’s throat if not dealt with immediately. Of course, this killing of dogs was something that was later thrown into some of the later campaigns thanks to point #12 on this list. Either way, it’s not something players sign up for, and when it becomes essential in order to beat the game, a feature as cruel as killing off a dog becomes more blasphemous than the mass firefights in the game. Dogs are innocent and this is unacceptably cruel, even though it is a double standard.
10 Over-Use Of Celebrities
Kevin Spacey, Katee Sackhoff, Gary Oldman, Kiefer Sutherland, and Claudia Black are but a few of the many names which have been tied to the Call of Duty franchise. Each game uses at least one major celebrity in order to boost appeal, sales, and lend authenticity to the games as a major player in the interactive entertainment space. In recent years, however, most of the major roles (particularly the villains) have gone to A-list actors who personify the edgy nature of the series in these bombastically bloated campaigns. By over-using celebrities, the Call of Duty games not so subtly break players out of their suspension of disbelief. When you recognize an actor as a character in a game, you are more likely to call them the actor’s name than the characters’. While they are good performers, it takes the weight off of the overall characters and their stories.
9 Killing Off Kit Harington Too Early In Infinite Warfare
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare made the profound choice to cast Game of Thrones actor Kit Harington as the lead villain. Casting recognizable actors can work one of two ways: either breaking your suspension of disbelief (because you are familiar with their body of work) or enthralling you with a gripping performance. Unfortunately in the case of Kit Harington, it is the former. We barely have enough time to see his character become interesting before he is killed… and not in the final mission, either. He is woefully under-utilized, getting very little screen time in cutscenes and in character development. In fact, given the nature of his role, Harington seems out of place as the commander of a ship, let alone an Admiral in an army. Perhaps it was the final presentation, but he never comes off as a real threat and is never given the opportunity to flourish into one.
8 Set Pieces: The Campaign’s Crutches
Michael Bay’s only real competition for massive explosions and complete cinematic chaos comes not from another film series, but rather with the annual campaigns of Call of Duty. These games’ short storylines are held together with oodles of so-called ‘set-piece moments’ and a lot of glue. The idea and appeal of set pieces on their own is a very alluring one with games such as Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End able to execute them well. That game succeeds in their use because it never goes overboard in a way that inhibits the player’s experience of the story. In Call of Duty games, these massive set pieces are largely what make up the stories’ focal points and are heavily reliant on players’ interest in them. To add insult to injury, most of these scenes are spoiled in the E3 trailers, teasing players to experience them in early November.
7 Overpriced Map Packs And Season Passes
It is no secret that publisher Activision is a greedy company. They make some impressive games that are matched only by their shady monetization practices. No, not skins. It’s all about the map packs and season passes and the varied pay-walls they offer. Even in Bungie’s Destiny, Activision hikes up the price compared to other games. This is not to say the company and the games do not deserve financial support for their work on maps, but having paid packs in 2017 greatly fragments the player base. Making a pack up to fifteen dollars with the game’s season pass 60% of the base game’s launch price, it becomes an exercise in tedium. Players really have to stop and ask themselves how much they will really play this game if the season pass price point is so high.
6 Locking The Zombies DLC To Map Packs
The only thing more infuriating than having to pay top dollar for some multiplayer maps is that the downloadable Zombies multiplayer content is locked to the same scheme. Want to play that new Zombies map? Please pay for the regular multiplayer pack too! When a pay-wall this deplorable fragments the player-base from their favourite mode so completely, it is difficult to want to justify them as a purchase at all. One of the few positive outcomes with the release of Halo 5: Guardians was the developer’s resolution to offer all maps for free to keep an active multiplayer community. This is very logical thinking for a series that does not have an annual release. But when it does, that is when the corporate greed sets in. It would be amazing if the Zombies DLC was released independently, but the word ‘amazing’ is seldom used with this franchise anymore.
5 Modern Warfare Remastered Exclusive To Infinite Warfare Legacy Edition
One of the most divisive issues with 2016’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was in its Legacy Edition. In it was a fully re-mastered version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. This was seen as a cool move on Infinity Ward’s part, but it quickly melted when Activision revealed that the re-mastered game would only be playable through the Legacy Edition. At the time, no plans were given to release Call of Duty 4 as a stand-alone game again. It was a bittersweet moment for many gamers who were already shrugging off Infinite Warfare as inferior to another soon-to-be released shooter. To make matters worse for those who bought the ultra-expensive Legacy Edition, the re-mastered Call of Duty 4 was recently released as a stand-alone game in both retail and digital markets.
4 Making A Futuristic Shooter In 2016
The conversations of franchise fatigue for futuristic shooters really set in when the trailer for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was followed up four days later by Battlefield. It led many gamers to question the validity of playing yet another futuristic warfare game when the idea of World War I was so fresh for the first-person shooter genre. In fact, if it were not for the Legacy Edition’s inclusion of the fan-favourite Modern Warfare, sales might have been quite dubious for this famed series. As a whole, gaming audiences had been treated to a slew of creative futuristic shooters and when word got out that they would be getting yet another one, both naysayers and long-time fans took a moment to pause. Infinite Warfare was the fifth mainline Call of Duty game in a row to take place in some form of a future setting. Enough is enough.
3 Killing Off ‘Soap’ In Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had a gripping cliffhanger with Soap in critical condition. In the follow-up game, he is able to survive until about the halfway point of the game as plot device to shoehorn in Yuri as vital to the story. While they do their best to justify Soap’s death in a meaningful way, it would have been more impactful for Price to die as he is very much part of the ‘old-guard’ in the story. The idea of passing the torch to the next generation to avenge the fallen older comrades would have been more thematically interesting. It would also keep a strong consistency, as Soap is the main playable protagonist for both Modern Warfare and its sequel. This is something that was later done in Ghosts to varying degrees of success.
2 Call Of Duty: Ghosts
There is one game in this series that is a cut below the modern standard for military shooters. Even though it was the first cross-generational Call of Duty release between seventh and eighth-gen hardware, Ghosts hit store shelves with a thud. The campaign felt like a garbled mess of forced patriotism with no real through-line into the state of the world. We know citizens of a conglomerated South America have invaded the U.S. and that’s about it. The game focuses on a team of ‘Ghosts’ who are given little personality other than a supremely macho father-son story arc. The campaign even ends on a cliffhanger that was abandoned in favor of making Infinite Warfare. The multiplayer had the least distinctive identity in the franchise’s history and the zombies mode… was non-existent. In its place: extinction mode features players fighting aliens. Wouldn’t that have been more fitting in Infinite Warfare?
1 Annual Releases
This is, without a doubt, the worst dumb decision to Activision’s pedigree. It is not to say that Call of Duty is a mediocre or antiquated series, but it is absolutely running on the fumes of the ‘franchise fatigue’ express. Releasing an annual entry prohibits players and critics to a stop and marvel the ways in which the series does innovate. If there were only one developer instead of a rotating roster of three, there would not only be greater cohesion but an excitement for the series to return. Sure, the loyal fans will return as they have for each entry, but everyone else will give a universal shrug because an annual Call of Duty release is one of the most sure things in gaming. The least they can do in the meantime is do their best to innovate and pray that they get noticed more than the previous year.
