Call of Duty

A bit of background

I love playing games on max difficulty. It feels like that’s the way the game was intended to be experienced, and at the end of the game I feel much more satisfied on a harder difficulty, and learn a lot more.

A great example is the Arkham series. When I started Asylum on the highest difficulty, I didn’t feel like Batman, I felt like a chump. The combat isn’t hard though, so as I played I got better and better, and by the end of the game I became Batman. When I went on to the next games, as the combat was mostly the same, even the hardest difficulty felt easy. When this happens, I usually get incredibly bored with the game as there’s no challenge, but as the ease came from my own hard work, it felt like I overcame a challenge and then the next one was to master and 100% the game.

Call of Duty

I started this wanting to play the latest CoD games, but my gamer blood™ won’t let me jump in the middle of a series without remembering the previous ones. I’ve been playing everything recently by release order. Yeah, it is a chore. I tried watching a game movie on youtube first.

A few years back I had this acquaintance who would mostly “play” games by watching them on youtube and I found it, in some way, for a lack of a better word, offensive that they’d claim to have played the game or to understand something about it. It felt like someone trying to “fake join” a hobby to be one of the cool kids.

I don’t know why, I now think it was silly, though when I tried watching CoD 1’s game movie, I felt like this won’t work and I have to play the game otherwise I’d be missing something. This might just be the gamer in me pulling me to play it to not feel like a “fake” gamer, but for CoD1 for example I watched the entire thing before jumping in and playing it, and I enjoyed it so much more. Thinking back on it, I think the catalyst that convinced me to play it was that I didn’t understand what the heck happened to Captain Price, how did he die? Well, turns out it was never shown, you just got told he died when you go on the damn boat.

Call of Duty 1 and 2

Military stuff and World War II aren’t really my shtick, and to tell you the truth I never really liked shooters either. When I was young, I used to play Aliens Versus Predator and Quake with my dad, and from then on I generally played these only with other people. Games were very scarce, even pirated ones, so I would play whatever I could get my hands on and I did play a bit of quite a few shooters, but I never finished the single player of the vast majority.

I think I got into the Call of Duty games because one of my best buds really loves all things military, so I started playing these to spend some time with him. I had a really hard time with it. My bud used to think I was doing stupid stuff on purpose, but I just sucked. I can’t count the amount of times I accidentally threw a grenade instead of turning on a flashlight or meleeing someone in games.

How does this relate to CoD 1 and (mainly) 2? Well, my opinion of the games might be a bit unfair. I do think CoD 2 is a nice game, and it’s worth playing to understand the evolution of these games, but God is it hard.

CoD 1 did not have this issue. I had some frustration, but I didn’t have to repeat a mission 7+ times to finish it, and no single mission took more than half an hour tops, if even that. That did make it a lot shorter though.

The enemies didn’t feel unfair and the friendlies felt useful. When you had zergs, you’d usually have some very powerful weapon with unlimited, or more than enough ammo to take them all down.

I think you should play Call of Duty 1 if you haven’t. The shooting is not the best, but it’s fairly easy. There’s quite a few scripted moments, which are the core of CoD games, like I said it’s short, and you’ll have fun blowing up nazis! Go ahead and download it from somewhere and play it!

Call of Duty Tewwww

Impossible not to love Captain Price and

But the game is somehow worse than CoD 1.

The friendly AI seems programmed in five minutes on a napkin then implemented without testing by someone who was high on coke for three years straight. Does it shoot at enemies?

In fact, I’d say Cyril is at least more useful because he TRIES to suppress the enemies shooting at Archer or whoever he’s with, but the CoD2 AI will suppress some random dude in a corner while you’re running alone for five kilometers thinking your squad is behind you.

The most annoying moments are where they yell “Oi m8 we got ya covered make a run for it” and they keep yelling at you to run, but they’re not actually covering you and if you take two steps someone shoots your dick off. Felt like Rambo for the vast majority of the game.

At one point I was having such a hard time with a mission where Captain Price kept yelling at me to run through the battlefield because he’s “covering me”, so I decided to just turn off the volume. I immediately won the mission without any difficulties.

You know who was one AI that actually did his job?

The enemies were RUTHLESS. They would barrage you non stop and they would appear non stop. I wouldn’t have such an issue with the number if they would be there from the getgo rather than spawning in. This was probably a resource limitation of the time, but they didn’t really change that in the newer games either. That’s fine, but then why barely give you any of the good weapons during the zerg rushes?

The checkpoints really sucked. I played for 20 minutes just to be sent back to where I started, and I wasted an hour trying to get this damn sniper rifle to help me in a tougher area, but I ended up just giving up and ramboing it.

Weapons

CoD 1’s weapons all felt pretty okay, but for CoD2 there were only a few ones I could use without getting constantly raped.

The russian weapons all sucked except the SVT40 which I stuck with for the entire campaign when I could, but I guess this is pretty realistic for Russia.

For the brits I liked the LMG, though I only got it probably two or three times and I barely go to use it due to the limited ammo. Whenever I saw an ally with it though, I tried getting him killed for the ammo.

The americans had the M1 which I loved. Single fire, but no cooldown between shots and reloading was super fast. I paired this with an MP44, and I sometimes switched it for something scoped. I liked the BAR too, but I only got to play with it once.

I tried grabbing the MP44 wherever I could and a scope in general. Avoided the pistols entirely. Being a sniper in this game was very fun for a few seconds, but with the incompetent friendly AI I had to switch between sniping and covering for myself 24/7, so I didn’t get to enjoy it much.

Final thoughts

Overall the game was very frustrating, but I did have fun. I loved the scripted bits especially anything that had Macgregor in it. I think the scripted parts are where Call of Duty really shines. The AI actually worked perfectly in them, there was a lot of humor, a bunch of political commentary that didn’t feel shoehorned and felt very natural, which is a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of media nowadays.

If you play this on lower difficulties you should be fine and you should get the fun of the scripted moments and stories, the experience and understanding of these games if you’re going for a release order run or whatever intellectual curiosities you might have about it, but stay away from the hard mode unless you’re a true gamer™. It might be a “git gud” issue, but it took me double the time it took to finish CoD 1. The only reason I didn’t switch off it is because I’m stubborn.