Battlefield over Call of Duty

I haven’t posted anything in a while so I thought I’d talk about something that is kind of important in games right now and will be later on this year. Lately I’ve been a lot more interested in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I bought the game when it first came out and I immediately fell in love, I played a lot of COD near the end of MW2 and pretty much played COD over Battlefield most of the time, only going back for a game or two. Now I’m back in and really excited for Battlefield 3 and not so excited for MW3.

For me it’s the gameplay, I do enjoy arena games like Halo and COD but I love the open battlefields and realistic gameplay that is showcased in Battlefield. I understand that games like COD may take more gun skill to drop opponents and complete objectives but in Battlefield you have to work together, I mean it’s like real war! You have to revive to keep ticket numbers up, give ammo, spot people etc. There are a lot of games that I want for example, L.A. Noire, Portal 2 and games that haven’t come out yet like Skyrim but I haven’t been feeling the same way about MW3. The engine has hardly been upgraded since COD4 and I’m not a graphics whore! But seriously, the Frostbite engine has was upgraded from Bad Company 1 to Bad Company 2 and now they are upgrading it again! That shows that DICE aren’t looking for a game to crap out every year whether it’s ready or not, they want to take their sweet time making a quality game. Who knows, with Sledgehammer helping Infinity Ward on the campaign and Raven Software takes care of the multiplayer, we could see a great experience in online gaming, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

I know it sounds like I’m crapping on the Call of Duty franchise which I am and not very subtly but I do love Call of Duty no matter how much it angers me sometimes. In fact I am getting into it a little more thanks to Machinima Respawn posting competitive gamebattle matches and the Call of Community which just passed really got my hyped up to play Call of Duty.

I’m not sure if I’ll get MW3 but I’m not going to say no straight away. I know if something sells why stop selling it but I hope Activision one day see that enough is enough and do something about the franchise.

MW3 Wishlist

My first Call of Duty game was World at War so I started when COD still ran with basic 3, 5 and 7 killstreaks. When MW2 if you sucked nut sack you were left watching kill cams over and over and over again. I wasn’t that great on World at War, I had mixed results in MW2 and I only started to get mostly consistent scores in Black Ops. MW2 was the beginning of the killstreaks, Infinity Ward finally released the potential of the real gamers in the community by allowing them to get killstreaks up to 25 kills. I was very inconsistent in MW2 so I pretty much ran the whole time with 3, 5 and 7. When Black Ops came out the made it so you couldn’t unlock killstreaks with other killstreaks e.g. you couldn’t use your Predator Missile to get a double and unlock your Harrier Strike. Personally I really like the new system, you can only unlock killstreaks with your gun, grenades, melee and equipment. It’s a lot more fair and it doesn’t create ridiculous amounts of death and destruction.

Black Ops might be the most balanced Call of Duty so far but it does have its slight problems. The randomised scoped shots with a sniper is extremely annoying and I don’t even quick scope. If you don’t know what that is, Treyarch made it so for a small amount of time when you first scope in your shot could go anywhere in the hip fire sights to bypass quick scoping. In my opinion they’ve made it more unrealistic. One thing that everyone hates, except for the douches who do this is, stacking up RC-XDs then spamming them, one after the other. I recently had a match where I got killed by the same guy with both his RC-XDs in a row. You’re pretty much guaranteed to get a kill with an RC-XD, maybe 80-90% of the time. Everyone has the period where you use RC-XDs and I pretty much got a kill with nearly every RC-XD  I had. Obviously I came to my senses and put 8, 9 and 11 on. I hate RC-XDs and I know people are going to use them, especially low level players but it really annoys me when a prestige 15 player stacks up remote controlled cars filled with explosives and obliterates me on an 8 killstreak. With Hardline all a noob needs to do is get 2 kills! 2 kills! And for bad player who most likely isn’t getting high killstreaks and dying a lot is going to stack up loads of them and just mess the other team up!

Treyarch have done a pretty good job at making the game balanced and fair but if you can spam something so much it makes the player consider stopping playing the game then there is a serious problem. Make RC-XDs like a 5 killstreak or something! At least the stacking will stop a little bit. All I wish for in MW3 is that they keep the balanced game and increase the amount of killstreaks, if I’m having a good day I’ll get blackbird, chopper and dogs in most of my matches. I don’t usually go higher than a 15 killstreak but it would be nice to have the option. I hope Infinity Ward don’t go over the top with the killstreaks like in MW2, not only do they need to keep gun damage balanced but they need to keep the killstreaks balanced, in MW2 you could have Harriers and Pave Low absolutely raping everyone on the server. Another huge thing I would like to see is killstreaks only by weapons etc. If not it’s going to be death and destruction and that can be fun but not when it goes over the top. Keeping the COD currency would be nice, that was widely accepted in Black Ops and I would be pretty pissed off if it were to disappear. More guns would always be nice, especially submachine guns. Maybe it’s just me but most of the subs in Black Ops aren’t that great, the best are probably, AK47u, Mac 11, MPL, PM63 and the Kiparis, there are other good ones but those ones are the ones that are the most consistent for me.

Battlefield 3 will most likely blow MW3 out of the water because all CODs are the same even if MW3 learns from past mistakes. As long as they keep it balanced and fair and try not to underestimate killstreaks to avoid stacking and spamming then it’ll be a better version of the same game they’ve been making for the past 10 years or so.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

A lot of gamers whether hardcore or just recreational gamers will say that COD 4 is one game that you must play. I first played the COD 4 campaign a couple of weeks ago and it turned out to be my second favourite COD campaign, Black Ops being my favourite. It just felt so much more realistic.

Obviously I was a little confused at some parts of MW2 because I had never played the first Modern Warfare but this one filled in all the pieces. I managed to knock out the whole campaign in one sitting in an afternoon, determined to get it finished. Whilst playing I encountered the best Call of Duty mission I have ever played, sniping with Captain MacMillan. MW2 was epic, I loved the airport massacre mission just as much as the next guy and I love Ghost and the rest of the characters but the overall atmosphere of COD 4 captured me.

As soon as I completed the campaign I hopped over to multiplayer and had pretty good results. My friend previously mentioned that the snipers were immense, just like the rest of the community. I’m not a Call of Duty sniper, I can only snipe on Battlefield, so having good scores with a sniper in Call of Duty was a big deal for me. My best scores were with the MP5 and the M4 Carbine.

At first I was surprised that I hadn’t come across any hacking, turns out I just had to play the game a little more. Pretty much as soon as I came across the first floating enemy I took the game out of the disc tray, not only floating enemies but people advertising their COD hacking websites at the side of the screen.

Finally I can see why most fans still think COD 4 is still one of the best Call of Duty games