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The Long Road for Call of Duty 3

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the war-is-a-shiny-hell dept.

All this week, 1up has been running an extended feature on Call of Duty 3. Despite the sometimes tired WWII genre, the CoD series has managed to keep things fairly fresh in their continued exploration of the FPS' greatest war. Articles include details on the making of the game, a look back at past installments in the series, and a discussion with Creative Director Richard Farrelly on the jump to next-gen consoles.

3 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Re:We need another World War... by amliebsch · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I think it's more likely that Vietnam simply offers a less epic scope. It was a proxy war, and the enemies just lacked that inherent evil awfulness that the Nazis had, and our motives were less than clear, reducing the "good vs. evil" dynamic that makes for compelling storylines. Also, WWII was on a huge scale, with practically every conceivable form of fighting was represented, and over a huge variety of landscapes and cities, giving designers lots of material to work with. In comparison, Vietnam battle types would be limited to infantry squad fighting and patrol boating, all taking place in either jungle or rice paddies. Finally, WWII was the last "total war" we have fought, with truly massive battles and relatively straightfoward strategy, and clear victories and losses. The Vietnam battles would be and endless series of skirmishes without any clear goals or much way to define "winning" or "losing", and I can see how that could easily be boring or frustrating to play.

    That said, it would be a different kind of FPS if they did it right - the player as an American commander in VietNam, where you have to make ethical decisions about who to fight (with lots of noncombatants or ambiguously aligned personnel), what villages to destroy, and what kind of force to use, all of which affect your ability to achieve some kind of overally strategic goal, like territorial pacification.

    --
    If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
  2. Call of Duty Dead For Long-Standing Fans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After the screwing that the long-standing CoD community got with CoD2, I think that a lot of people are going to think twice about purchasing another Call of Duty or Infinity Ward title. Infinity Ward made a conscious decision to dumb down their multiplayer (because of the XBox360), kiss up to Microsoft, and release an extremely flawed multiplayer game really got under the skin of most of the die-hard fans. While the single-player was excellent, it wasn't enough to offset the travesty which the multiplayer fanbase got stuck with. Patch 1.4 and most of the issues still aren't fixed.

    It didn't help that the "all-new from-the-ground-up" Call of Duty 2 was actually just Call of Duty 1 with a slightly upgraded rendering engine and dumbed-down interface. Serious bugs, including server-crashing exploits that were known from the original game were all present when CoD2 released ("all new", huh?) - and code was found that indicated the fixes were bypassed to rush the product to market. It didn't help that they released the multiplayer without ANY cheat protection. It didn't help that Grant Collier (President of IW) pissed all over the mapping and modding community.

    While the guys at Treyarch are great, the decision to go console-only on this title isn't going to make their PC-based fans any happier.

    Grant Collier and Infinity Ward need a serious reality check - you don't survive long in the gaming industry by spitting on you customer base, especially when they're who put you on the map in the first place. While they can trot out whatever server stats they care to, it's a known fact that CoD2 is withering on the vine (something like 1% of available server slots are actually in use).

    Most of the CoD players I know (and I know 100s from League and clan play) will never purchase another IW product or any further CoD titles. Best of luck to Treyarch, but Infinity Ward can rot for all that most serious players care.

    1. Re:Call of Duty Dead For Long-Standing Fans by Kazzahdrane · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Remember that not everyone plays games online, I enjoyed CoD2 and haven't gone online with it even once. OTOH, CoD2 is still the #1 most played 360 game on Xbox Live, so don't pretend that it's "withering on the vine".

      Sounds to me like you feel personally voilated by Infinity Ward and have decided that everyone hates them as much as you do. Not so, certainly 360-wise there is a lot of CoD2 love around.