its crazy to me to act like the guys who made a game during the iraq war where you invade a country geographically located in iraq that actually turns out to have wmds and that insanely masturbatory ac-130 level just stumbled into making critical games about america and war while the guys who intentionally put subtext along those lines in their games are somehow the jingoist thoughtless ones. maybe the problem is that call of duty is a black box where you can read whatever you want into it
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first person shooting men games were a mistake
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the last one I played all the way through was WW2 and thatâs sorta like my last marvel movie being âAge of Ultronâ . I think Pops Ghostly has more gameplay in it
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Well thatâs not true, they rock
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Not really, or they could never figure out how to do it. It wants walls, a floor, and ceilings, or its stencil shadows gets very confused.
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that one was spectacularly bad in a like what the fuck are you doing kind of way with the ghost cowboy and whatnot but then the epic way it trivializes the Holocaust officially drove me insane
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ive never really been a fan of call of duty, ive always looked down on it, and like if you really wanna double down on those smug feelings of âthis is the worst shit everâ then call of duty ww2 is the game for you (its the only one ive played besides looking at sweaty meloni for 15 minutes)
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I never hear anyone talk about this so i am going to explain the problem with cod ww2âs portrayal of the holocaust actually. This was made by a 3rd, even more incompetent group of developers.
So your main character is haunted by his ghost cowboy brother because he like let him die during a hunting trip because child main character COULDNâT TAKE THE SHOT and the way this character arc is resolved is by you going to a concentration camp to look for your Jewish friend, who has been captured. For some reason, they base the next series of events on a real guy who was infinitely more heroic than anything portrayed in the game:
On their first day in Stalag IX-A, January 27, 1945âas Germanyâs defeat was clearly approachingâCommandant Siegmann ordered Edmonds to tell only the Jewish-American soldiers to present themselves at the next morningâs assembly so they could be separated from the other prisoners.
Instead, Edmonds ordered all 1,275 POWs to assemble outside their barracks. The German commandant rushed up to Edmonds in a fury, placed his pistol against Edmondsâs head and demanded that he identify the Jewish soldiers under his command. Instead, Edmonds responded, âWe are all Jews here,â and told the commandant that if he wanted to shoot the Jews he would have to shoot all of the prisoners. He then warned the commandant that if he harmed any of Edmondsâ men, the commandant would be prosecuted for war crimes after the conflict endedâsince the Geneva Conventions required prisoners to give only their name, rank, and serial number; religion was not required. The commandant backed down. Edmondsâ actions are credited with saving up to 300 Jewish-American soldiers from possible death.
So what happens in the game? Oh uh your squadmate tells a Nazi FUCK YOU and then they shoot some other Jewish soldiers, and your main characterâs traumatic childhood is resolved by you shooting a Nazi war criminal before he can execute your friend while ghost cowboyâs voice tells you to take the shot. The guy youâre shooting is based on a real Nazi, who in reality was recruited by the Allies irl to fight the Soviets and never had to face any consequences for running a concentration camp. They made a game where the Holocaust is a platform to resolve your personal trauma and it bastardizes the story of a real guy who actually did something to save some people. Really nice.
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Some Call of Duty moments that live in my memory forever:
- MW2âs No Russian, just the absolute most vile level in a shooter, all shock value no redeeming qualities.
- Honestly just all of MW2, itâs a really obnoxiously evil game and on top of that it doubles down on killing the protagonist every few chapters which is cringe and stupid.
- BO2âs blowing up Menendezâs disabled sister with a grenade, shown as a âwhoopsie we thought he was in the room too!â moment. This is at least depicted as unequivocally evil and unforgivable and also you get a fun sequence as Menendez where you run around in rage mode gibbing americans with a shotgun.
- Ghosts explaining how your buddy turned against America as âhe was converted through jungle tortures and toxins by those Brazilian savagesâ
- Advanced Warfare âthereâs a great junior high just down the roadâ. You donât say, Kevin Spacey?
- Infinite Warfare having a moment right before the plot kicks off where Brian Bloomâs self-insert openly fantasizes about how cool it would be if the military just ran the world, shortly before the antagonist with flimsy motivations shows up and orbital bombards the city.
- Infinite Warfareâs ending level where each character has to die in increasingly contrived ways to fulfill the mission
- MW:Remakeâs level where youâre a literal child being chased around by a burly Russian man threatening to rape you
- MW:Remake rewriting history so the highway of Death was perpetrated by the Russians
All of the most shockingly negative things about Call of Duty that I remember come from Infinity Ward and specifically Brian Bloom, the hackfraud that he is.
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i think its interesting how no russian is like mario 1-1 for people under 25. i hear it referenced in music so so so often
brian bloom should have just stayed in oz forever
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Modern Warfare 1 was the only time I was ever at all interested in the series and I thought it was very smartly done in a way that was obviously fragile and could easily have fallen off afterwards. I honestly thought this was a more common experience
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Fucked up that you mentioned infinite warfare but not the hilariously tawdry final level where solemn music plays the entire time as your entire supporting cast sacrifices themselves one after another in increasingly violent ways so you can finish the game by killing yourself as well
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When the original mw3 came out my dad ran upstairs to get me because he wanted to show me the cutscene where you play as the child on vacation in Paris when the biological weapon goes off and obliterates you lmfao. He was so excited.
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Whats really funny is the COD campaigns are incredibly expensive to make and take multiple AAA studios but have to be in the game in order to players to feel the titles have value, even if a fraction of them actually play and complete the campaign.
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Itâs a shame too because the more campaigns you play the more radicalized you become against call of duty as a concept. Thereâs so much shit you run into that nobody talks about. Whenâs the last time you heard someone talk about how the Pointe Du Hoc defense level in cod2 inexplicably ends with Ronald Reagan giving a speech about Normandy lol. The way the text of order 227 is completely made up in cod1 to make Stalin sound more insaneâŚlike he needed any helpâŚitâs amazing.
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Iâve only played Call of Duty 2 and I remember it being very loud mostly. Appropriately unpleasant.
The No Russian level would be great if you were playing an actual terrorist instead of an undercover good guy. Theyâre just so close to this ideal game where you play a spirit of battle possessing various warriors over the world completely disregarding sides or ideology or morals, you hijack the plane, you save the president from the collapsing world trade center, youâre a child soldier, youâre a Russian drone operator. Ah shit wait thatâs Marathon 3 again.
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Yes!! Yes!!! I love this shit. Thereâs several stalker mods where you can turn on a feature that when you die it makes you possess the nearest body regardless of faction or whatever and you just keep playing. Itâs so goodâŚgive us more fps games where you feel like an anonymous spirit forced to participate in endless battleâŚ
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Kinda sounds like passing the ball in a sports game.
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Thereâs been a few times where I like hear footsteps from behind, a shotgun, then my screen goes black and when it fades back in im looking at my own dead body holding the gun that killed me. its awesome every time
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I think the reason CODs are the way they are is because in working on them nobody ever questions the mission or is critical of leadership, because the gameâs production feels like an inevitable freight train and also build on a fragile house of cards, so saying The Emperor Has No Clothes would be very expensive and problematic for a lot of people. Itâs not a place where you want to stick out, lest you get painted as not being with the mission and therefore a liability. The only way to survive is to just never question anything that happens, which I think is why a lot of the stories do not make any sense.
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