It’s been exactly a month since Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was released, and once the shimmering new graphics and the star power effect of Kevin Spacey have worn off…what exactly are we left with?
The positive critical reception led me to believe that this time the endless and repetitive series had finally done something new. Unfortunately nothing about this game is new and everything it does has been done better elsewhere. Changes to the formula are definitely more significant this year, but it’s only really an aesthetic change, with a few minor additions to the gameplay. It’s great that Call of Duty has a solid foundation to fall back on, but this has stifled creativity and the developers’ willingness to really try new things, instead of pretending to under the guise of a change of setting. What the series needs is real innovation, not gimmicks.
Returning to the series after three or so years really emphasised how much games have changed and how Call of Duty hasn’t. The game is lifeless and linear to a point that almost makes the experience worthless; just a bad movie with button prompts. Nothing you do matters. These things stand out after playing The Last of Us or Wolfenstein: The New Order. I still had fun, but it isn’t an experience that’s aged well and the minor changes did nothing to fix that.The big addition can be whittled down to future tech we’ve already seen in Crysis and Titanfall. A bare bones and ultimately pointless upgrade system has been forced in to compete with every other game with a forced upgrade system. Kevin Spacey was hired in an attempt to get respect, just like Beyond: Two Souls tried with Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. It seems to have worked as most critics seem to be loving it. It’d be nice if we had higher standards.
I’m not going into the intricacies of the story, or nuances of the characters, because there’s nothing notable to be said. Read any review of any Call of Duty game since 2007 and you’ll know how it is. It does its best with dramatic narration that tries to be meaningful and deep, but it lacks direction or purpose and fails to have a point. Advanced Warfare is a more refined, slicker version, but still ends up being beneath even a Michael Bay movie in terms of depth, meaning, character development and interesting narrative.
I don’t remember there being so many quick time events in previous games. The short campaign is full of them and while the infamous Press F to Pay Respects is the worst example, it’s not an anomaly. It’s a game full of awkward moments that emphasise how restricted it is and how hard it’s trying to force what it believes is maturity and sophistication into the experience. The infamous press X scene is also notable because you can walk around that small funeral and stare at the motionless people all waiting for you to press F. If you stop doing what the game wants you to do, the game falls apart. It shows how binary and simple the Call of Duty approach to gameplay is and how little trust they have in the player to do anything for themselves.
While the PC version is an improvement over previous games in the series, there are still many issues that wouldn’t be forgiven in a less popular series. Examples of this are oversized gun models, inability to change FOV in single-player and an abundance of downright ugly textures. It pales in comparison to competitors when it comes to visual fidelity, performance and basic PC features.
Scenes from Call of Duty 4 are still stuck in my head, but apart from that my memories from the series are almost non-existent. Why is this? Why can I remember far more about any movie I watch, any book I read, no matter how boring I find it? How can a big budget, incredibly popular and well received video game series be so forgettable? In my opinion it’s context. The world, story and characters make my experiences memorable. Alien: Isolation put me into its world in a way no other medium could. It embraced the all the strengths of the medium, provided more than Call of Duty has ever offered, more than just limited interaction and explosions.
Call of Duty games have a story and setting, but they do nothing to immerse you in the world. Everything about it is clearly manufactured solely to get you from one set piece to the next, characters never seem like real human beings, just enemies to shoot and allies to praise you after missions. You are a one man army and a mindless killing machine. Not a part of the world, as the world itself isn’t convincing enough to make that possible. An early mission has you rescuing the president and during extraction you’re told to hide as a patrol moves on, totally unaware of your presence. You can choose to just gun down these people though and while the game does acknowledge your choice, it’s never impactful in any way. Nothing you do really matters.
I abandoned the series for a while because it’s impoverished, stuck in its ways and only willing to grow by emulating, but not expanding on popular features from other and in my opinion better, games. Creativity and innovation are nowhere to be found. It’s slick, big budget action, crippled by its unwillingness to move away from a tired formula and trying desperately to distract you with minor changes taken straight from other games. It’s just a shame that the series hasn’t really given us anything unique or interesting since 2007, as it’s where a lot of people look to see what video games are and have to offer. It shouldn’t be selling so many copies and getting such a positive reception for releasing the same experience ever year. More time seems to be spent coming up with new ways to get money from you, than making a better video game.
It’d be nice to just ignore Call of Duty and focus on how great smaller titles like The Walking Dead are doing with their focus on interactive narrative and being more than just a bunch of mechanics. Yet even with such a popular license it’s far behind the popularity of Call of Duty or Angry Birds. Even the disappointingly inconsistent TV show is given more acknowledgement and respect. We’re still focusing on playing with soldiers in linear corridors. I hope that changes soon.
Casual players need to branch out to other genres, other experiences. Games should be for everyone. There should be more available for people interested in an interactive narrative, but not in fantasy or sci-fi. It’d be nice if there were games I could recommend to fans of Breaking Bad or The Wire. Serious drama that uses the interactivity to put the player into the experience and forces them to make meaningful choices. Telltale are doing a great job, but there’s a lot of room for improvement and innovation. Whole groups of people who have no interest in experiences gaming has to offer could be enticed into the medium through mature interactive stories. Having a big actor like Kevin Spacey in Call of Duty is great, but it isn’t the series to attract House of Cards fans to gaming.
2007 was the time of the Wii and Call of Duty 4. The Wii is the console that helped bring gaming to a wider audience and Call of Duty 4 kept the core gamers happy during this transition period. I had a Wii, but it was the first console that wasn’t meant for me. It was for everyone out there that wasn’t satisfied with the current selection of games, people who didn’t know what the medium had to offer them. It brought a new audience to gaming and as I fit somewhere in between hardcore focused e-sports players and casual, games are starting to give me what I’ve always wanted.
Despite hate from the vocal minority, interactive storytelling has become a big deal. You could go back to old RPG’s, specifically Bioware games, but Telltale’s The Walking Dead was the first popular game I know of that focused solely on interactive storytelling and giving the player meaningful choices. Dear Esther and Gone Home have also been helpful, they don’t have you making meaningful choices, but they helped convince people that games don’t have to be Tetris or Call of Duty, don’t have to be focused on traditional mechanics.
We can have games focused on immersion, atmosphere, interactive storytelling with meaningful choices and character development. Those things don’t have to be forced onto a Call of Duty game, because that isn’t the only way to do things, there’s room for everything. I just wish people would give other things a chance.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is an improvement on what came before it, but not by much. Its changes are good additions to the existing formula, but do nothing to distinguish the game from the countless drab and dull military shooters that have been released for many years now. Give me something new Call of Duty. Revolutionize, innovate. Surprise me with original mechanics and storytelling.
