Ok, so like a lot of other gamers out there, I was really excited about the new Call of Duty game. Before we got our new TV, I was seriously considering asking Santa to bring it to me for Christmas.
Since then, my opinion has changed a little.
First of all I heard the single player campaign is really short, as in 'five hours' short. Considering I'm still playing and finding new things in Fallout 3 after putting almost 80 combined hours into it, sixty bucks for just five hours of gameplay (and that's gameplay with little replay value) isn't worth it to me.
Of course, the real reason you buy Modern Warfare 2 is for the multiplayer…but as you can probably guess, I have a few problems with that as well.
First of all, after my experience with Call of Duty: World at War, buying a shooter purely for its multiplayer content feels a lot like signing up for a subscription service. For example, World at War had no matchmaking option for games with just the core maps or just the map packs you own…meaning that if you haven't shelled out for the extra map packs, it gets extremely frustrating to get into a game.
You start matchmaking, you wait while it finds an open group, you join the group, you wait for more players to join, then the countdown starts, you go to a loading screen…then you're instantly thrown out of the game and taken directly to Xbox Live Marketplace because you don't have map-pack three.
If you're playing with a group of friends, especially if you only know them through Xbox Live, you quickly start to feel like a complete dick because when that happens, it's not just you that has to quit, but the other nine guys in your party have to quit as well….and most of them have shelled out for the extra map packs. Also, if you're like me, you finally cave in, pay almost sixty dollars for the downloadable content…then the new 'latest and greatest' game comes out and then even though you have the downloadable content, you can't get a game because no-one's playing it any more.
When you can expect a twenty dollar map pack every other month, it's a bit of a piss-take when you spend sixty bucks on a game, then within a month of buying it (or in some cases, less than a week), you have to spend another twenty bucks to keep playing.
However, the absolute worst part is that playing online means you have to play with other people.
I've talked about this before, so I won't go into too much detail, but there is a certain type of gamer who will treat any game like a second job, play for eighteen hours a day and work out every single glitch or exploit that allows them to win, totally regardless of whether their 'play-style' is any fun or not…and it only takes one of these gamers in a full group of 32 to completely spoil the game.
For example, think of the kind of mind that would a) work this out and b) consider it to be a fair and fun way to play the game:
Basically, someone playing MW2 discovered that if you equip a grenade, pull the pin but then switch to your javelin missile launcher without throwing it… when you die, the grenade goes off and you'll fire your javelin… which results in a massive explosion that will take out any other players within 30 feet. In other words, you can blow yourself up but take five or six of the opposing team with you and there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
For the non-gamers out there, think of it this way: Imagine playing in a tennis tournament and after your opponent wins the first point, he just sits down and refuses to serve. When you ask him what's going on, he points to the rule book where there's some old rule from 1967 that states that if the game isn't over after an hour, the player in the lead wins by default. When you tell him he's being retarded and unfair, he also points out that there's no rule that says he can't take as long as he likes with his serve.
In other words, the game's not going to be any fun for either of you, he's not actually beating you at anything, but after a long and boring hour, he technically 'wins'.
That's your average opponent on Xbox Live.
2 comments:
I played ODST online for the first time yesterday. They use the same maps from Halo.
And it was an absolute JOY to play with the other people. They were mature and sportsmanlike. Several of us partied up quickly. I commented aloud on the lack of douches, and one guy said he noticed the same thing.
A game or two later, a douche joined, and we overwhelmingly douched him back until he shut his yap. After the game he talked smack, and we all smacked him down again. He left with his tail between his legs.
The funny thing? Shortly after that, he asked me to play Halo3 via Xbox invite. I put him on my ignore list.
Other than that though, it was AWESOME.
That happens...but it's rare.
I've done the same thing with World at War, played one game and had an excellent time, only to be confronted by wall to wall douchebags in the next game.
It's why I don't like the amount of map-packs they release. I started playing with the MGC, had more fun playing multiplayer than I ever had before...but then found myself getting more and more embarrassed when I had to get the whole party to quit matchmaking over and over because I didn't have the maps.
Then, of course, I dropped sixty bucks on all three map packs...then MW2 came out.
Post a Comment