Enough is enough. A resident fanboy is finally venting about the most frustrating game of all time.
I speak of course about Modern Warfare 2 (MW2). It seemed so long ago that November 10 rolled out, relieving gamers of a Juggernaut-infested Call of Duty 4. Little did we know that 6 months later, we would be in the proverbial gamer hell. To use a stupid pun, if Dante's Inferno wanted to really gross people out, the developers would have had Dante fight through a horde of campers to reach his beloved Beatrice.
Before I start, I just want to set the record straight on some stuff. If you see me playing this game, it will be with friends. I don't care about my Kill/Death Ratio (KDR), I don't care about doing well, I just try to have fun with friends. I have tried to convince them to play something else, but to no avail. Please don't think me a hypocrite. I hate what has happened to this game, but I also want to get better. Secondly, I am an avid youtuber, and I subscribe to many channels of gameplay commentators who make money posting their videos. As such, I have many different perspectives to hear from. I can get a feel for how this game is affecting people who genuinly try to do well and have fun with this game. Enough of that stuff, though. Let's rant.
There are a multitude of entities to blame for Modern Warfare 2's blatant shortcomings. Here's my take on each one.
The Media Surpised I'm sure. Yes the gaming news networks are to blame in part for overhyping the game. This was obviously what both Infinity Ward and Activsion wanted, to spread the word about how amazing the game was going to be, but it has ultimately led to embaressment for both parties. If the game had not been as hyped as it was, I declare we would not have as much frustration about every little thing that bugged us. Now, instead of a "minor problem" in the system, every glitch, overpowered weapon, and problem becomes another line in an increasingly large checklist of failure. Lesson to learn: Don't talk shit unless you can back it up.
Infinity Ward (IW) Wha-huh?! After I defended them in my previous post?! Yes. As much as it pains me to say, if a game has deep problems not only at it's core gameplay mechanics but also it's online support, someone has to pay. Call of Duty 4 (COD4) had it's problems, believe me. But they seem like cakewalks compared to Modern Warfare 2's problems. Noob tubes in COD4 were annoying, cheap, and lame. Rather than seriously re-evaluate them, IW added Danger Close and One Man Army, ensuring Noob Tubers a place in "Fuck you" Hall of Fame. In COD4, the knife was a method of last resort, a means to kill when bullets weren't fast enough. In MW2, there's Commando, the equivalent of the Halo Sword Lunge. You want a lag jump? How about one that's unstoppable at 10 feet or closer. It seems tragic that IW didn't even listen to the community at all when it came to what it wanted, opting instead to make a more "noob-friendly game". Add on top of it hands-down the WORST online support in the history of video games. No online beta, no quick fixes to the millions of glitches that pop up every week, no easy way to play with friends right away, no response to the outbursts the community has about the game at all, and on top of all that, the new map pack doesn't even work correctly. Robert Bowling, get your shit together. Say what you will about Halo, but Bungie would never allow this.
Activision Well duh. These fuckers perpetuate the shituation (not a typo) even more. In the pursuit of making billions of dollars, the company fucks over millions of gamers. Demanding a whopping 15 dollars for their new map pack (consisting of 3 new maps and 2 COD4 rehashes), these sonsobitches are greedy. You may not think that is a whole lot, but when you consider that most map packs for other games (like Halo and WaW) are only 10 dollars and offer a shitload more than that. Activision has dug itself deep into MW2, and it won't let go until it sucks every last dollar away. It's as if Activision is a kid whose found his dad's gun, and has magically learned how to use it to rob every gamer of fun and money.
The Community The Matrix itself. It seems strange, but don't forget that most of the glitches in the game are found one way or another by the community. Now some people will choose to ignore the glitch until it is fixed. But the OTHERS. Oh, the OTHERS. What makes people exploit broken mechanics in the game to cheat their way to victory and then lord it over other players as if they had been beaten fairly? Short answer: people are assholes. But they aren't the only ones. Campers, emotionally incapable of dying in a video game, must hide in corners in order to win, because if they don't, they will spend an eternity in KDR Hell. Sadly, the worst people are the people I play with. These are the people who go into any game, Team Deathmatch, Domination, or even Search & Destroy, with only one goal: boost their KDR. No capping flags, no helping teammates, and no communication. What's worse is the lack of party chat in most games, forcing me to listen to other teams talk shit as my team silently runs around, going apeshit for kills.
Wow. That made me feel better. Anyway, if you have anything you'd like to add or debate, leave a comment and vote in the poll. Feedback is appreciated. Go play some game other than the clusterfuck "the biggest entertainment release of all time" has become. :D
Wow. I actually DISAGREE with a lot you said here. Now, before I start, let me say I acknowledge that you had much more first hand experience than me with the game. But I do feel I have a lot of experience with the gaming community as a whole.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I'll start with what I agree with. Certainly the media had a part to do with this. Hype created exaggeration of the good aspects of the game and a hiding of the bad parts. This had a lot to do with how much the game sold, too. Surely a game that sells this well could not be bad. It's a mentality that is in the minds of everyone, even us, and it's hard for anyone in the gaming media to admit that the biggest selling game of all time is a shitfest.
Activision, in my honest opinion, is much more to blame than IW. We can see by many examples not only with IW but with many other developers under the Activision name that Activision pressures their devs. They, more than any other publisher, bully their devs to get what they want. They wanted MW2 in November of last year. They needed it to be out, regardless of issues or opinions IW may have had. It is Activision's fault there wasn't a beta, not IW's. Publishers allow these things to happen, not devs. It is Activision's fault that they feel they need to pump out a COD game every year without a need for troubleshooting.
IW is a great company, and I will defend their efforts in making a good game. Let's remember that MW2 consists of multiplayer AND singleplayer, and I feel they did a fantastic job in singleplayer. I also felt that spec-ops is very underrated, and is definitely a superior option IMO to matchmaking with friends. They know how to make games, and they are talented. I really do believe that Activision rushed them to make this game. If you look at all the glitches in the game, they are all things that would have been spotted had the dev been given a longer time to troubleshoot. But the fact that the game had to come out in Nov. created such a rushed feeling. You can see that with a company like Blizzard (which is ironically partnered with Activision. LOL.), time is not an issue, and every game is quality. Starcraft lasted a whole 12+ years. I really don't feel IW is that much to blame here.
Sorry. character limit FTW.
ReplyDeleteBy far the worst culprit of these problems is the community, and I agree with you that they do make it worse by exploitation of glitches. At the same time, I think rational gamers sometimes ask too much. It is annoying that people exploit these things, and that is certainly grounds for complaint. But in regards to things that have been around since COD4 like "noob-tubers", gamers need to learn that these people are not going to dissapear. There will always be assholes on games, and there is no way to get rid of it. There is going to be people that exploit the bad parts of games. How many times have people used glitches in Halo 3 to get their way? There are a TON of assholes on Halo and every other multiplayer game, and saying that it's the games fault that these people might be here is somewhat plausible with MW2, but debateable. IMHO, it isn't the glitches that attract the assholes, it's the assholes that make people notice the glitches. The glitches wouldn't have even been a big deal if they weren't being exploited by assholes, and unfortunately, it's impossible for something not to be exploited. Every game will have problems, and although MW2 is an extreme case, these people will always be around and they will always find ways of being assholes in games. There is no way of getting around it. Learning to enjoy games anyway is the best we as gamers can do. Friends obviously contribute to this.
One way I think IW could have improved this is if they made a system similar to Halo where you have the ranked matches and the social matches. The super hardcore who care about KDR's and bunk like that tend to gravitate towards ranked because that's where skill comes into effect. Social is much more laid back, and although there are still idiots trying to boost their rank, they know social isn't the best way to get there. Social, and even specific playlists such as Action Sack, are specifically for the casual, cater to the casual, and are made of games and maps made by the casual. MW2 could of benefited much more from something like this.
Okay, I'm done. Sorry this was so long. But I really did like this blog. Keep it up. This is definitely one of your best.