THE CALL OF DUTY SERIES: GOING FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH?
Treyarch are trying their hand at making a Call of Duty this year and surprisingly there hasn’t been a lot of hype surrounding it as far as I have seen. From what I can find the game will be set towards the end of the Cold War, which was from 1985-1991. Of course, all will be revealed at E3 but I thought I might get in my two cents about what I want to see in this new installment to the COD franchise.
1. Custom Classes in Campaign
"Imagine doing this with a minigun"
Custom classes have been a huge success in multiplayer part of previous COD games. In Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 and 2, the campaign allowed you to take whatever weapon you wanted and it meant that you could get comfortable with a particular weapon – making the learning curve for the game a lot less steep and a lot more enjoyable. So there is no reason for COD not to follow suit. If I want to sneak into a enemy base with a minigun then I should be able to.
2. Emblem Explanations
In Modern warfare 2 you had an emblem over your gamertag and whenever you did something like complete a challenge or level up you would unlock a new one. At the time you would know what you got it for, but a week, a month, or even a year later you look at the emblem and say, “how did I get that?” My idea is once inside the emblem selection screen that underneath the emblem selected or at the bottom of the screen should be a sentence on how you unlocked it – like when you get achievements there is an explanation on how you obtained it.
3. Prestige Mode
"I love the smell of napalm in the mornin'…"
This seriously needs to be fixed or scrapped in its current form. It was improved in MW2 but not perfect and there is still a lot of work to be done on it. For those not in the know, when you reach level 70 you are given the opportunity to enter “Prestige mode”. What happens is that all weapon attachments you’ve unlocked are relocked, and in order to unlock them again you need to complete the challenges again. Doesn’t seem too bad right? You’ve done it before, you could do it again – well the requirements to complete challenges double and there are no new attachments to gain just the ones you had before. So what’s the trade off? What does one get for having to unlock their hard-earned attachments all over again? Some shiny new emblems and an extra custom class slot. Seriously not worth it in my opinion. Either make prestige mode more worth my time or set it as a separate lobby, kind of like social and ranked game lobby’s in Halo 3. That way all the hardcore players are in one lobby and those of us who just want to have a good time can be in another one.
4. Golden Guns
In the first Modern Warfare game once you had completed all the challenges for a particular weapon type (e.g. completed all challenges for the all assault rifles), you would unlock the golden skin for one of the weapons in that category. It was scrapped in MW2, much to my anger, and it needs to come back in Black Ops but with a few changes. Instead of unlocking it for one weapon by completing the challenges of all the other weapons as well, make it a reward for completing all the challenges for that particular weapon. It would be easier to get (which I think is why it was scrapped for MW2, it was too hard and very few bothered) and it looks super cool. Also have the golden skin for all the weapons and not just one per category. There are those out there who will say that it does nothing for the weapon like unlocking a red dot sight would. This is true but unlocking the other skins did nothing for the weapons performance-wise either yet there are those who spend hours trying to obtain them. Aesthetically it looks good and that’s all there is to it.
5. Character Customization
I suppose this links back to custom classes. If you have a cool weapon you want a cool looking guy to wield it. This may be a bit difficult in multiplayer but in the campaign there is no excuse. You don’t need to change the character’s face or how he expresses himself but you could change his armor and tattoos, like how the Rainbow Six: Vegas series or the upcoming “Alpha Protocol” game handle it. It’s not a new thing to have in a game, and it makes the experience more enjoyable. In fact you could unlock stuff and put it on just for bragging rights like Recon armor in Halo 3. Having armor that changes the performance of how a character moves and how much damage one could take would add a whole extra level of strategy to the game. Having to think about what armor the opponent has and how much ammo you have to defeat them would increase the learning curve but that just means you spend more time practicing then before and ultimately it is not a huge step.
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As always, E3 will reveal all and until then all we can do is just sit back and play MW2. Not a bad way to pass the time if I do say so myself…
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