Review :: Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2

Some spoilers below.

After playing Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2, I still feel the same amount of apathy that permeates the "Call of Duty Problem." (Go back! Read it! Shameless plug!) When I sit down, I know I'm about to enter a long, linear shooter that is going to thrust me through many 'exciting' environments in an effort to give me the 'coolest' experience possible. The more I play Call of Duty games, the more I'm convinced that they're not going to change. It's the same principle with the television show, '24:' watch one season, and you get the gist, the basic formula (and the enjoyment along the way). Watch any more seasons (or play any more games) and you're in for a downhill ride of repetitious scenarios that can never seem to match the original.

CoD6: MW2 is a game defined by context: the events which are going on around you. I think that's why the original Call of Duties were so successful: never before in a game did you feel so authentically like you were part of a larger-scale war. People weren't standing around like stick figures waiting for you to talk to them--in contrast, your comrades were ducking for cover, chucking grenades, pulling each other to safety, trying to advance without you. Something was always happening, independent of your actions, and that made the world feel so much more alive, the battles so much more authentic. It was new, it was fresh, and it was exciting. Flash forward to today, and Call of Duty 6 relies on the same principles, except perhaps even more so. CoD6 continually uses the same game mechanic (or rather, only game mechanic): run into an arena of enemies, tap zoom-in to auto-aim at the baddy (at least for the console version. Maybe I would've liked it if I played it on PC), press fire, then rinse and repeat for maximum fun. What changes throughout the game, however, is the context. You shoot bad guys in the same way, except you do it in different environments: in a helicopter circling a castle, in a raft roaring down a river, in a snowmobile jumping over a ravine.
Don't get me wrong, it's good to change the context--it provides variety, new environments to switch up the game mechanics in, and new scenarios to take part in. What's disappointing, for me, however, is that the designers seem to be so focused on what's going around you, rather than on what's going on because of you. They seem to be so concentrated on providing interesting settings and scenarios--icy cliffs, burning white houses, raging rapids--that what few actions you can perform no longer have as much meaning.
When you're with the terrorists who are shooting up an airport in Russia, you're not allowed to stop the attack, shoot back, or take action; you're only allowed to view the onslaught (or participate in it, for gosh's sake) until the mission is over.
When you are an astronaut in space, you can only view the impending explosion from your static viewpoint, not influence it or try to stop it.
These scenarios are interesting to be in, but you can't really participate in them. You are sitting, watching, viewing--and the only way you can participate in the scenario (if at all) is to shoot enemies until you clear a location so that the soldiers around you can hold your hand until the next story segment.

I want my actions in a game to have meaning. I want to influence the story, be a part of it, not be a passive viewer on the sidelines. I want to stop an assassination, kill an enemy leader, successfully break down an enemy outpost, and then see the repercussions of those actions. This happens in Call of Duty somewhat, but it seems to happen less and less, especially for the current game. So many things in CoD6 currently take place independently of your actions (the terrorist massacre, the EMP missile launch, the betrayal by a certain comrade), and because of that, you are reduced to more of a viewer than a participant.
Then again, that was part of the original point of the Call of Duty games: to make you feel as if you were a small piece of an ultimately larger and global conflict. It worked, in that respect, but it feels so scaled down currently, than any actions I make don't have any meaning at all--all I can do is just kill endless waves of enemies in confined and pre-determined locations, and then watch everyone else get to do the fun, important, plot-changing stuff.

The last scene in CoD6 exemplifies what Call of Duty has now become for me, in both scope and methodology. It doesn't take the game mechanics, make you exploit them in an innovative way, or challenge you to perform your best to finish the fight. Instead, you, the player, sit and watch, and watch as your ally fights the last boss as you are helpless to participate in the fight. The game restricts you to a dying position without any movement, then literally tells you to smash your SQUARE button endlessly as a quick-time gimmick. You don't have to think, strategize, or perform--you just do what the game tells you to do. After that, the game lets you aim at the final boss with virtually no chance of missing or losing. This isn't an exercise in gaming--it's an exercise in viewing and following instructions.

Games, as a medium, are different, important, fun--whatever adjective you want--because of one main element: interactivity. Without this, it becomes a passive medium, much in the same way of film or literature, which are enjoyable on their own right, but in a different manner. What makes interactivity interesting is in the ways in which (you think) you can directly impact the game world, however small or large. What Call of Duty has progressively shifted towards is a game with many moments of action, except you are not causing the action, you are viewing it. Moments like these are exciting to be in, but don't always work as a gaming experience because there is no interaction, no feedback from the player. If Call of Duty could keep the same moments, the same level of polish, but make you, the player, the instigator of the action, then it would be a much more enjoyable game.

Creating Satisying Goals

Last week I was climbing up a gigantic piece of granite rock by the name of "Lembert Dome." This experience taught me some things, the least of which is related to game design, which is why I am referencing it.

By the time I reached the final stretch of the hike, the sun was about to set and the peak was still ahead of me. With a little help from my friends, I made it to the top, and learned some valuable lessons about goals and what it means to achieve them.

How does this apply to game-design? I would say that in order to have satisfying goals, you need three elements: Payoff, Originality, and Failure.

1: Payoff
Why do people do things? Why do you endure struggle, pain, and hardship? The obvious answer is because it will be worth it, but the end goal must be gratifying enough that it is worth the struggle. If you know the payoff will be high enough, you can endure many difficulties in order to reach it.
What's the notion behind hiking to the top of a giant dome? The 'explorer' answer is for the view--you get to a see an aerial perspective that is not available from down below. As you're climbing, in the back of your head you know that there is a great view waiting for you, and that motivates you to keep going. This is the reason why you would exert force and endure the pain to reach the peak--because you know that there will be a payoff, a reward for your efforts.
In game design, there should always be a payoff to every task that requires the player to struggle. Why should the player explore a giant underwater, mutant-infested Utopian residential section? Why not just sit in the corner and not doing anything? In order to motivate the player to explore, there needs to be some sort of reward, and in this case it would be extra health, ammo, items, or power-ups. What's the reason for the player to defeat the gigantic cyclops boss in the Earth temple? To gain an extra heart container, advance the story, and unlock new areas of the world. Whether it's fighting a boss, or just exploring a level, there needs to be a reason as to WHY the player should be doing it. If there were no rewards for completing a given task, it would be pointless to do so. In game-design, there should always be a payoff to each of the player's accomplishments, whether they are big or small--the payoff will be adjusted accordingly. The greater the promise of reward in each specific task, the more incentive the player will have to reach it and the more intrigued he or she will be to keep playing the game.

2: Originality
The second item required in achieving satisfying goals is originality. When given the choice of hiking two places, one already hiked and one never traveled previously, which one will a given person choose assuming that both hikes have an equal payoff? Logically, most people will probably choose the hike they had never done before, because it provides a new experience.
When hiking Lembert dome, I had never seen the top before, so it was a new experience for me. If I had already experienced the view before, it would have not been quite as magnificent.
Likewise, with game-design, goals should be new and original in order to be satisfying. If the goal of every level in a game was the same (interrogate the traveling merchant, pickpocket a thief, then eavesdrop on a conversation) then it will become stagnant and boring. When you achieve those goals, it is not as rewarding because you've already done them before. If goals are new and unique (become a Big Daddy, liberate City 17) they will be more fulfilling because you have never done anything like it before. Goals should be original as much as possible in order to provide the best experience for the player.

3: Failure
The last element necessary for satisfying goals is a chance of failure. When reaching the peak of Lembert Dome, I saw the tall granite cliff wall and wasn't sure if I could scale it to the top, especially since it was dark and the sun was setting. Also, since this was an original goal, that added to the difficulty since I was not sure I could do it. If I knew I could have made it to the very top before I even started hiking, that would not have been as fulfilling. Instead, since there was a chance I could not do it, that I could fail, that made it much more rewarding when I got to the peak.
With game-design, an element of failure helps to motivate the player to give her best to complete a task. If a game is too easy, there is no satisfaction when reaching a goal. If you already know you can kill these two-hundred Germans because your health respawns and you quickload when you die 5 seconds prior for each death there is no chance of losing at all. This makes the completion of each goal unsatisfying since it was a matter of when, not how to complete the goal. In contrast, if you don't know how to defeat an enemy and may die in the process, it makes the success much more enjoyable. When the Big Daddy comes around a corner, and you are not sure if you have enough health, ammo, and leeway to destroy him while staying alive, it is very fulfilling when you fire the last bullet into him and he thuds to the ground, giving you a payoff of money and more. When you jump onto the final dragon boss and hookshot your way across several flying pedestals to reach the dragon's neck with only several hearts remaining, it is much more satisfying to destroy him while almost dying than to have beat him without losing a single heart container. It is the chance that you can fail, that you can die, that makes something so much more fulfilling when completed.

Conclusion
When I reached the top of Lembert dome, there was a feeling of mutual victory, thanks to the fact that I had some fellow hikers. In the same way in games, victory is just as sweet when shared with fellow players.
On last stage of Goldrush in Team Fortress 2, when the cart is several feet away from the drop zone for the first time (originality), and there is only several seconds left (chance of failure), victory is mutually satisfying when you push the cart in and get to kill your enemies while seeing the gigantic hole explode (payoff). A shared victory always holds something slightly more than an individual victory, but both still benefit from a payoff, originality, and chance of failure.

The Call of Duty Problem

The continuing Call of Duty series suffers from three main problems:
1) Repetitiveness
This is not just confined to one specific area of the game. How often can you take the same setting, the same battles, the same situations, the same weapons, the same screenplays, the same levels, and repeat them in each game, and then make five games exactly the same? With Call of Duty 4 being the exception, all the Call of Duty games have been set in World War II. Many of them contain the same battles (Stalingrad, Berlin, etc), and have you doing the same things as in the other games (raiding houses, shooting people, not being allowed to open doors, waiting for your slow comrades to continue). Each game virtually has the same weapon list since the beginning (Thompson, M4 Garand, Mp40, Sniper, etc) with few exceptions. Wrap it up in the same generic levels of "shoot respawning enemies from a variety of locations in a variety of environments all while your teammates are useless," look down on the battlefield from below in a plane mission, get on a tank in a vehicle mission, drive a car in a chase mission, and then get giddy in the good ol' grab a sniper rifle and shoot limitless enemies from a battlefield safe location. Even the individual games repeat their own missions and gameplay concepts, so how does it make sense to repeat those games over, and over, and over? It already gets tiring after the second game.
The FEW--and I must stress FEW--exceptions to the Call of Duty formula are where the games truly shine. In the first game, there was no established formula to expect, so all the situations and ideas were unique and fun. In the second game, the formula was repeated, but they still had enough variety in the missions to maintain a level of interest. The few things that Call of Duty 5 does differently (flamethrower, solo sniper missions) are the only interesting scenarios in the entire game. Looking back, it's been that way for each Call of Duty game, since the standard combat formula that constitutes the majority of the gameplay is just plain repetitive and boring. The unique missions where you do things other than just kill respawning, endless clones of Germans are where the most fun lies.
When a game sticks to a strict formula, it might work the first time (because you don't notice it), but then it ridiculously hampers enjoyment from then on if it is the meat of the entire game's core--which it is, in Call of Duty's case.
2) Lack of Strategy
The Call of Duty gameplay formula for individual battles goes something like this: Confront the enemy, shoot him with your rifle from a distance, advance on him by rushing to cover spots, throw a grenade to kill him if you can't shoot him, if in close quarters use an automatic rifle, if in really close quarters use melee, and finally... when your enemy is dead move on to the next enemy.
You are always given the same weapons and the same environments and the same enemies. You approach every battle with the same mindset, the same strategy, the same plan to what you are about to do. This reduces the game to a chore--a "to-do-list" of things you know you have to do. You already know what you are going to do, how you are going to do it, and there are few spontaneous events that truly force you to adapt to a situation and use the game mechanics at your disposal in order to solve that problem.
This is what separates games like Bioshock and Team Fortress 2 from Call of Duty. The first two have you constantly adapting, thinking, and analyzing every new combat situation in order to get out of it. You are always engaged in the battle. On the other hand, in Call of Duty, every battle unfolds the same way, with the same set of tools to overcome it. There's no strategy here. Just mindless reflexes, timing, and pacing--which is fine if done right, but Call of Duty has just repeated it so many times that this mindless combat can't survive on its own.
3) Lack of Challenge
Games should be challenging. On one end of the spectrum you have the "Win Button," where the solution is in front of the player, and all he or she has to do is click it. On the other end you have whatever you can imagine to be the most frustrating, inane, and difficult game you can ever conceive of. Games (and the word "challenging" for that matter) should fall somewhere in between the two.
Call of Duty has progressively moved into a zone where it's not challenging because of the design of its combat. You are always given the objective to kill the random Germans, and you are told how to do it, where to do it, so all you have to do is go out and do it. Everything just becomes a matter of when--not how, where, or why. When is the endless respawn wave going to end so I can move on to the next arena? When am I going to have to use this Panzerfaust on the inevitable tank that will appear? When am I going to finally kill enough Germans for this area to be designated "clear" and this mission victorious? It's not how am I going to do it, or why am I going to do it, or where. All of these things are given to you, so the game just waits for you to do them.
This is not a matter of challenge. It's more like a matter of how fast can you beat the current level, rather than how do I figure out how to destroy these enemies in the most efficient way?
Without this challenge, the gameplay becomes stagnant and unmotivating.

Call of Duty 1 was a great game. Call of Duty 2 was just as good, except it was more of the same. Call of Duty 3, I will not talk about. By the time we hit Call of Duty 4, this formula had been repeated too many times, with too little variation. Call of Duty 5 was just worse.

Many of today's successful franchises rely on repetitious formulas. The Zelda or Half-Life series, for instance, are prime examples. What those series do differently however--for the most part--is disguise the repetition through different environments, storylines, and characters. Call of Duty currently lacks that, and because of this, its future as a series looks like to be more of the same. Unless it can solve these problems, each game will progressively become more and more generic.

Call of Duty 3 (Wii)

Time playing = 30 minutes - 1 hour.

First Impressions -
So, I loved Call of Duty 1.
I played Call of Duty 2 next, which was pretty awesome, but it felt like it was getting repetitive, and didn't add too much new stuff to the formula.
I played Call of Duty 1: United Offensive after that. It was boring.

I loaded up Call of Duty 3 (Wii version) and I did not expect much.

From the first hour of gameplay, it plays just like the other call of duties. It has a short tutorial, then throws you straight into an intense battle. And of course, every soldier has his little commentary about random stuff. (And seriously, that whole incident with the "Let's retreat dudes/I'm gonna shoot you soldier!/Hey Look, I found a hatch! was just dumb.)
Then you have to go into battle again.

The interface in this game is really, really clunky.
I don't see how a Nunchuck + Wii Remote makes this game any more interactive than a potential PC counterpart.
THE INTERFACE:
To shoot you have to hold B (The trigger underneath - Right index), which is sensible.
To use the SIGHTS you have to hold A (Top round button - Right thumb), which is understandable, but doesn't make any more sense than pressing Z on your keyboard.
To change stances you have to tap or hold down Z (Nunchuck - Left index/middle finger), which is okay in theory, but takes some getting used to.
Jumping requires the pressing of C (Nunchuck) with your left index finger, which again, is not any more innovative than using the Space Bar.
And then it gets really awkward by having you use "<--" to throw grenades and "2" to use binoculars.
Just to clarify: The top of the Wii Remote contains the 4 directional buttons on a "plus." The bottom contains the (1) and (2) buttons. Both sets of buttons require extra effort to get to, and are not accesible without looking down at your remote and/or letting go of B or A.

Pressing "<--" is not very fun at all. I'm gripping the WiiMote with my right hand, index finger on the B trigger, thumb on A, and the rest of my fingers underneath. My other fingers are NOWHERE near the 4-Directional cross, or (1) and (2). Just to press either of those requires me to stretch my thumb to an uncomfortable position, which also makes me lose my aim, which then makes me throw the grenade really high up instead of straight, thus effectively killing myself or my fellow soldier.

Using the Wiimote to aim is more realistic I guess then a mouse, but it's very shakey and hard to keep your shot steady. This is probably more life-like, but it is annoying when you're used to perfect aim for so long.
Finally, turning is a nuisance. If I try to get my character to turn a little bit, I aim the remote to the left a tad, and he doesn't turn at all. If I try to make him turn 90 degrees, I gleefully slide the remote to the edge of the screen and he makes a quick 180. So when I'm in a CQB situation, I'm lucky if I'm even facing the enemy.
If I played the game longer, I'm sure I'll get used to it.

I only played the first mission, and those are my current views. If I play the game longer, I'll probably get used to the controls setup, but for now, it seems really foreign to me, and uninnovative. And I don't even know if I want to play the game longer, because it contains essentially the same combat and gameplay that I've played through in the first 2 Call of Duties, which I thought was even getting repetitive. So for now, I don't want to play the 3rd one.