Call of Duty's Shooting Mechanics

 

Call of Duty's Shooting Mechanics

Call of Duty whether you love it or hate it tends to be a big topic among the Gaming Community, it was a much bigger franchise back in the 7th gen and the series tends to reboot it's sub continuities a lot to rebuild interest among it's fans but one thing I never see discussed much about the series is the core shooting gameplay. People often insult the franchise but I have never seen that much discussion on why they hate the games so much, and it's often due to it being the face of "bro gaming" and I think writing off games like that is pointless and unfair. CoD4 tends to be ridiculed less among the "gamers" but I argue that game has some of the same issues the series has but often gets away from the scorn of the gaming community is because of how the story was told and how it was the less over the top "power fantasy" due to the restrain that game has, but I argue just because it and arguably World at War are the most restrained CoD games since it became mainstream that does not mean it ignores the core flaws in their shooting gameplay.

Okay, that was a long intro but now I will get more into the issues I have and offer feedback. Note this will be about CoD's single players all though some of this can apply to multiplayer as well.

Issues:

Well it was sort of big in some ways back in 2003 for an fps game to have iron sights and enemies that don't take a lot shots to die, I argue as the series as it went on it became less of a novelty and more of an issue that became more and more prevalent as the series progressed. First of all, the iron sights, while iron sights can make a game arguably more "realistic", I argue that iron sights well, not so much iron sights but the lack of giving the player hip fire options except for the shotgun really limits the options players have in terms of taking out enemies. It's often just relying on the aim assist to kill nearby enemies than it is to take out enemies yourself by looking for them in the battlefield or getting up close and personal unless if the games' level design specially allows for close quarters combat. Partner all this with hitscan weapons, and all shootouts in most CoD games consist of is ADS, shoot, get hit, take cover and rinse and repeat. People do point out CoD's reliance on set pieces and I argue CoD's set pieces exist is because this core shooting gameplay isn't enough to make an exciting enough 6 hour game out of. Some games in the series like CoD2 do let you hip fire more and let you be more aggressive at times, and relies on aim assist less due to being made for PC first but it still has some of the above mentioned issues and later games games have you reload your gun just as much as you are firing it. I really like an over reliance on ADS just gives the player less options in combat, I argue games like Resistance Fall of Man and 3 gives the player options to shoot far away enemies but gives the player enough leniency to use hip fire to make firefights feel fresh and have enough variety when it comes to enemy killing.

My next issue and this one is what really bugs me is enemies taking very little damage. I feel like this issue really annoys me when it comes to CoD. Since CoD has hitscan weapons and relies on cover heavily for it's shootouts, it often leads to enemies surrounding the player from all sides often having no idea where they are actually attacking you from, this often leads to deaths where you have no idea where you got shot from. And the funny thing is, the easy setting lets you take more hits and allows the player to be more aggressive which can to more moving around and less hiding behind cover and less cheap deaths. On the hardest setting, the player takes way less damage and enemies can hit harder, which leads to the player hiding behind cover more and more cheap deaths you couldn't see coming. Some games even have enemies grande spam in order to add more "difficulty". And the next issue this leads to is that weapons just feel samey for the most part. Of course there are weapons for long range encounters and shotguns for close range, but in CoD especially the modern ones, there are dozens upon dozens of machine guns that all serve the same function. Since enemies all take the same amount of damage to die, this allows for less genuine weapon variety. Since one machine gun is the same thing as the other machine guns since all you have to do is ADS, shoot and enemy dies. I'd rather they just have a smaller number of weapons and have enemies take more damage to give each weapon it's use. Add more enemy variety of enemies and less guns that I will never use. There is also "grenades" that CoD took from the Halo series but in CoD you can "cook" them. In all honesty, I have never used them in a CoD that much because enemies take little effort to actually kill. I argue Killzones 2 and 3 actually made me use a feature like that more since first of all, those games give you a visual indicator on when the grenade will explode and on top of that since Helghast AI move around a lot and they take way more damage than any CoD enemy, this feature actually has a use now. Cooking a grenade and killing 2-3 Helghast at once feels very satisfying to pull off where in CoD it doesn't require nearly the same amount of skill since enemies take little damage and machine guns can kill them in 2 hits. It also helps that Killzones 2 and 3 despite their flaws have very powerful feeling guns that eviscerate enemies whenever you shoot them and they have more enemy variety than any CoD game to boot.

Improvements:

I feel like as much of the hate the futuristic CoD games get, I argue Black Ops 3 has on paper has some of ideas on how to improve the shooting. BO3 has a of enemies like flying drones, enemies that sprint like Serious Sam enemies, mechs, and your usual foot soldiers among others. Some of these enemies take a number of bullets to kill partner that with the customization and you can get some core shooting with some genuine variety and dare I say it, "depth". I feel like there is a blueprint for something interesting here. Plus the Titanfall style movement and you could get a great core shooting system. I just wish the levels were more opening and they dropped the regen health or make the health pool smaller and focus on movement more. And less guns and more weighty animations and you could get a genuinely great shooter.

I guess another way is borrowing from Medal of Honor Allied Assault. That game does have typical missions were you are on foot with other soldiers and setpieces but that game does let you hold all your guns and give enemies more health before they are killed. I say do something like this, let the player hold all their guns and let enemies take more damage while giving the player large arenas and play spaces to play around along with the usual military soldier missions. CoD Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare does something like this, I say just do it with more options.

And there you go. My critique and thoughts on how to improve. I wanted to cover more stuff but I feel I got the core issues down.