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.
