I have often talked about Call Of Duty about having an identity crisis and that the series lost its integrity by appealing to the pre-teen boys. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw today at their presentation.
First off we did not play anything, we were guided into the theater like lambs to the slaughter. The video started with the devs greeting us and telling us what we were about to see. A pre-recorded gameplay demo of a single player level was shown afterwards. The level was on a colonized, out of orbit asteroid on a collision course towards the sun. Because of the intense spinning of the asteroid, the day/night cycle is limited to minutes. When the sun passed, the surface will reach a temperature of more than 900°. As soon as you hear and see that in action, you realise the team can go nuts with its set-pieces, even better than before. When the game actually started, the player was put inside the base on the asteroid. The demo starts of with an amazing atmosphere. There was a lot of “slow walking” , looking at debris/ bodies and talking about it. The developers of the demo were clearly trying to set for the game more serious and dark. In my opinion… that right there, is where it all went wrong.
At first every person present that day seemed to like the slow build-up to a worst case scenario. Eventually one minute went by, quickly it became two minutes. Three followed after the first couple of minutes. But nothing ever realy happened and the game got stuck in its “gravity zero”. At the end of the ten minute long demo, a robot punched a team member and the clip ended. The end of this presentation was quickly being followed by an immediate cut to a black screen and another trailer. During the entire ten minute gameplay demo not a single shot was fired and not a single enemy was encountered. Near the end of the demo, we saw a trailer about soldiers fighting robots…. It just didn’t make sense! The editing even left some stones unturned and got sloppy. Basically what we got was ten minutes of nothing followed by a trailer that showed of some of the action we should have seen in the demo in the first place. Nonetheless Infinite Warfare looks like it has some potential to do some crazy set-piece moments like previous games but it’ll be amplified by ten. It looks like Infinite Warfare can actually pull this Sci Fi thing off but it doesn’t seem like Activision believes in there own product. I mean as soon as the infinite Warfare logo appeared on the screen at the end of the trailer, it disappeared just as quickly. It felt like Activision literally went “ok quick guys show the logo and then immediately cut to the remaster so people forget about that game”. It’s a shame Activision seems to treat this game like they don’t really care about it.
After Infinite Warfare we got to see “the entirety of the Shock and Awe” level from the Call Of Duty 4 Remaster. It seems like Activision wanted to show us the twist of the game, remade from scratch. Here’s the thing about COD 4 Remaster. It’s not a remaster, It’s a remake. The engine seems to be mainly the same but there are some subtle differences in the gameplay. The Remake of the game looks great. The lighting is done very well and colors are a bit stronger instead of the extremely washed out grey/ brown colors in the original game. While watching the game being played I found myself getting sleepy. Halfway through the demo, I thought to myself “gee, I remember Call Of Duty 4 being way more exciting than this… Why does this look so boring?” And then it hit me. The player was playing the game in a demonstration way. A lot of panning shots and slowly looking around, to show off the improvements. I don’t remember playing Cod 4 like that, it was more like throwing grenades, sprinting and knifing guys. Much like the previous demo this one left out a lot of important mechanics that made COD 4 so much fun. The demo made the game look boring and I know that it’s not. Despite the boring demonstration, Cod 4 looks to be an amazing game all over again.
Then we got something that made us leave the theater in disbelieve.
By now you have probably seen the Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare trailer… well, it’s exactly the same trailer that ended the presentation. For those of you who don’t know, the trailer was for a map called Zombies In Spaceland. It’s a map that’s been heavily inspired by the 80’s. The trailer shows a colorful neon theme park full of different kind of zombies: clowns, dancers alongside the 80’s stereotypes characters. The game itself doesn’t even look promising, it just looks awful. This is why the first single-player trailer is such a huge problem. I have talked a million times about how the series lost its integrity just to make big numbers and appeal to the pre-teen boys. Infinite Warfare’s demo tried to set an atmospheric, adult and serious tone. This just throws it all out of the window. There is nothing wrong with trying to be more serious or trying to be more lighthearted but it’s so painfully clear that this is the wrong way to go. All of this zombie stuff looks goofy rather than this “adult-like” atmosphere. The trailer gives of some serious Blood Dragon vibes but that just makes it way more clearer that it won’t work. Blood Dragon understood it’s source material and while it made fun of it, it respected that source material. This zombies thing is just the team googling “80’s cheese” and asking the higher-ups if it’s marketable. And I’m not the only one who thinks that either. When the trailer was done the entire theater just looked like they were in disbelieve. I talked to the guy next to me and this is what he said “What the hell was that”. Eventhough, you could argue over the fact that its a separate mode, so it won’t’t impact the game at all if you ignore it(which would be an awful argument by the way.) but I can already see the multiplayer being this awful awkward mix of both styles. There is nothing wrong with a camouflage on a gun but all those ugly vibrant colors make the game look and feel extremely tacky.
I really didn’t enjoy the Call Of Duty presentation. Infinite Warfare and Cod 4 seemed to look like good games (for the most part) but the presentation was just boring. The Infinite Warfare single player demo was suspenseful at first but then it turned out dull. The demo even stops when the action is actually happening. Modern Warfare 4 Remaster looks beautiful but the demo was played in a cinematic way that made the game look like it’s the most boring thing ever. And let’s just not talk about zombies anymore…
