Another year has gone by, and once again Call of Duty is here to greet consumers at the front door of nearly every major retailer nationwide. But despite the series’ success, the Call of Duty franchise has often been accused of lacking innovation and remaining stagnant through each new iteration. With the latest advert for MW3 – which seems to be playing on just about every channel – featuring celebrities in live action role-play instead of showing actual gameplay, it’s beginning to set in that the game is just another clone of Call of Duty 4. The latest evidence that’s been uncovered doesn’t exactly help Activision’s case.
In the PC version of Modern Warfare 3, if the game crashes, the user will be asked to run in a “safe mode” on the next start-up. However, the error has an error of its own, which you can see below exhibit A:
Okay, so Infinity Ward forgot to change the error code from Modern Warfare 2, big deal. But what about this video evidence presented by FinalLevelGames?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5dsOn06w1s[/youtube]
The sad thing about this is that other developers who pour their heart out to make fresh experiences don’t even sell a tenth of what an annual Call of Duty release is able to accrue. This regular, astronomical success appears to have gotten into the minds of the development team, and in an effort to retain the award-winning formula, next to nothing has been done to evolve the series. Much of the same elements, from the gameplay, to the UI, weapons, and presentation, are absolutely unchanged. In other franchises this would be looked at as DLC, or perhaps even a map pack, but Activision can get away with just about anything until consumers’ demand change. As a result, what was once considered the undisputed king of its genre is beginning to not only look stale, but is turning into the FPS version of Madden, and without roster updates.
Are we being too critical, or is the annual release of Call of Duty damaging the series’ quality?
