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guns and connection
pretty soon after adjusting to the weird floaty feeling, i was introduced to gun play. i have partnered guns and internet connection into one because these go hand in hand in mw3.
connection is king in many games, but the dynamic feels increased in mw3. my matchmaking in mw22 dips into high ping lobbies but i don't ever feel like i've been had soley based off of connection alone. sure, that connection can make or break a gun fight at times, but it isn't in the way mw3 has shown me. in mw3 i can blatantly shoot people running to cover, around walls and out of sight. bullets feel magnetic in a way as other players and i can let bullets loose down wind and watch them hit a target that had run off on our screens. deaths aren't always immediate, and bullets aren't always quick to hit bodies. sometimes mw3 players seemingly have a coating of gel around them that slows bullets, causing bullets to miss or hit late.
my issues with connection end there. i get phantom bullets that leave my gun and go nowhere, but i sorta.. don't care. patience in these old games is part of the process. i remember ghosts upping hit detection and it made that game feel strange as hell. going back to bad hit detection is the same feeling.
i say all that first because phantom bullets are part of the gun fight. my ump seems to be a 3 shot kill at medium range but i don't wait around after 3 rounds to the chest to see if my enemy bit the bullet i shot. i found myself sprinkling the enemy until the hitmarkers topped. something i don't do quite so much on mw22. this lead to reloading after every kill or double kill.
i noticed that this game plays different in some ways because theres no attempt at funneling in players from other platforms. i am thrown off by how much accuracy mw22 gives me while lining up my shots. at this point i'm quite used to mw22s aim assist, for better or worse. what was really interesting was the help that mw3 gave me. i went into it thinking the boys would be separated from the men and aim was going to be harder than ever. i wasn't wrong in some respects. if you aren't on target, you aren't on target. where as in mw22 i can be drunk and blind and still get a longshot in on occasion. this isn't some aim assist hit piece though. i may not get that full aim assist in mw3 but i get something that might be just as powerful. around everyone is an aura that attracts my gun. this is no different between the two cods. what is different is this aura attracts my gun through walls and foliage in mw3. just the act of walking while looking forward will subtly pull my gun, letting me know theres an enemy infront of me or around a wall nearby. i was hunting a camper in bakaara today and it was my gun that told me exactly where in the foliage he was.
another big thing i noticed was the power my guns seemed to have. sure, they're bouncy messes, but they shoot in a straight line and are extremly lethal. my perks change how my gun opperates and i even have access to a gun perk that makes the gun even stronger. the 5+ gun attachments in new cods seems overkill but to be honest it doesn't compare to an acr with stalker, quick draw, an attachment, and a gun enchant (thinking minecraft here lol). keep in mind all the things i listed are pure bonus. no downside whatsoever unless you consider the perk choice balance. not to mention that stalker and quickdraw allow me to turn any gun off the ground into an aim walking god.
my opinion on this is mixed. games nowadays are made with fair competition in mind. actvision has had many years to balance guns. i can feel their experience when i pick guns up in mw22. attachments have downsides, class builds can be janky, theres no single gun to do everything. the rock paper scissors aspect has entered the gun balance process more than ever. this makes sense. however, i can't help feel like something is lost when power is situational and purely skill based. did the sweaty mw3 noobtoob c4 chucker out-skill me today? not exactly. was it fun as hell to die to him anyway? absolutely. i say this while also hearing about the fiasco with the most recent cod. i can't say i know the full story there, but if op weapons don't work anymore, i'm generally fine with samey weapons. besides, most engagments come down to the map they take place on.
maps
i would have told you just last week that mw3 had huge maps. i no longer agree. this isn't clearing mw3's name though. theres some maps that might be a bit much. does terminal need that whole back area with the metal detectors? does fallen need so many apartment buildings? probably not. still, traversal feels much easier in mw3. getting from one end to another feels better. in mw22 it can seem like a chore to die when my game plan is to stick to a specific part of the map. in mw3 things feel much more accesible. i think this is for a few reasons.
first off, people play different. surprise surprise, mw3 players dont play like mw22 players. theres a good amount of people running around, making long lines of sight less threatening. i don't even attempt running down main pathways in mw22 because i can expect a korean kid with god aim ready to click on my head the moment i peak. mw3 players post up in spots that aren't always obvious. their campsites have nuance and they don't stick around for long. many of the mw3 maps feel randomized in layout and i'd guess that that promotes exploration of the space to some degree.
secondly, i believe mw3's set spawns have something to do with its map traversal. spawning in the same 2-3 places allows game plans to be established before i've even mashed the respawn button. theres no surprise as to where i end up after dying and all my routes are hardwired into my brain. this not only makes my movements more predictable and easier to comprehend, but the same is for the enemy as well. when i kill an enemy in mw3 i have a good guess as to what direction i need to go to meet up with them again. because of this, me and the guy im at war with are playing with something closer to half or even a quarter of the map. mix in beef with another enemy player and the game feels pretty action packed.
simplicity
ill keep the topic of simplicity simple. imagine that. 5 custom classes with 5-10 guns per category. 2 gun attachments max with less than 10 attachments to choose from. prestiging takes all your progress away. being the highest prestige is self explanatory. theres a cap to how far you can progress but no cap for improving at the game.
any nuance comes from your perk choices and how well you know the maps.
graphics
this is the part where i unbutton my pants and piss all over infinity wards hard work when it comes to how their game looks. or maybe not.
i don't think mw3 looks bad. im running my ps3 through a large 4k tv. does this help the game look better? i couldn't tell ya. what i will say is the game looks just fine. textures are less than impressive but there's plenty of detail, shadows, and effects to make up for poor resolution. i gotta hand it to the developers for making such a pretty game on a console that can't keep up with my iphone.
in fact, i have a controversial opinion on this. before i go any further i should warn you that i will also backtrack on this point a bit:
its easier to spot enemies in mw3 when wall textures are low quality and player models are high quality. it reminds me of old cartoons where you can tell what in the environment is going to move based on how much detail it was drawn with. i spot people on terminal and seatown like its my job.
here's the catch: a grey player model is hard to spot against a muddy grey background. my worst game today was on carbon, a dingy, dirty, brown map with plenty of shade.
there may not be so much detail to get lost in on mw3, but the color palette doesn't work with the player models. thankfully i'm spoon fed giant names above everyone's head. that's a topic i don't need to touch lol.
perks
i wasn't going to elaborate any further but this might be of interest considering lots of perk conversation came up after mw22's release. i think this is an important topic. here's my general perk line up in mw3: sleight of hand pro, blast shield pro, stalker pro, and specialist with quickdraw pro, and regular sitrep and dead silence. i'm fairly certain my level 80 account is the same but with all pro perks. each pro perk is the equivalent to two perks or a perk + a good attachment in mw22. put a player in a game with a good killing spree to start the match and they have 6 pro perks.
let me elaborate. not accounting for my streak perks, i can reload very quickly, swap weapons very quickly, resist both lethal and tactical grenades, aim walk about as fast as i normally walk, and delay the reaction time of claymores and other bombs. some of the effects can stack with gun attachments and perks such as dual mag. once i get the full specialist streak, i get 3 more pro perks and all 6 gun enchants, each one an equivalent to a powerful gun attachment.
i don't have much more to add here. i already covered how gun fights are affected by perks. what i'll provide is an opinion piece. what's a reddit post without a reason to downvote?
here's my thing: i don't think teamwork will ever be super prominent in a cod game. people don't all have the same goal in mind and theres no requirement to help one another. does it piss me off when im causing water damage to my controller with my sweat during hardpoint while my teammates pick flowers in the back of the map? sure. do i get where they're coming from? i do. what i see in mw22 is a powered down individual with true power through collaboration. one of us has a deployable shield, one of us has a trophy system. one of us has a slow LMG, one of us has a close range shotty. theres a dynamic there and its played into extra in newer cod games. i noticed the shift with ghosts when satcoms turned a uav into a team effort and player models made callouts rather than relying on microphone users. cod wants players to work together and become strong together. i say bring back the strong individual. i'm often the only one holding down the fort. keeping the one man army resilient seems key. giving the individual power also allows enemy one man armies to put up a fight for their side as well. when everyone is super, no one is. or something like that.
wrapping up
i could say a lot more. that speaks to my long windedness.
it's difficult to compare these two games without breaking down every miniscule difference. the truth is, the two games were made at very different times with different standards. cod has gone from setting trends to following trends as other games steal some of the limelight. this isn't always bad thing. a franchise needs to grow in areas where it lacks. spotting the differences is fun and changing the game up year to year isn't a terrible idea. i don't have some wise man ultimate truth to drop on the reader.
if anything, i think activision should have developers pick up a ps3 or 360 controller and feel what i felt. it might have substantial effects on how new cods come out. that and maybe having activision take a chill pill on the money making schemes for a year or two lol.
that's all i got. if you made it this far, congrats. lord knows i barely made it this far.
TL;DR:Â mw3 different, mw22 newer
what are your honest opinions on the older cods? was there a golden age? what makes a golden age a golden age? is there a silver or bronze age in call of duty? would an old school cod dropped today do well in your opinion? 1v1 on dome snipers only trickshot last kill?
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This was a refreshing read! I agree with pretty much everything here. personally i'd say the golden age of cod was probably black ops 2 (definitely no nostalgia bias there lmao). However, i think something that should be considered when discussing cod is that it's always sort of been more arcade-y. FPS's like counterstrike and battlefield were/are pretty heavily focused on realism, or at least some emulation of it. People often approach cod from the same critical lens of realism, but i dont think that's accurate.
cod's always been more fast paced, more action than tactics. Even with the introduction of search and destroy and other permadeath gamemodes, players focus much more on meta strategy (fastest possible movement, min maxing damage and recoil with attachments) than approaching it like an actual tactical situation like a counterstrike or rainbow 6 player might, because like you said: teamwork is not necessary or required.
To me, black ops 2 had a good balance between fast paced gameplay and better feel than mw3, mostly due to polishing of the series. Being less janky decreased the amount of ghost bullets, noob tubes, etc., but didnt totally destroy one man armies. The movement was simple but felt good, not as swimmy or floaty as mw3 at least in my opinion. It still has that classic fps charm, something i think the post advanced warfare games lack because of how advanced the movement is.
Dont get me wrong, i absolutely love titanfall 1 and 2, but i hated the effect it had on the rest of the fps genre. Not every game needs wall running or grappling hooks or jetpacks and many, many games are better off without them. Even with the rollback of the super solider movement, sliding and mantling completely changed the gameplay. I dont think this was a negative change per se, but it sped gameplay up even more and changed the way players navigate maps, especially in terms of different height levels. You mentioned hesitating to cross open areas in mw22 and thats a direct result of mantling allowing so many different levels, rather than just "ground" and "x story of building". Instead of certain maps with tall buildings needing different map exploration, now nearly all maps require this.
Recently my favorite cod game without the new movement system was cod ww2, because it felt like a return to form. No more parkour, vintage weapons, great feel.
My opinion on the current cod, mw22, is pretty neutral. It's not a bad game by any means. The weapon unlock system is... annoying, but i dont totally hate it. My main complaint is that i simply get bored of plain multiplayer and wish it had zombies (because i love the zombies mode, can you tell i prefer the blackops games lmao). However, these blog posts have made me want to dig out my remaster of the first mw and invite some old gaming buddies over for a lan party.
thanks for reading! I couldn't agree more. black ops 2 is the call of duty. hands down. I'll definitely go pick up ww2 and try it out next time I'm in town
by Nerdy Occultist; ; Report