The More Things Change

In the past I've admitted that I love the Call of Duty series. It's fast-paced, non-stop, and always fun. With the tenth game in the series, Call of Duty Ghosts, set to release in November I've seen a lot of whining on any article or video talking about it.

"Call of Duty is always the same game." 

 The complaint is said as though that's somehow proof that the game is terrible. A few people will bring up legitimate reasons for why they don't like the game, which is just fine by me because I don't expect everyone to like it. But when the only thing people can say is "It's so awful, it hasn't changed since the 4th game," it gets more monotonous than the game they complain about.

CoD 4 was when the series exploded on to the online competitive scene, and since then the series has been slowly evolving rather than making drastic changes each year. With Ghosts releasing, I started thinking about how far the game has come in 6 years and whether it is, indeed, "more of the same."

How the series hasn't changed:

• Kill Streaks. Getting a string of kills without dying allows you to call in a killstreak reward. In CoD 4 this was limited to calling in a UAV/Air Strike/Helicopter at 3/5/7 kills.
• Quick Kills. Although World at War and Black Ops 1 had lower bullet damage, CoD has always allowed you to kill the enemy in your sights rather quickly, allowing a single person to take a room of players by surprise and kill them all quickly.
• Knife Kills. I had an Xbox Live account dedicated to only getting kills with knives. If you are close enough to an enemy you can assassinate them with a single slice of the knife.
• Gun and Map Variety. Although guns can only vary so much, each map tells its own story and always has different tactics. Maps are built to support either close-, medium-, or long-range firefights.

And of course, here's how the series has evolved in 6 years:

• Gun Customization. Rather than having a handful of weapon upgrades (silencer, red dot sight), you can now equip your gun with a variety of equipment to reduce idle sway, increase aiming speed, give you different vision modes, change your ammo count or reload speed, as well as a few other weapons that can be attached to the underbarrel of your gun.
• Personal Customizaiton. Gun camos, different images for the red dot sight, and outfit customizatio... all hidden behind a legion of challenges.
• Loadout Customization. Rather than taking 3 perks, 1 main weapon, 1 grenade, and 1 piece of equipment players are now given much more control of their loadouts. All choices are given a point value, and you can spend up to 10 points to create the character you want. That means a character can have 5 perks, more weapon attachments, or a bunch of equipment to help them accomplish what they want to during the game.
• Point Streaks. Kill streaks are no longer "kill" streaks. Rather than rewarding the offensive player, players get points towards their streaks based on everything they do in the game. Capturing a flag, defending an objective, supporting teammates, and a host of other things can get players closer to calling in their rewards without requiring them to play Death Match during an objective game type.
• Point Streak Variety. No longer is it just a UAV/Air Strike/Helicopter. Players can run a full support package, choose only low-point killstreaks, or go for bear and choose killstreaks that require 7+ kills just for their first reward. No only that, but the kill streaks themselves have exploded in variety.
• Recurring Point Streaks. Rather than getting to call in your streaks once per life, your points counter resets after you've called in the highest kill streak of your loadout.
• Game Modes. While Ghosts still has Death Match, Domination, CTF, and Search and Destroy, the variety of competitive game modes has grown. In addition to these classic modes, there are a ton of variants on these that completely change how you play the game, keeping things from growing stale.
• Packages. Different players of different skill levels play Call of Duty. To make sure everyone can contribute to the game, players can choose one of three Packages, each with a different set of point streaks.
       -Assault is the traditional CoD experience. Kills gained from point streaks contribute to the next point streak, and your points reset when you die.
       -Support is for players who a) play support roles that don't always let them live long enough to call in streaks, or b) suck at the game. I fall in to both categories, so I love this package. While the streaks have fewer lethal options, your points don't reset on death. And since I refuse to let someone take my flag, I tend to die alot.
       -Specialist is for the hardcore players. Rather than having kill streaks, the specialist gets new perks when they reach certain points milestones. At 8 points they are equipped with every perk, rewarding their skill by making them even more deadly.
• Dymanic Maps. This is new to Ghosts, but I think it will be here to stay. Rather than maps being a static thing with exploding barrels, players can actually affect the landscape of the battlefield during the game. Unfortunately these are scripted events, but I still have my hope for fully destructible environments!
• Multiplayer Support. CoD Elite has gone through some growing pains, but it seeks to change how we experience CoD. With challenges, contests, and more, Elite allows players to connect to the game in more ways than just starting the game and joining a multiplayer lobby.
• Clan Support. With Elite came the ability to actually join a group of players. With clan-based modes and challenges allowing you to grow your clan, it's become much easier to play the game as a lone wolf or a social butterfly.
• Prestige. This is what keeps me playing CoD. While CoD 4 had the ability to reach the maximum level and start over, it was an impossibly long process with very little incentive to do it. Ghosts has totally revamped how it works, allowing you to work on 10 prestige characters at once.

So is Call of Duty just more of the same? Yes, and that's the brilliance of it. People don't buy Call of Duty for the name on the box. They buy it for the ever-evolving experience. There aren't radical changes that polarize previous fans with new players. If you've played CoD 4, you'll know how to play CoD 10. But that familiarity works in the game's favor while it continues to introduce new features that grow with us as players, as well as proving that slow steps are better than drastic changes for the sake of change.

See you tomorrow!

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