When I first bought my Xbox 360, I remember very distinctly borrowing Call of Duty 2, firing it up for the first time and being jaw-on-the-floor blown away by the scope and feel of the game. Skip ahead to the reveal of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and again, jaw-on-the-floor blown away. At the time of Modern Warfare’s release, I was heavily invested in Rainbow Six: Vegas but I decided to give the Modern Warfare beta a try (yes, believe it or not, the Xbox 360 version had a beta). I liked it well enough but I didn’t love it.
That all changed when the game released.
Once I was able to really dive into multiplayer I became hooked. Over 1000 hours, hooked. Since then I’ve bought every single Call of Duty on day one. However, after Call of Duty: Black Ops, the multiplayer has kept less and less engaged with each installment. In Call of Duty 4 I prestiged 10 times, Modern Warfare 2 I prestige 9 times, in Black Ops I prestiged 5 times, and ever since I’ve only reached the cap until Call of Duty: Ghosts in which I stopped playing at around level 25.
The reason for this is pretty simple – Titanfall.
Titanfall got its hooks in me the way a game hasn’t since Modern Warfare 2. The mobility and scaled back focus on things like Killstreaks (getting your Titan faster is pretty much the equivalent) made the game simple and fun. Of note is the fact that you don’t die in 2 bullets in Titanfall either. It has the feel of Call of Duty 4 in which it takes more bullets to put someone down. Also, the map design is incredible – while you can’t really control the map, the verticality and layout that lends itself incredibly well to both Pilots and Titans is something you can see was well thought out.
It would take a major shift for Call of Duty to pull me back in and judging from the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare trailer, it seemed they were poised to do just that. It looked frenetic, fast paced and added a whole new layer of mobility and strategy to gameplay. I was in!
Then I watched the live stream event.
This put me off again, but not by a large margin, but now I’m more hesitant. The reason being is that there just seems to be too much going on. Not in the moment to moment gameplay, but rather the things being added like Pick 13, Supply Drops, upgrading Score Streaks and so on. Call of Duty used to be a relatively easy game to pick up and play and now it seems like I’ll be spending just as much time just as much time futzing about in customization as I will playing the game. This may paint me as old, but as I mentioned earlier, Titanfall’s streamlined approach is one of the many things I like about the game.
The jury is still out, for sure. I am really enjoying what I’ve seen of the maps, and Uplink looks amazingly fun. However, as an adult who has limited time to play video games, and also chooses to write about them, I prefer my gaming sessions to me spent actually playing the game. Then again, I’m probably just old. I’ll still be getting Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on Day One Zero, I just hope I don’t wind up trading the game in sooner rather than when the next iteration comes out like I used to.
