Hi gamespotters! This is my first blog. So do go easy on it!! Most of you might easily have guessed what I am going to talk about. Call of duty is a huge commercial phenomenon of our times!! Almost everybody out there is playing it, me included!! Both Modern Warfare 2 and Black ops rule the charts. That considering they are pretty much the same stuff re-hashed. Black ops did in november and I am not sure about this month but maybe its still up there. There are faults and connectivity issues (slowly coming to light) but that is no way near to the really cool and addictive gameplay these titles offer. And multi-player is in itself much popular due to its appeal to beginners and casual gamers. Which does put long time traditional gamers who value the single player experience and judge a games excellence by its campaign in a bit of a worry! I might sound a bit off on this what with all the big titles like Crysis 2, Unchartered 3, batman: Arkham city on their way in 2011 but consider the following this year. Kane and Lynch 2 was definitely a big bummer on this front! Both Kane and Lynch can be really complex bad ass characters but the single player campaign barely lasted six hours (would have been less if it werent for some nasty bugs). Its multi player was good but it in no way justified the short campaign since it could have been so much more. Vanquish was another game and even though its gameplay was like WOW I was done with it in four hours!! Sure they were some exhilrating four hours but come on guys for a game that has no multiplayer dont we deserve more!! Medal of honour followed suit and even though there were two different studios working on the single and multi player parts. I am in no way pointing fingers at infinity ward and treyarch since call of duty is about largely multi-player (even though war can be a highly complex topic. Metal gear solid and Hollywood has shown us that) but what about the others. Seriously its not convenient to just have a sp campaign and sell games on the basis of their multi-player. I grew up on games like Max payne, Half-life. Doom, prey and the age old age of empires (thats a limmerick). They made me fall in love with games. Their thoughtful and compelling narratives, beautiful visuals, great gameplay all came together to suck me in a wonderful world and leave me with actual memories. But then that was a different time. Even today you gotta feel for developers like take-two. I played both Red dead redemption (didnt know it was a sequel) and Mafia 2 and boy they did have all the above that traditional single players look for. A great story, interesting visuals and cool gameplay. Too bad they didnt sell as much as call of duty : re-hash even though i bet more work went into them. Hopefully 2011 will rectify this trend the industry seems to be heading into. Good multiplayer experiences are in no way an excuse for short sp campaigns. We have games like Killzone 2, Metal gear solid 4, Halo series who have cool mp modes but their single player campaigns in no way made me feel unsatisfied or wanting. Maybe its too early to bring up this topic. But then that's what blogs are for. There have been great single player experiences like god of war 3, bayonetta, Halo:Reach, heavy rain, nfs:hot pursuit (not those annoying rapid response events) this year but there were some glaring shortcomings too which shouldn't have been. And I bet there are several titles I haven't mentioned due to my limited knowledge. So if the industry is listening single player campaigns are definitely not dead( as some moron in EA might have you believe). We love our multi-player options. But Single player campaigns are what defines a game. It provides an experience that gamers become loyal too. Lets hope Call of Duty didnt start a trend as opposed to the title of this blog!!!!