(TL;DR at bottom)
Right, thought I'd dive deep into some controversy - I honestly think that games like Call of Duty have lowered gaming standards these days. Allow me to explain.
Now COD is by no means a bad game, heck you could argue that its a very polished title with very little flaws and is itself very well presented as I'm sure most of you will point out. My quarrel with it however isn't its technical shortcomings (which it doesn't lack), but rather its lacking of originality.
Cast yourself back over a decade ago or even beyond when we had developers experimenting with innovative gaming ideas all of which were very original - we had Yu Suzuki giving us the brilliant Shenmue games which were so far ahead of their time, we had enjoyed terrific stories from Lucas adventures such as Grim Fandango and Monkey Island, and furthermore we truly had barrier-breaking, astonishing titles such as Ocarina of time, Final Fantasy 7 and Deus Ex which had raised the bar in the gaming world.
Nowadays that same bravery and indulgence into originality has been replaced by a soulless attempt to cash in at the so-called 'safe-selling' games, i.e. games that are not necessary ground-breaking, but rather following a common formula that will most likely appeal to those looking for a quick action fix, typical in games like COD, gears of war or what have you. It seems every game released nowadays is a shameless clone of Call of Duty or Gears of War, if it wasn't already bad enough that those franchises already re-release the same game every year under the guise of a sequel. It sets a depressing precedence, where you forget about innovative ideas and simply go for the fool-proof formula of creating a game with bald, space marines killing terrorists, Nazis, aliens all in a very short single player campaign, while the multiplayer is nothing but an unimaginative fragfest with annoying pre-pubescent children shouting down the voice comm.
Now I appreciate that there are some gems being released out there today, but sadly they don't seem to get much attention and its only indie developers which tend to be brave enough to put em out there, most likely resulting in poor sales and discouraging them from continuing their work. Hence we get this almost Darwinian system where the only games that are left to saturate the market are shameless spinoffs of games like Call of Duty.
Another thing I should note is that I'm not solely blaming the Call of Duty series here, its just the game I happen to think of when I evaluate what is IMO - an era defined with a fall in gaming originality.
TL;DR: Games like Call of Duty have ruined gaming because every game tries to mimic its success by copying its unimaginative formula, not being brave enough to experiment with the originality we were spoiled with in previous gaming generations.
This isn't just a rant by the way, I'm curious to hear what other people have to say on the issue.
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