Maybe Call of Duty Should Stop Making So Many Sequels

Call of Duty was a series that got its start in 2003, which I bet a whole bunch of the embryos that populate modern CoD servers weren't aware of and it's a series that I didn't have much interest in for the longest time.  A younger me would have looked at something like Call of Duty which was set during World War 2 and then I'd look at something like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem or Unreal and I think I'd much rather play a game like that over something all gritty and realistic. 

But then 2007 rolled along and out came Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and at the time it really did blow me away.  People had liked CoD in the past but no one in my circle of friends had ever raved about a game in the series as much as they were with Modern Warfare so of course I end up trying it and really enjoying it.  The game was just generally really fun and the multiplayer really helped give it some sticking power.  I remember thinking at the time that this was easily the best console FPS multiplayer experience I ever had but my expectations were particularly low after trying out F.EA.R and Prey's multiplayer modes.

Fast forward to 2016 and I had to do a google search to find out what Call of Duty is up to now.  I had no idea what the fuck Infinite Warfare is but I think the series has gone all spacy and science fiction with multiplayer looking more like a slowed down, shit version of Unreal or something (in Black Ops 3 at least) rather than an actual Call of Duty.  Not that there's anything inherently wrong with this, it just seems that since I dropped off the series has taken a weird direction.  That doesn't mean however that the game has lost any traction by the sounds of things, there always seems to be some degree of hype for the latest installment and the multiplayer modes always seem well populated.

However a week ago I stumbled across an article on GameSpot that said "There will always be Call of Duty games", here's the link

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-ceo-there-will-always-be-call-of-duty-g/1100-6443574/


I'd be upset by this if I was a fan of the series.  Every time there is a new Call of Duty game you have to shell out full price and these games come out yearly.  Sure, you can linger around on the old games for a while but if you're into the multiplayer, which most are, you WILL have to move to the next game or else be completely left behind.  Every goddamn year another full priced game with the inevitable DLC map packs that you'll have to buy a couple of months down the line.  The sheer blatancy of the money grubbing here is astounding and I'm actually baffled as to why there aren't huge numbers of fans just putting their foot down and saying "no".

Just look at Counter Strike as a great counter example of this.  Counter Strike Source was bundled with Half Life 2, a game that every man and his dog had, back in 2004 and then Global Offensive came out in 2012.  That's an 8 year gap and the game is consistently populated with a large number of players

To top that off the game is only like £12 and you don't have to worry about another one coming out in the next 6 months.  Sure, you can shell out extra cash for a few maps or to get some skins for your guns but this shit is all optional and you won't have trouble finding matches without the extras because despite having not played for a long time I'm sure DE_Dust2 is still a thing.

The fast sequel thing really turns me off to the series.  The game doesn't look shit by any means, it looks well polished and fun to play but the fact that I know Infinite Warfare will be perma-shelved in 2017 for the next one makes me not want to buy it.  I wish they could just give us ONE game that they update constantly with lots of cool shit rather than this yearly release stuff.  It's not like you couldn't have WW2, Modern Day and Sci-Fi War shit all in one game and just release it as a stand alone multiplayer experience at this point.  Still, if they did stop they might lose their license to print money so I guess the sequels will never end.

Another 24 Hour Stream Incoming! Counter Strike: Global Offensive

Right, do you remember that 24 hour Final Fantasy stream?  Well I'm doing another one but this time it's with some other buddies and it's with Counter Strike Global Offensive.

That's right folks, 24 solid (almost) hours of Counter Strike Global Offensive being streamed directly to you.  It will be taking place from 8am CEST on the 25h (Sunday) to 8am CEST on the 26th (Monday) so come down and watch me and my buddies click some heads.

I'll try and think up some donation incentives before the day so that we can get our charity on some more, so keep an eye out on the twitch channel. 

Assuming you want to go and get hype, tune in on the 22nd where I'll be streaming some more Final Fantasy games from 9pm CEST at

www.twitch.tv/taurinensis

Yu-Gi-Steam

This is something that popped up on Steam recently, and while I don't see the point, I fucking love it.

Steam Trading Cards is a feature that hit sometime last month I think and from what I can tell it's a feature where you can earn things like chat emoticons and other features for your steam profile. 

The system is very simple, certain games have card drops attached to them and by playing these games you get the cards.  Every game has a card drop limit of 3 or 4 but there are 8 cards in a set, so to get the full set of cards you must trade or use the steam marketplace in order to get the badge.  When you get the badge you unlock a load of stuff to use on your profile so you can customise your shit with a load of themed virtual goodies.

I personally think this whole thing is a load of shit and don't see the point, but that said all the cards are steam marketable, so I have no problem selling them off for a little bit of spare change to go towards my next game purchase, so there is some good that comes out of this whole thing even for those who don't really care.

Also if you have a Steam account above level 10 you can get foil card drops, but the only purpose I've seen for these is selling for insane amounts of dosh on the Steam market.  Still, I think they did a great job here of providing a fun and free little extra then benefits everybody, it'll be interesting to see what direction this thing takes when it comes out of beta.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive First Impressions

Before I start talking about this game lets have a BIG FUCKING DISCLAIMER!  I was never really all that good at Counter-Strike: Source and even less skilled at 1.6, so if your looking for someone to give you the ins and outs of this game from a competitive standpoint, I'm not your man!  Also, there are going to be pretty much no pictures in this post because I was having so much fun I forgot to take some, and I'm too lazy to load it back up.

Anyway, with that out of the way, I can finally start talking about CS:GO.  If you're not sure what it is, then you're either too young or you have been living under the rock your whole life.  CS:GO is the newest game in the long standing Counter-Strike series of games, basically the big grand daddy of team based online shooting.

It's actually refreshing to play a realistic style shooting game where my decisions actually fucking matter for once.  Health doesn't regenerate, at all, so if you go and make a stupid move in a fire fight, you're going to be punished for it, HARD.  Also you're limited to what you can take into each round by how much money you have, so in the early rounds or when you are losing, you really have to make careful, planned, intelligent decisions for what guns and gear you are going to buy.  So take all your Call of Duty pre-set load outs and regenerating health and fuck off, this is a real mans game.  I don't hate Call of Duty but the difference in skill required to play this, and to play CoD is astounding, so you best be willing to put in some practice hours in order to get good here.

Before CS:GO came out, I found that I was actually rather bored of CS: Source, I just didn't have the urge to find a mix or play in a public or anything like that, but when I fired up Global Offensive, holy shit was I pumped.  The menus are so sleek looking, the reticule is cool as fuck and best of all, the sound design is top notch.  Seriously, I have never heard guns sound this good in games before, it was giving me a fucking rush just hearing the effects.

The best feature I thought after playing it for about an hour was the match making.  You can very quickly find a casual or competitive game, and on top of that you can even play the much loved Gun Game mode through the matchmaking.  It just speeds everything up and makes the whole thing more accessible to those who don't want to trawl through server lists.  But I'm from a generation where server lists were the only thing around, and Valve made the correct decision not to remove the feature.  Custom games, custom maps and everything else are all still available through the games server list feature, so this game really does feel like a complete package.

Basically, the game is fucking awesome and you should play it.   Sure, there might be debates around the competitive nature of this game that I'm not aware of, but if you're looking for a fresh change of pace from all the Call of Duty and Battlefield type games, then this is for you.