Is ‘Call of Duty’ a Bad Game? Here’s What We Think

The Call of Duty franchise has been dominating the gaming world for years. Since the first installment of the franchise released in 2003, simply called Call of Duty, the game has been growing in success and popularity amongst players worldwide. However, the franchise is under constant criticism from the gaming community and has been hailed as bad, repetitive, and blatantly uncreative. Furthermore, Activision is blamed for most of the problems gaming faces these days, which got us thinking – are Call of Duty games that bad?

Most common reasons why Call of Duty games are bad

The gaming community has always been vocal in how they rated released games; some would say they are more demanding and “picky” than film and TV series fans. With the Internet, ways of criticizing and demanding answers from game developers have become more accessible, which is needed and understandable since games are insanely expensive today. Call of Duty games are regularly one of the most expensive on the market, which brings us to the first reason.

Call of Duty games are too expensive and encourage microtransactions too much

Activision regularly releases games every year or every second year, which is good for players who like new content. However, if the product doesn’t offer anything new and creative, most new releases will be “found out” by the community.

Call of Duty fell into that hole a decade ago when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was released in 2011. Previous installments, Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare II were successful and generally loved by the fans. Still, MW 3 was a literal rehash of the previous games that didn’t offer anything exciting. Same linear story with a lot of action sequences and some resolved plot points, and that’s basically it. Multiplayer added a few more maps and features that weren’t that notable.

Even today, MW 3 costs 40$, which is insane for a twelve-year-old game. Since Call of Duty games today are bought mostly for multiplayer, the way it encourages microtransactions is a huge disadvantage. However, most players still spend their money on various things, so people shouldn’t be surprised that Activision offers these features knowing their players will purchase them. Many games “fell victim to microtransactions” and will stay like this for years.

The toxic fanbase makes the multiplayer experience insufferable.

Last two decades, multiplayer games reached impressive popularity, and Call of Duty was truly one of the first games that kickstarted the modern multiplayer genre. Since the first Call of Duty game, online servers have been full of players from all over the world who could test their skills online against their peers.

Consoles also joined the multiplayer mode, and Call of Duty soon became one of the most-played multiplayer games in the world. Older players are still haunted by the abuse they got when playing this first-person shooter online during the mid and late 2000s. Xbox 360 had the option to send voice messages to other players connected through Xbox Live and let’s just say that players didn’t send heartwarming messages to their teammates and opponents.

Hurling abuse and sending awful messages gained the Call of Duty fanbase a notorious reputation for being toxic and unbearable. You could say that Call of Duty games were pioneers for the unpleasant gaming experience, which got exaggerated over the years since all online games have similar problems. In the past, game studios didn’t regulate lobbies and in-game interactions, which is much better nowadays. Especially for games that include a lot of skill, and Call of Duty is one of those skill-based games.

Repetitive gameplay and uncreative decisions lead to the same old games.

Although Activision regularly releases various Call of Duty projects, players accused most of them of being uncreative and repetitive. The Call of Duty franchise has over 21 games released today, and only a handful in the last few years were unique. Warzone seems like the freshest game since it moved away from classic first-person shooting-based deathmatch game modes to battle royale, which became popular with the release of Fortnite.

Call of Duty storytelling has been a hit-and-miss over the years, with Modern Warfare and Black Ops trilogies seemingly being the most concrete (both trilogies generally have bad third installments). Modern Warfare got its reboot, was quite popular amongst the players, and was complimented for its multiplayer. However, at times it still felt like Activision/Infinity Ward were recycling the same old games.

The biggest and boldest move from the game studio came in the form of Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare, which moved the franchise to space, frankly, the campaigns were good, but players weren’t that big fans of that change. Immediately after those games, CoD moved back to Earth and started telling or retelling stories of the past, which we saw before from the franchise. The futuristic CoD projects weren’t masterpieces but weren’t inherently bad games, and the fans’ reaction dictated how the CoD franchise would conduct their games in the future – back to old ways.

The size of Call of Duty games increased tenfold.

Over the years, Call of Duty games added more and more features to their games, increasing their size tenfold. Players reported that new Modern Warfare reboots had almost 200 GB of file games to download, which some consoles can’t spare so willingly. For example, Xbox offers 500-megabyte and 1-terabyte memory consoles to their consumers, and having a game that can reach 200 GBs is problematic for any device with up to one terabyte on its hard discs.

Yes, constant updates and balancing of the game require a lot of new files, but still, the size of some of these games is ridiculous. For example, Epic Games did a fantastic job balancing the size of Fortnite and ensured their game didn’t get over 100 GBs. Call of Duty game developers said multiple times that they could not decrease the size of their games like Fortnite has, but they still tried.

Call of Duty games became too unrealistic and transformed into bad action movies.

First-person shooters were action-packed from their beginnings in the 1980s and stayed like today. When Call of Duty released its first game in 2003, it directly competed with the Medal of Honor, which was heavily inspired by the Saving Private Ryan movie. EA Games even got famous director Steven Spielberg to help them with the game’s storyline.

Call of Duty 2 was much more successful because it valued epic action scenes, and we felt like we were part of the siege of Stalingrad or the D-Day operation. The gameplay was dynamic, fun, and non-stop, making CoD 2 successful. It helped that multiplayer was also regarded as one of the best modes of that era.

Modern Warfare, or CoD 4, was a game changer because the franchise moved away from WWII and transported us to modern warfare, as the game’s name suggests. CoD 4 had great multiplayer, entertaining gameplay, great voice acting, and action scenes that make CoD 4 absolutely amazing.

CoD was never supposed to be a war simulator; Activision always intended their game to be a fun, action-packed game where players will feel like they are part of a cool action movie. The issue with recent CoD games was the repetitiveness and recycling of the same old stories that made games look like bad action movies, which the gaming community didn’t appreciate.

Are Call of Duty games that bad?

All of these reasons are valid criticisms from the gaming community. The CoD franchise did a lot of good for the first-person shooter genre but also was pioneering practices in gaming that weren’t good for the gamers. Microtransactions, expensive games, and new releases that didn’t add anything exceptional are problems the CoD franchise is guilty of, among other notable franchises.

With that being said, CoD isn’t a bad game because it brings some value to the market, especially in the action-first-person genre. Call of Duty multiplayer is still one of the best and most dynamic games on the market today and still attracts many gamers daily. Some players are bad, and some are good, and if you are bothered by abuse from others, just mute them – in the end, Call of Duty is entertaining, which is the most important thing.

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