Call of Duty's Influence Over the FPS Genre Is Coming to an End

1. Call of Duty's Influence Over the FPS Genre Is Coming to an End It is often a long time since I have played a shooter and haven't thought to myself; "oh this is a variation of Call of Duty. inch That was until Titanfall had its beta recently, and finally I felt like I was playing a game that was not inspired by the same mechanics that seemed to be recycled for the past 6 years. When the 360's major title Halo a few hit in 2007, I found myself having a great time with Master Chief's latest adventure, but It was still just much more Halo. I like many others were eagerly awaiting the next big thing that a new wave of consoles would bring, so when Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare hit, I like many others were blown away by the sheer amount of enjoyment I was getting from a system shooter that didn't have the name Halo in it. Modern Warfare started something big for games, and for some time every single developer wanted to get in on the excitement and make their own flavor of a modern shooter. At that time it was acceptable, simply because Call of Duty

2. took a year off from the Modern Warfare style and released a WWII shooter, and the market wasn't overloaded of modern era shooters. As time went on, every gamer started noticing a trend that every shooter they indexed was some spin on Call of Duty. From Homefront to Medal of Honor, everything that seemed to be somewhat various ended up being a spin on the Call of Duty Formula. This was on top of the yearly releases we saw from Activision and also the COD franchise. Infinity Ward had created something that started out as the next big thing, but then turned the FPS type into a 5 year cycle of the same recycled mechanics. Even the big first party games like Halo took style ideas from COD, and implemented similar features in games like Halo Reach and Halo 4. Visit: call of duty modern warfare multiplayer gameplay Because Microsoft introduced the Xbox One and Sony revealed the PlayStation 4, that trend didn't seem to falter. ?call of duty?: Ghosts was coming alongside both consoles' release, and to no one's surprise ended up be the most popular game to both the platforms. It seemed that this trend was going to follow gaming even longer, and possibly hinder the progression of video game design for even longer. I thought that same thing until I played Titanfall. Titanfall logo pilot running Respawn amusement is the group of developers that actually inspired the COD revolution back in 2007, so part of me thought that Titanfall would be "Call of Duty with mechs" as a lot of the world called it when trailers hit at E3 2013. In a few ways that is true, but Titanfall is so much more than just a game with guns and mechs, which provides me faith that possibly this trend of having the same game repackaged over and over will finally start coming to a conclusion. Titanfall does borrow some things from Call of Duty, which is to be expected since it is essentially coming from the team that made Contemporary Warfare, but Respawn has been very careful to make sure that Titanfall feels unique and different. While the menus and upgrade system appear to be identical, the other 90% of the game play feels fresh. I ended up playing the beta for more than 15 hours, and never once did I say to myself, this is just Call of Duty with mechs. That was such a relief and gives me a small glimmer of hope that this era of the realistic modern shooter will start to end, and gamers will start getting some

3. fresh shooters and not recycled content. Activision is still going to make Call of Duty games, and even recently announced that they are moving to a several year cycle on the Call of Duty development cycle, but with the release of Titanfall this March maybe Activision will see that actually Call of Duty needs some sort of shake up. If you look at the reviews for Call of Duty: Ghosts you will see that it did not review very well when compared with previous titles. I was given the opportunity to review Ghosts on the PC, and I honestly thought it was a rushed game which had zero inspiration. Most importantly, I felt as if the entire Call of Duty genre was focused on how many weapons you uncover and how high your rank can go, instead of focusing on how much you are having while playing. Fun factor was a term that was used a bit in the 90's and early 2000's by game reviewers, but overtime that idea appears to of vanished. Now the trend seems to be stuck on realism and graphics instead of fun, which is something that needs to modify sooner rather than later. Titanfall is the best example of a game that's releasing that is about fun first. It isn't the most impressive game aesthetically by any means, and in many ways uses dated technology such as the source engine, but not once did I think Titanfall was a low quality game because of its visuals.