It gets to the point where you barely hear it in the end – the constant chatter of machine gun fire that has accompanied Call of Duty campaigns for nearly two decades. First it was the tick of the Thompson’s typewriter, then the clink of the AK-47’s factory line – the last one was a real test for the eardrums in the late ’00s, let me tell you. Now it is the more refined kick drum of the Kastov 74u. But the action has always remained the same: click to command your weapon to spread the lead in a specific direction. Maybe this time you interrupt the flow with a grenade. Probably not, huh. Stick to the classics.
The eternal appeal of this setup is undeniable. Even in the cramped and linear environments of a COD level, no encounter will go exactly the same way twice. As you and your opponents change positions, like the paddles in a game of Pong, the battlefield throws up implicit, absorbing technical problems. At what angle can a bullet get between all these shipping containers and hit only the head of the guard on deck? To what extent should you lead the target at 300 yards? At 500 meters? And always a primal question begs to be answered: who is predator and who is prey? No other game can convey the power of a critical hit quite like COD.
Still, these are the basic building blocks of the FPS genre. By now, they could be the foundation of a tower of interlocking mechanics that sets Call of Duty apart from its peers. Instead, if you play this year’s Modern Warfare 2, you’ll find that the equation is largely unchanged from 2009’s Modern Warfare 2.
In part, that’s due to resistance from the game’s multiplayer audience. In that area, even the smallest changes to the formula can wreak havoc; just google ‘slide cancel’ and you’ll see how a simple speed exploit can define Warzone’s meta.
The biggest backlash came in the early 2010s, when Call of Duty developers, inspired by the former Infinity Ward team behind Titanfall, began embracing more dramatic movement techniques by designing double jumps and dashes in the air. In Black Ops 3, skilled players were chaining boosts and wallruns in such a way that they never touched the ground. But this futurism was eventually rejected by fans, and 2017’s World War II was advertised with liberal use of the phrase “boots on the ground” — essentially a slogan in favor of mechanical conservatism.
Unfortunately, that also had a domino effect in the campaigns. Any momentum that had accumulated during previous entries, literally and figuratively, quickly dissipated as the series rebooted. Gone were the tactical advantages of a sci-fi environment, such as hackable robots, spider-leg seeker bombs, and anti-gravity grenades that lifted enemies out of cover. REST IN PEACE.
Body Goals
Of course it is possible to separate multiplayer and single player, treating the former as a protected area and the latter as a laboratory for testing new ideas. So it happened with Black Ops: Cold War, where developer Raven Software, alone in the campaign, created a simple but transformative body shield mechanic (opens in new tab). By tapping a key you can disarm an opponent, grab him by the neck and march towards his comrades, his torso taking most of the fire. Once they had enough lead, you could pull the pin off their grenade and push them into a crowd of enemies.
Since you were invulnerable as the animation unfolded, the body shield functioned rather like a glorious assassination in modern Doom – prompting you to plunge into danger to save yourself. It enabled a new style of play in a game that since the rise of Halo had encouraged you to sit back and recharge when you were under pressure. A solid addition to fold into the COD campaign’s formula as it progresses, you’d think. But last year, when it came time to follow up on the Cold War, the body shield was missing.
There are practical reasons why innovations can fall through the cracks in an annualized series. Responsibility for creating Call of Duty campaigns ultimately bounces between three different main studios. The Cold War campaign was Raven’s work; the next game, Vanguard, was created by Sledgehammer; This year’s Modern Warfare 2 is an Infinity Ward production. Who knows: maybe one day Treyarch will get a taste for single player again.
While all of these studios share lessons in technology and level design – this year’s narco mansion disguise is reminiscent of both Cold War KGB headquarters and World War II Nazi stronghold – the development overlaps of their campaigns each other, so it’s never easy to build on what came immediately before.
There’s also a nagging suspicion that Activision regards COD as Baby’s First FPS, aware that each new campaign is a gateway to the genre for a new generation of teens. As such, these campaigns may have been designed not to overwhelm: restraint in tactical options, freedom of exploration, or too much interactivity. The structure of the new Modern Warfare 2 certainly seems to support that: leading the way in gallery shootouts and not expanding your toolset and latitude until you’re deep into the second half of the story.
The most charitable comparison that can be made is that Call of Duty is a bit like Mario, where Nintendo regularly introduces new ideas for just a few levels, before throwing them out. No novelty should be welcome any longer. COD campaigns, too, have always shot for variety above all else, alternating sniper hunts with car chases, plane bombings with stuffy home invasions.
But old players like me have seen too many good ideas defenestrated in favor of familiar, machine-gunned beats. COD may be first-person cinema, but the truth is that the stories won’t stick in your mind unless you get something new to engage with – a clear memory made with the fingers. Until that happens, her campaigns will never really surprise us, no matter how many No Russians they draw.