Call Of Duty Black Ops Mission 1 without firing a single shot

BopNiblets

Wow saw this on RPS earlier, this is on Hardened difficulty too, probably some minor spoilers and swearing in there, but it's a real eye opener of awful game design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RULv6HbgEjY

Grayditch

Entire thread.

BopNiblets

Whatnow? Was that supposed to be a link?

Overheal

I wish more movies gave you a gun to shoot the extras.

TerrorFirmer

Ah seriously, for christ sake - the whole point of sections like that (the mentioned 13:50) are cinematic involvement, there are entire other parts of the game that test you well enough on any difficulty that it doesn't exactly make much odds if one or two on rails part are really only interactive cutscenes. It's about the carnage and mayhem, only a nob would sit there doing absolutely nothing and then whinge that he didn't die because of it. There are quite a few areas in the game where you have that type of 'invincibility', but they're rare in the overall scheme of the game, and are a hell of a lot of fun to play.....people like the dude who made that video have too much time on their hands. As for not shooting a gun in the overall level as a whole....great, it's hardly bad game design that a dude chose not to fire his gun and let the AI do the work. That's actually possible in more games than just Black Ops, but it brings me back to the whole issue of cinematic gameplay and the very fact that as a player enjoying the game, there is absolutely no reason not to be firing your gun at the enemy in game. There are actually achievements in Treyarchs other COD games for completing missions without firing your weapon, can be tricky to get, though they left it out for Black Ops. Any normal player would be happily blasting away at the enemy, just enjoying the roller coaster ride.

Den_M

I for one am sick of the Call Of Duty series. There seems to be one released every Winter aimed squarely at the Christmas market. It's like the Fifa of first person shooters. They don't seem to change very much either, either in graphics or gameplay. At least with Quake and Half Life there were massive changes between 1 and 2. I certainly ain't going to own 4 or 5 games in the same series at 40 - 60 quid for each one where it can be hard to tell the difference between them if you didn't know which one you were playing.

Retr0gamer

I've a feeling next year it's going to start to go stale unless they really shake up the series the way CoD 1 shook up cinematic FPS games and CoD 4 shook up the series. It's in danger of becoming like Tony Hawks.

PogMoThoin

With COD 1 and 2 the enemy would keep coming until You pushed forward, this is just pathetic

TerrorFirmer

Den_M wrote: »

I for one am sick of the Call Of Duty series. There seems to be one released every Winter aimed squarely at the Christmas market. It's like the Fifa of first person shooters. They don't seem to change very much either, either in graphics or gameplay. At least with Quake and Half Life there were massive changes between 1 and 2. I certainly ain't going to own 4 or 5 games in the same series at 40 - 60 quid for each one where it can be hard to tell the difference between them if you didn't know which one you were playing.

Have you actually played it? It's an amazing single player game, the best yet. It's aimed at a hungry market alright, but the quality is only improving. Why would the graphics change? They run on the same engine, though Treyarch have modified it fairly extensively so a lot of features are far improved over Modern Warfare. With Black Ops, what Treyarch did was take an existing engine, enhance it, and build a whole new story for the series, and did a damn good job. I fail to see what you would have them do differently? It's not entirely different to a film sequel...you take the same elements that made the first film great, with improvements where required.

It's hardly a fair comparison to compare it to Fifa or Tony Hawks, as they're not storyline based games, they're sports titles....the premise and expectations of the series are completely different. As far as I'm concerned, the money I've spent on Black Ops is the best value for money alongside Halo Reach since Modern Warfare 2 over a year ago. MW2 and Black Ops are shaping up to be two of the best selling independantly sold video games in history.....something neither Fifa or Tony Hawks can lay claim to nor ever will.

K.O.Kiki

All I see is "blah blah, you are a hand with a gun, blah".

BopNiblets

I can accept that it's the first mission and that you can do it without doing anything except stand and watch your NPC buddies win the game, but on "Hardened" with 20+ guys at the end of the video shooting at you in the door of a slow moving plane? Oh dear.

I liked the previos COD games and I guess BLOPS could be enjoyable, but they seem to be the "Directed by Michael Bay" equivalent of the games world, they look great and you're constantly bombarded with STUFF, but not much finesse.

landsleaving

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

MW2 and Black Ops are shaping up to be two of the best selling independantly sold video games in history.....something neither Fifa or Tony Hawks can lay claim to nor ever will.

Sales ≠ Quality

That exact point is an indication of the dire state of the games industry. Marketing and sales trumping creativity and imagination. It's not even CoD thats the worst, it's all the derivative copyat games. *cough* Medal of Honour *cough*

Lukker-

Games are regressing. Why innovate when you can recycle and re-use the same old on-rails sh*te rather then create something dynamic and fresh.

BlitzKrieg

Meh dual narrative media giving its finest experiance (explained here:http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=61689479&postcount=1)

The dynamic narrative is usually the smaller of the two today but I would argue it is probably the more important. Its the story the player himself tells by how he plays the game, this is the aspects of the game where the player chooses the use specific elements in a game they way they choose. How they kill an opponent or even if they bother to kill one or not, its the narrative that is directly tied to the gameplay. And as we know Gameplay is king.

The COD games like the medal of honour series before it have always fallen on the constructive side of the dual narrative over the dynamic. As I mentioned over on the cod forums, the closest the series got to dynamic gameplay was back in COD 1 on the 2nd british mission

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBH8-NefjdA

a defend scenario but one that didnt funnel you down a direct path but kept it open and required you to be aware 360' around you at all times. Made it really feel like a genuine battle.

Series never really matched that again and has gone more and more constructed.

Heavily constructed is not bad. If you want an experiance that is easy to pick up and is very rewarding on the visuals and tight set pieces then a game that is highly constructed will always be better then a highly dynamic game.

Just dont expect any gameplay depth (compare, contrast COD vs Fallout)


The problem with Treyarch though is they fall far too strongly on the constructed side of things most of the time and this is its most blatantly true in the early segments of black ops which painfully overdoes it. btw the commentator blames consoles for the rise of high construct fps (or cinematic FPS as retrogamer dubbed them) but Medal of Honour Allied Assault started this horrible trend and that was a PC exclusive. High construct gaming is the big thing right now. They are easy to sell, easy to develop and easy to play.

But in the defence of COD, black ops and high construct gaming in general. Modern Warfare did put forward quite strongly the point that the single player experiance does not need to have anything to do with the multiplayer. Cod's single player is a cinematic rollercoaster where the player is led by the hand through set piece after set piece where he possesses rambo like strength. High construct, low dynamic.

Cod's multiplayer is all designed around customization and personal skill progress. THe high construct is thrown out for low construct level design, game rules and stat traking and high dynamic balance and customization.

The two modes may share the same graphics and gun models and settings, both they are worlds apart in game design.

I'd say though of the two the single player is blatantly the easier to make.



And final thoughts stolen from kotaku:




btw we need to get another game theory thread going sometime.

they are fun.

TerrorFirmer

But the point people are missing here is that it's what a good portion of the market wants. There's a target audience. I like Fallout and Bioshock as much as the next guy, but I have certain expectations from Call of Duty and Black ops did not disappoint. If the next Call of Duty came out and it had radically evolved into an FPS/RPG hybrid, I'd be incredibly disappointed, because it's not what I expect from the series and not the gameplay I enjoy from it.

It's hardly fair to call it a 'terrible trend' and an indication of the 'dire state' of the games industry - dire in whose opinion? Disliking a massively popular game does not make it anything other than a good game regardless for the market it's aimed at.

People should actually play the game before also implying that the entire game can be played without killing enemies as a sidenote, I can tell you I didn't die about 100 times playing a certain rooftop level on Veteran by choice.

Open ended and flexible games like Fallout can never provided the cinematic quality that heavily linear games like Call of Duty can, which is why I love Call of Duty equally as I do those like Fallout, because they're very different types of games and appeal to very different interests.

As for the map design, such design does still exist, though games have evolved to the stage where they can make the choice as to what they offer the player rather then just a challenge.

I also thought Medal of Honor was a pretty good game, not quite as cinematic as Call of Duty, though it made a decent and enjoyable stab at it. But, as the market goes, it didn't sell particularly well in comparison, though it's simpy fruitless to deny that quality does equal sales, and in the case of a game that is the fastest selling in history, they are certainly doing something right with regards the intended market, regardless of those who dislike the game dynamics.

There's room for dynamic and linear in the FPS market, and I enjoy both, and would be disappointed to see either vanish as they both have a lot to offer. If you don't like the game, that's a valid opinion, but nothing more than an opinion, even though people seem aggressively intent on establishing their opinions as fact i.e some of the initial comments on this thread. There are plenty of games that I personally despise; playing ten minutes of Final Fantasy is ten minutes too much for me, but regardless of my loathing for it, it's an opinion and I would never attempt to claim that it was a terrible game, just one that doesn't agree with me.

landsleaving

I actually liked CoD 1 & 2, but when a game gets to the point of yearly updates, even switching dev teams every year isn't giving a long enough development cycle to make something new, it's just the same thing over and over. Every other publisher wanting to imitate doesn't help matters.

I guess the problem is the market has changed hugely for games. CoD sells to the type of gamer (not exclusively) who just wants to shoot, see things explode and get a kick out of finishing a level. It's not made for those of us who grew up exploring every nook and cranny of Mario. It's simple, the formula works, it has just enough of a story to make it keep rolling forwards, kind of like a horror franchise. It was actually good in a mindless sort of way at first, then it started losing its appeal but you could still enjoy it a little, but it's reached number 7 and everyone just looks at it and cringes a bit, now the original cast and crew are long gone. Yet the public laps it up thanks to there being a certain slavish devotion to the franchise and/or genre.

Yep, Black Ops is in fact Friday the 13th part 7.

Oh and the newest Final Fantasy games have been rubbish for pretty much the same reasons, so I'm not singling out CoD for criticism. The whole industry is at it.

Chairman Meow

Anyone going into a COD game expecting some kind of Halo style sandbox shooter full of emergent gameplay, radical new ideas, and unscripted gameplay is an idiot.
COD is the pizza hut of FPS'es. You know exactly what youre getting, every time. Big explosions, fancy scripted sections, and over the top storylines. Expecting anything more is expecting too much.
It aint Half Life 2, and its dumb as a bag of rocks, but its enjoyable popcorn fluff.

Retr0gamer

My problem with CoD is that it's the same thing every year and the accelerated development cycle means there's no time for the developers to innovate, they are turfing out the same game over and over. I'm sick of it and it's only a matter of time when the rest of the target audience who unlike me had CoD4 as their first CoD game get sick of it. Something better is going to come along, possibly something like Stalker, that will be popular enough and so far ahead of CoD that the series will struggle or never manage to catch up. It's the same thing that happened when Half-Life 1 was released and made every other FPS released for the next year or two seem obsolete.

Chairman Meow wrote: »

Anyone going into a COD game expecting some kind of Halo style sandbox shooter full of emergent gameplay, radical new ideas, and unscripted gameplay is an idiot.

Halo isn't much different, it's basically the same linear progression with non sscripted AI, something that's been around for years.

Kiith

I think i just got sick of shallow (and i don't mean that in a bad way, but compared to some of the games i'll list in a minute) first person shooters. They have always been a dime a dozen. Yes, Modern Warfare does it well, and i enjoyed them, but i guess i just want more from my games. It's probably my rpg side speaking here, but we need more System Shocks, Stalkers and Deus Ex's in the genre, rather then more CoD's.

landsleaving wrote: »

Yep, Black Ops is in fact Friday the 13th part 7.

Ouch! I'm not CoD's biggest fan, but that was a low blow :P

Chairman Meow

Retr0gamer wrote: »

My problem with CoD is that it's the same thing every year and the accelerated development cycle means there's no time for the developers to innovate, they are turfing out the same game over and over. I'm sick of it and it's only a matter of time when the rest of the target audience who unlike me had CoD4 as their first CoD game get sick of it. Something better is going to come along, possibly something like Stalker, that will be popular enough and so far ahead of CoD that the series will struggle or never manage to catch up. It's the same thing that happened when Half-Life 1 was released and made every other FPS released for the next year or two seem obsolete.



Halo isn't much different, it's basically the same linear progression with non sscripted AI, something that's been around for years.

Youll never see a game like STALKER selling well on consoles. It doesnt have that instant gratification that ADHD affected teenagers crave from COD. Theres already games that are miles ahead of COD, the original bad company had a free form non linear campaign and an incredibly deep and satisfying multi, but probably sold a quarter of what cod4 did. Hell half the people who buy COD dont even finish the singleplayer theyre in such a rush to find out what the new perks or care packages or whatever the **** do.
Its lowest common denominator gaming. I can admit to liking the campaign but in the same way i admit to loving ****ty action movies. Why people put it on some kind of a pedestal as the greatest FPS series of all time is 100% beyond me. Its MP is a retarded Quake 3 arena clone, and its SP is bettered by everything out there, but it appeals to kids who just dont know any better.

Retr0gamer

Well maybe it will change. I never though I'd see western RPGs doing well on consoles but KotOR and Oblivion changed all that. I can see battlefield over taking CoD in the next year or two because it's multiplayer offers so much more. In fact I didn't think that I'd see Halo being taken off it's console multiplayer pedestal, even with better console multiplayer games around, especially not by a CoD game but it was.

I'm pretty sure that the basic team deathmatch and deathmatch gameplay of Halo and CoD will disappear like it has on the PC and be replaced by much more complex multiplayer offerings. I can't see much future in that gameplay style considering there's only so far you can go without a keyboard and mouse allowing much faster gameplay. Halo would be the fastest and it's totally pedestrian to even Quake in speed terms. The slow pace suits much more team orientated fair.

At the other end of the scale the terrible community on the consoles means that it's hard to get a decent team based match and the lack of dedicated servers means unpopular games are dead within 4 months whereas on PC there's always a few servers for a game.

Overheal

As I mentioned over on the cod forums, the closest the series got to dynamic gameplay was back in COD 1 on the 2nd british mission

So having only played CoD1, I'm better off then?

I thought the Russian Missions were great, but I hadn't watched that Ewan McGregor movie, either.

Chairman Meow

Retr0gamer wrote: »

At the other end of the scale the terrible community on the consoles means that it's hard to get a decent team based match and the lack of dedicated servers means unpopular games are dead within 4 months whereas on PC there's always a few servers for a game.

I played borderlands on 360 first, and never delved into co op too much as it was constantly full of arseholes trying to duel with you over and ove,r even if they were 20 levels above you. Got the PC version in the steam sale and not had a single person try to duel me in the 7 or 8 hours i put into it, just good coop fun.
I love the 360, and to be honest i think halo is an excellent game, when it works well its fantastic, but the majority of people on XBL are the very definition of cu*ts.

Retr0gamer

Overheal wrote: »

So having only played CoD1, I'm better off then?

CoD2 gets a lot of love but to be honest I didn' think too much of it. If you didn't play the CoD 1 expansion united offensive then you should because it's great. Other than that CoD: MW is fantastic and well worth a play. Really showed how good Infinity Ward are at level design when they don't have a 2 year development period restricting them.

Chairman Meow wrote: »

I played borderlands on 360 first, and never delved into co op too much as it was constantly full of arseholes trying to duel with you over and ove,r even if they were 20 levels above you. Got the PC version in the steam sale and not had a single person try to duel me in the 7 or 8 hours i put into it, just good coop fun.
I love the 360, and to be honest i think halo is an excellent game, when it works well its fantastic, but the majority of people on XBL are the very definition of cu*ts.

Well it's unfair to say it's only happening on consoels but yeah it happens a lot less on the PC whereas public servers on consoles are full of twats and griefers.

Chairman Meow

Retr0gamer wrote: »

CoD2 gets a lot of love but to be honest I didn' think too much of it. If you didn't play the CoD 1 expansion united offensive then you should because it's great. Other than that CoD: MW is fantastic and well worth a play. Really showed how good Infinity Ward are at level design when they don't have a 2 year development period restricting them.
.

United offensive is still the best ever cod game and literally shat all over cod 2.

Stercus Accidit

I read a comment somewhere that they should make you a journalist, dispence with the gun entirely, replace it with a camera and have it as a modern warfare version of pokemon snap.

That could be pretty cool.

krudler

Stercus Accidit wrote: »

I read a comment somewhere that they should make you a journalist, dispence with the gun entirely, replace it with a camera and have it as a modern warfare version of pokemon snap.

That could be pretty cool.

I'd love a level playing as a medic, no weapons, I cant for the life of me think if a FPS war game had it before, I think one did for a level.

I like the CoD games, but more so for the multiplayer, which is phenomenal when you get good games going and it not full of dickhead 13 year olds cheating to get their precious gun camoflage.

Youll never see a game like STALKER selling well on consoles. It doesnt have that instant gratification that ADHD affected teenagers crave from COD.

Probably true, my taste in games is like my taste in movies, I'm a big COD player but my most anticipated game is The Last Guardian, because its the complete opposite of the CoD franchise. Same with movies, sometimes I wanna watch Lost In Translation or Into The Wild or something character driven, but a lot of times I just wanna watch sh1t blow up

Games are definitely becoming more cinematic, and its at sacrifice of freedom to explore, instead you're being driven down a linear path, Uncharted 2 did it brilliantly because you genuinely want to see what happens in the story next, stuff like MGS4 feels like you're interacting with a movie more than playing a game half the time, its about balance.

Fanny Cradock

He actually did fire a bullet. See 9:35 or thereabouts.

Lukker-

Retr0gamer wrote: »

CoD2 gets a lot of love but to be honest I didn' think too much of it. If you didn't play the CoD 1 expansion united offensive then you should because it's great. Other than that CoD: MW is fantastic and well worth a play. Really showed how good Infinity Ward are at level design when they don't have a 2 year development period restricting them.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had a 2 year development cycle just like every other one.

The first 3 titles from Infinity Ward were fantastic IMHO ( CoD1, CoD2 and CoD4).

All went downhill with MW2 which had an appalling SP and an average MP with woeful balance and a tiny skill gap.

CoD2 had the best MP.

TerrorFirmer

Chairman Meow wrote: »

United offensive is still the best ever cod game and literally shat all over cod 2.

You do know that Treyarch technically developed UO, as it was developed by Gray Matter, who were integrated into Treyarch a long time ago.

In fact United Offensive is nothing to do with Infinity Ward at all.

You guys are continuously passing off opinion as fact. Everyone's entitled to an opinion but I do take exception when people start referring to those opinions as definite statements about a given game.

If you don't like the SP and MP - that's fine, that's why such a variety of genres and even sub classes within genres exist. To cater to a versatile and wide target market. As I said before, there are several franchises of games I absolutely cannot stand; but nonetheless I acknowledge that they must be doing something right to be so popular even if they are not for me. Why so many people are so rabidly attacking the integrity of Call of Duty as if it where a great offense to the gaming market despite it, however, being the best selling game of all time, is beyond me.

For example, I would address the following comments as so:

I'm sick of it and it's only a matter of time when the rest of the target audience who unlike me had CoD4 as their first CoD game get sick of it.

Actually, I've played the games since 2015 brought out Allied Assault, and enthusiastically played COD, United Offensive, COD2, COD3, World at War, COD4, and MW2 prior to Black Ops. I was particularly into the PC gaming scene, though I've since switched to the 360. I've been playing FPS games since Wolfenstein, so I don't know what gives you the authority to seemingly speak for everyone as to how or why they appreciate Black Ops.

I can admit to liking the campaign but in the same way i admit to loving ****ty action movies. Why people put it on some kind of a pedestal as the greatest FPS series of all time is 100% beyond me. Its MP is a retarded Quake 3 arena clone, and its SP is bettered by everything out there, but it appeals to kids who just dont know any better.

As above - what gives you the right to say that? I'm not a kid, and I certainly do know better; I'm perfectly well informed as to what's out there and on merit of what I personally feel constitutes sheer entertainment and longevity excellence, Call of Duty, throughout and up to Black Ops, is my favourite video game franchise. It's my opinion, shared by most of the 20,000,000 odd people that bought MW2 along, and it doesn't make your opinion wrong, but it does suggest that you're leaning far more towards suggesting fact than opinion in what you're saying. Can you not respect the opinions of others?

Critical reviews of both MW2 and Black Ops are overwhelmingly positive, sales figures are phenomenal, which would surely indicate that personal opinions aside, there's a massive target demographic out there satisfied with the output (whom I would be one of). If you don't like it's style, if you prefer games of a different nature, then it's hardly fair to judge it on the merits of what it never professed to offer. It delivers on what it promises, and does it better than any other game of its type out there. People have expectations of games, myself included, and when comparing games like, say, Bioshock, Fallout 3 and Call of Duty, they're not entirely cross comparable, each has to be taken on its own merits and offerings. For example, I expect intense, cinematic, in your face straight up brainless entertainment from Call of Duty; from Fallout, I expect a much deeper and involving experience that places both choice and freedom in your hands. I like both, I just happen to prefer what Call of Duty offers, it doesn't mean I can't enjoy the others at the same time.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had a 2 year development cycle just like every other one.

The first 3 titles from Infinity Ward were fantastic IMHO ( CoD1, CoD2 and CoD4).

All went downhill with MW2 which had an appalling SP and an average MP with woeful balance and a tiny skill gap.

CoD2 had the best MP.

Actually, Treyarch were given serious restricted Timetables with their releases, hence COD3 was inconsistent, excellent in some sections and then atrocious in others, an extremely rushed title pushed out to capitalise on COD2. You can't blame Treyarch for that, they were under immense pressure from Activision. Given 6 months, I'm sure IW would struggle to piece together MW3 either, but even at that, with COD3, Treyarch had no prior track record apart from some members of staff having worked on United Offensive and COD2: Big Red One, which, decent as it was, was worked for a vastly different and limited platform. World at War had longer but still less than MW2, though Black Ops had the full cycle - and it shows.

In my opinion....Call of Duty was an instant classic. Relevant to the time in which it was released, it's definitely the best COD title. COD2 was equally epic, and really pushed the angle of cinematic gaming. COD3 was outdated, entertaining and promising, but severely rushed; buggy, inconsistent qualities in development; it belonged in the past rather than the time it was released. COD4 was brilliant in every regard, hard to fault it. World at War was severely underrated, a great title and as a gamer who leans towards WW2 titles, it had some fantastic set pieces but it lacked the character development that IW had nailed down to make the SP truly memorable. I see Black Ops as Treyarchs perfection, surpassing IW in creating and drawing the player into a story, and creating an entire world of characters and motives to make it credible. Multiplayer wise, I feel Black Ops is more like an add on for MW2, with some stellar new modes and options, but overall feeling far too similar to be considered an entire step forward the way most of the other titles were in several ways.

If I never played Black Ops MP again to be frank, I wouldn't consider it much of a loss. I appreciate the improvements in BO over MW2 but something in me just prefers MW2. I'm more of a Halo Reach player either way.

Nehaxak

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Any normal player would be happily blasting away at the enemy, just enjoying the roller coaster ride.

If the game were free yeah and even then only once or twice before you got bored of it, but paying 40+ Euro for this where you can go through a whole level only firing your gun twice on the hardest difficulty ? :P