Call of Duty: A Franchise Retrospective and Analysis

there aren't many mutually agreed-upon opinions in the gaming universe nowadays but I do think there is one that comes pretty close call of duty games just aren't as good as they used to be we hear it a lot or some form of it but it rarely comes with much more analysis than that the thing is oftentimes people agree with the sentiment but disagree with the timeline maybe you thought cod 2 was the zenith of its attention to historical accuracy and commitment to adhering to the literal Call of Duty I think many people think it was somewhere between cod 4 and modern warfare 3 when the after-school multiplayer xbox live parties with their most fun and their most competitive finally there's a core of people that find the final nail in the coffin was the advanced movement and further progression into the future that did the series end regardless the games are still routinely the best-selling video games of each year they are absolute entertainment institutions at this point and while they have traversed hundreds of years in terms of their settings one can still tell a Call of Duty game is a Call of Duty game within seconds upon seeing it even the newer ones there's a through-line of ubiquitous and consistent design decisions that have created an absolute identity for what it means to be a co d game are we tired of that design has it been played out or has the industry moved on how did this series go from the military focused valor of a collection of normal men and women to the superhero action of individuals doing superhuman things it is no doubt that the Call of Duty games have shared design ubiquity throughout each title but it is not at all true that they are all the same game in their thematic and tonal objectives Call of Duty the first and Call of Duty say modern warfare 3 even are so radically different in their approach that it's hilarious to think of all of these games as being wholesale derivative when was the shift though did it happen at once or over time and it goes without saying that this is an extremely complicated question one that requires a video of this length to even attempt to answer because I've always found Call of Duty to be one of the most interesting video game franchise ever simply from a consumer standpoint there's this undeniable rubber-banding between expounding upon military stick valor and a stringent commitment to marketing annualizing and commodifying real-world bloodshed much has been said about the ways in which Call of Duty has a less than virtuous relationship to war and colonialism but it was not always this way Call of Duty was originally hilariously enough the artistic and commercial response to the sort of one-man-army superhero approach that so many FPS games had up into this point it's why I think I love the single-player campaigns more than anything replaying every one of these for the video has reignited a sort of nostalgic ember in my subconscious I think a lot of you who know me for my analytical conversations about video games in their artistic objectives will be surprised to hear that I am for the most part hugely positive about these games in their presentation and gameplay I mean sure these games come with an absolute trash fire of political social cultural philosophical and ethical implications baked into the very core of these titles even then I can't help but find a good deal of joy in the stories of soap and price and the absurdity of the Treyarch titles and the hilariously unintended comedy of a war drama like scene in ghosts I never start my videos like this but the length of this one has to be an exception on screen right now is a table of contents as well as one in the description with links that should navigate you to the exact place you want to be just in case you get lost or YouTube loses your place on multiple viewings there are also timestamps in the description I don't expect anyone to watch this all at once so please use this furthermore this is a deep dive into okay almost every single Call of Duty game released as of early 2020 its single-player campaigns its multiplayer and its respective co-op campaigns I purchased and played through every single game in every single DLC I played every campaign all the co-op modes all the zombies maps and countless hours of multiplayer for this video and of course I'm not counting the near immeasurable amount of time I've played this areas in my life up until this point the only games missing are the mobile games as capturing those are not impossible legally so please don't comment saying this isn't actually every Call of Duty game I'm gonna ban you in real life the video has taken hundreds of hours and buying everything on Steam took almost two years of waiting for sales and bundles to finally get everything in a way that I can afford it I've been thinking about this video for that long but unfortunately due to the length of this video I won't be going into each game as deep as I do the other games on my channel only because I mean that video would be like 14 hours long this is much more of a retrospective on these games to sit back on and celebrate their influence so finally please consider leaving a comment or like on the video as it has taken me months of work and effort I mean don't do it until you are done and you actually liked it of course but please consider it as this is free for everyone last thing before we get stuck into it I am launching a patreon alongside this video I know I know another YouTube person with the patreon all I want you to do is consider the time and financial input of producing a video this long with all of the games in DLC and consider giving if you find yourself capable it is a lot to ask for in this weird time in human history however I'm confident everyone hearing this understands and gets that it is totally optional for you and if you enjoy my content that much then great I say this knowing all of you are mature enough to know that you should only donate given you have 100% confidence it is financially responsible for you I will talk more about this at the end of the video and what's gonna be included and whatnot the other way to support me is to come by my twitch stream and consider tuning in or following or if you have Amazon Prime you can get a free subscription to my channel which also helps me financially I promise I'm done now let's do this eh I actually love Call of Duty believe it or not I still have the CD case for the first game which my brother and I got in 2003 I've since purchased every single Call of Duty game since all but two of them at the very moment they were released I love the campaign's the multiplayer and even the co-op modes no one knows how many hours I put into multiplayer matches on Call of Duty and I'm confident I was shudder at that number Call of Duty despite its reputation in 2020 is almost assuredly my most played video game franchise of all time and sure like most of us my relationship to the series has faltered quite a bit but I cannot deny the influence of this massive entertainment pillar I want to talk about these games as I would any other but because of the sheer scope and size of a video like this I will need to institute some structure and fair warning for each game I will be taking a second to analyze my favorite moment level or set piece from each game these examples will be best understood as emblematic of the game itself and what it does uniquely from the others I will also be doing this for the multiplayer modes when relevant and speaking on a map mode or a weapon that best exemplifies where that game succeeded most finally I will be doing something similar for the cooperative modes as well I am confident these games especially the later ones are to be understood as thematic pieces separated into two or three mechanical objectives I think the multiplayer and the coop are both important to our understanding of the series as a collective so my name is David o Z and I'm excited to begin the book of Call of Duty this time all in one video and I'm serious the best way to help me is to please consider joining the discord or visiting me in a live stream on Twitch all the links are down below let's get into it the first game of the franchise Call of Duty did a lot of things great for its time but I'm confident that there is one mechanic that sets itself apart not only as interactive software but as a thematic approach to telling a war story in an interactive medium that mechanic is names character names each friendly you come across has their name appear upon aiming at them now I'm unsure on the mechanics of this whether or not it is random or if it's scripted but I can confidently say I don't want to know because these games do more for the tonal objective of this game than any blown up French building or meticulously designed soundscape these men that fight alongside you private Williamson or sergeant James or I don't know private Nash the names emphasize the humanity of the experience that these were people who had jobs and lives and not members of the military and that's it the names also add permanence to the war that really truly existed in these units a real soldier not completely unlike the ones represented in the game might only know someone by their last name that does not take away from the severity of the loss of life of course and can often emphasize just how unfair and unbiased war really is it is not unlikely that you die by catching a bullet not meant for you and war it is not unlikely that you could do everything right everything by the book and still find yourself under an incoming mortar shell war is a carefree killer having the names appear and then just as quickly disappear emphasizes the indiscriminate nature of war sometimes bullets have no biases no objective other than point B I can't speak for you the viewer but I have a distinct memory of me playing through early Call of Duty campaigns and sort of picking a squad mate so to speak of the many NPC allied soldiers running around the levels I would make it my goal for that mission to ensure their survival to see them safely to the end of the level and in my head to their wife and kids and sometimes that wouldn't happen sometimes they would go through the wrong door first and would be mowed down by an mp40 now imagine that was really your squad mate really your brother in arms but actually don't don't imagine that don't even think about it for too long because it's a good example of how Call of Duty deals with its irreconcilable issue of making a game about the muck and mire of war fun war is and let's not sugarcoat this at all as antithetical to fun as absolutely possible Call of Duty especially the first is absolutely fun Call of Duty is not trying to represent the thoughts emotions the pain and torment of losing your squad mate on the battlefield in real life Call of Duty is teasing out the tonal and edifying nature of the conflict of World War 2 as if to say it's okay to have fun here this isn't real life just please make sure you consciously realize that because realising that means that you are realizing the severity of warfare without sacrificing the enjoyment of the game itself Call of Duty makes some of these conscious concessions to create a contrast that causes context Call of Duty is very very clearly not trying to express warfare but it is edifying in that it gets you thinking about the mechanics and implications of warfare I don't feel like I'm speaking for myself when I say that games like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty sparked an interest in world war ii media and history that actually manifested a real appreciation for the pain and sacrifice the soldiers went through Call of Duty isn't trying to reproduce that pain and sacrifice it is trying to open the window for you to see from afar I've often had conversations with people about what historical event I would go back in time and witness the invasion of Normandy is one of them for me but of course I would only ever agree to going back if I was given a sort of abstract floating observational booth from which I could experience the event from my bulletproof balcony this doesn't make you a bad person if this also interests you it doesn't degrade from the sacrifice made it is a unique experience in human history but it absolutely was not enjoyable for those that took part Call of Duty games work best when they offer the balcony when they don't try and blur the lines of realism and grit because for as long as I can accurately 360noscope a German 250 yards away under gun fire Call of Duty is not realistic the problems arrive when it tries to be regardless and this at its core is the reason for the inception of Call of Duty as a game in the FPS genre FPS at the time war is all about the player all about winning scoring highly enough doing the best of any soldier ever because you you are the doom guy you are the secret agent you are BJ blasts Kovich Call of Duty as a direct response to this makes sense insofar that asks you to be no more or less important than the soldiers around you you are not always special you are not always the best you don't even get to raise the flag atop the Reichstag at the end of the game you are important but so is the man tear left on your right which really brings us to the game itself and it's rhythms and gameplay call of duty the first does an amazing thing with its construction insofar that it captures not only three different theatres of war but it also captures three different approaches to the war the American campaign captures the approach of a unit the rhythms of banter of the modern squad this term really began to take its modern role during World War two because it was as close quarters of a conflict has been fought in a long time certainly with firearms I think one of the reasons World War 2 was such fertile ground for first-person shooters was exactly because of this gone were the days of lining up in fields or in trenches to take shots at each other now windows alleyways doors and homes were cleared one by one with automatic weapons what this does at least mechanically for a video game is emphasize the individual insofar that warfare was less of one giant unit fighting one battle against another giant unit but instead hundreds of little battles being fought across hundreds of squads between thousands of individual soldiers these micro battles created a specific and unique tension that lends itself to the concept of playing a video game it empowers the individual the player the American campaign I think looks to capture that the moment-to-moment micro battles that ultimately develop into the macrocosm of the entire conflict this is all to say that in a squad of five one soldier is a dreadfully devastating thing to lose you are losing twenty percent of your operating power at that point so you can begin to see how the first Call of Duty frames it's wider thematic goal inside of the u.s. squad each part of the military pyramid feeds into the next part and the previous part your ammunition feeds into your rifle that feeds into your person your person feeds into your squad which feeds into your company your company feeds into your division the division feeds into the wider conflict of what was quite possibly the last enemy taken on by America that genuinely needed to be taken on it all contributes to this idea that each element of the Armed Forces is necessary to complete the mission and each must be operating truthfully and efficiently to ensure the elements before and after are capable of completing the objective we actually get to see how this is deconstructed later on in the games and a cool subversion of this theme but for now this is as optimistic and earnest and understanding of military practice as you can get and I kind of love the almost childlike construction of it in these games Call of Duty the first is not necessarily pro war but it is unapologetically earnestly pro bravery these games are a celebration of the type of men who were genuine in their service and capable in their action I love this about the games and I think we should remember how positive it is toward the common soldier as that could easily be considered one of the most clear thematic pillars the franchise takes down in the later games the British campaign captures the approach of an individual the precision and potency of one highly trained operative these missions tend to carry the design ethos of the first-person shooters of old that narrow corridors of limitless Nazis the heroic actions of a real awesome player 1 these missions aren't bad but they do capture a necessary gameplay and thematic shift that keeps the game from being too OneNote but they are not where Call of Duty shines as a piece of rhetoric and if we want to talk about shining we must finally mention the Soviet campaign the campaign captures the approach of a collective a genuine war machine that can change the tide of the entire war in one unified push and I'm unsure if the Russian armies actually did assault the occupying Nazis in such a way I would probably say they did not in reality but whether or not it is used as a stereotype popularized by war movies it still stands effective as a peripheral point in Call of Duty's thematic triangle the Soviet campaign does what we will learn Call of Duty makes a habit of doing in biting off little bits and pieces from World War 2 films like enemy at the gates I don't mean this as a criticism I think it's kind of neat actually the interactivity of storming Stalingrad is different from the cinematic experience of the storming of Stalingrad I tend to love this about games it further solidifies the idea that Call of Duty isn't asking you to actively participate in war but to see it through the safety of your window or the television to overly explain the metaphor here each of these mechanical constructions tell the player a little bit about the thematic and cultural objectives of the country in which you are fighting for at least in earnest stereotype in that sense the levels are linear and can sometimes be say me it isn't groundbreaking video game analysis to say Call of Duty tends to be more about the spectacle in context of the level as opposed to the level design itself but Call of Duty the first doesn't have terrible level design for its time there's a good deal of naturalistic level design in the French and Russian streets and less so in the British campaign due to the corridors but occasionally the levels have some non-linearity to them that makes them somewhat special the Snowy level towards the end of the game is probably the best example of this as it usually gives you another plan B route around it enemy emplacement most of the level design of the early Call of Duty games has you confront spawning enemies take cover and either take them out with accuracy straight on or navigate to the left or right to flank them from the side a majority of the combat encounters play out like this in a Call of Duty game and that's okay for they're relatively short run times it's maybe not ok for someone who's playing almost 20 of these games in a row for one YouTube video but I really wouldn't recommend doing that don't ask me how I know Call of Duty is a borderline immaculately designed first person shooter spectacle it plays well even today in 2020 the game runs smoothly and its levels expand far beyond the starting point giving the game that pace and forward momentum that will soon become iconic to the franchise but more on that later I find myself loving Call of Duty more and more each time I play it each time I think about it my brother and I purchased this game from Walmart in 2003 when it came out I still have the jeweled CD case in my home town home we fell in love with the stories we could make in the campaign's in the strategies we could come up with to best make our way through as many Germans as possible I even adore the borderline naivete of Call of Duty's tone and presentation I endure its mechanics the way that it introduced aiming-down-sights so crisp and cleanly when it has never been done as well before I cannot get over how good the Soviet campaign is how memorable that speech is on the boat to Stalingrad the ember' that was my love for first-person shooter games just had to have been lit in 2003 with this game it sparked 17 years of reading about world war ii about watching movies and connecting with my dad over history and weaponry from the time and finally it sparked a love for one more very very important thing for me and my relationship to video games online multiplayer now even as early as 2003 a lot of the rhythms of Call of Duty multiplayer that we know today were established here already the frenetic pace sure but also the forward momentum and quick responds Cod wanted to establish itself as a multiplayer game to be consumed and bites in short 10-minute sequences so as to never overwhelm or wear out its player we're going to talk a lot about these games and their multi players but especially the ways in which they became such an addiction for so many gamers everywhere a multiplayer game in this Call of Duty is never going to overstay its welcome I mean if anything it slightly under stays once you're team deathmatch game is over you will often end up thinking to yourself man that was so short I bet it could have gotten at least ten more kills thus you try again your next game each life encourages you to push forward and be aggressive and try again once you inevitably die the same can be said about each match search-and-destroy on the map harbor rifles only was the Coliseum in which I learned how to be elite FPS gamer boy before people were 1-view wanting snipers on shipment people were adding each other on Xfire to 1v1 on the modded map wha-wha experiencing this time in Call of Duty truly makes you an OG of the series if any of you did this in 2003 or four please let me know it's such a special memory of my childhood that my brother and I laugh about to this day the multiplayer here is genuinely surprisingly awesome a lot of the core design philosophy of what makes a cod multiplayer match work was formed here from the quick time to kill to the fast-moving character models things like drop shotting and air strafing started to become annoyingly effective oh geez in this game before it ever did in the future games the call of duty map design was beginning to be solidified here but not quite to the degree that it fully reaches further in cod4 in modern warfare 2 but we'll talk about it then I almost have nothing but positive memories of the first game of this franchise and I'm confident that those who played at the time feel the same way even saying that I think this game is still a joy as a game even now in 2020 to me united offensive is exactly one of the things I miss so much from video games nowadays we just don't get too many genuine expansion packs anymore additive experiences that build off of the existing engine and assets the united offensive looks to take a lot of the beats and emphasis put onto Call of Duty's level design and start implementing some of the decisions we will see manifest in cod2 we see bigger battles louder battles more bodies and more enemies appearing on screen where Call of Duty wanted to express the individual heroism of the many building toward a common goal a duty then united offensive wants to tackle the brutality of a conflict that you are not always on the winning side of it is no accident then that the game starts you in the Battle of the Bulge a scenario that put the Allied soldiers in so dire of a situation that it was not unlikely that the result of the battle could very well invalidate and eradicate a good majority of the progress made since the Normandy invasion the stakes were incredibly high here and it is reflected in the gameplays insistence on running enemies down your throat this was the axises last opportunity at turning the tides of war and united offensive subverts its name in the first 20 minutes by forcing you to unite in a defensive effort against the axis offensive you get a lot of the aspects of iconic franchise presentation in this game as well resulting in some of the most impressive visual artistry I've seen from a game this age we will learn as we go through these games that they care deeply for the presentation of the combined military force Call of Duty loves to show its military's unite to show the planes dogfighting overhead while all the artillery screams above the foot soldiers call of duty the franchise that is loves to put you in as many diverse boots and seats as possible from the seat of a tank commander to the suit of an astronaut while this was certainly present in the first game this legacy really kicks off here and united offensive so let me expand on this because not only do I think this broadly explains what could be considered a major thesis statement to understanding the franchise's entire ethos but it also has to be one of the things I most dearly about the games not only do you see the other militaries like when it switches you to a British bombing plane in one of the game's best levels but you also experience and witness it even from the foot soldiers perspective play through these games yourself and count how many times you and your fellow foot soldiers are bailed out by a squadron of p-51 Mustangs soaring overhead or when the armoured division arrives precisely when it means - or when a shelling attack stalls the advancing forces its trophy and sometimes overdone but it hammers home a real stance that the game is taking on the military you are only as sturdy as the other branches attached to the tree it is a combined effort a united offensive that assures victory and you know I kind of like that when games are saying something about their subject matter Call of Duty does well for itself by putting this unification front and center and Call of Duty as a franchise is actually really pretty awesome at doing this kind of thing through its visual and set-piece design they say a lot about war and combat without actually using any words for example the game also asks you to consider sacrifice in a way that the previous games earnest portrayal of military service didn't really have you confront so directly remember when we talked about how the character names encourage this idea of togetherness but also the lack of bias of warfare the indifference of how character deaths are treated in this story is interesting to me because they will have characters that you have spent missions with instantly perish in a matter of seconds take a look at one of the British spec ops missions where you infiltrate a German position to destroy artillery you have voiced characters supporting you who are present with you the entire mission they banter and talk about just like any other characters near the end of the mission during your escape the lorry they are occupying explodes killing a number of your squad mates the game refuses to treat it as drama compared to how the future games handled death and how we were going to look at the melodrama of character death in these games down the road this comes as a pretty clear thigh mattock difference that will be somewhat hilarious going on in the series as a general rule this game treats death in a way that seems so consistent with its wider goal your squadmates and friends will die but it's never indulgently so you will never see legs flying off or screaming while burning alive it is acknowledged as a reality of war but like the rest of the game it's not trying to be so realistic that it's a direct representation of the war itself it's a window into the war that you can watch from afar it's not putting you there and so the deaths aren't going to either did you know the ac/dc singer Brian Johnson provides the voice acting for sergeant Starkey and call of duty finest hour how about this did you know that call of duty finest hours first campaign is an almost set for set remake of the movie enemy at the gates even Tanya character you meet in the game shares the same exact name with a character in the movie well did you know that call of duty finest hour has one of my favorite missions in all of these games and in I've played them all you see because it does and it has to do with Tanya as well there's this awesome mission where you are paired with a ruthless sniper atop a broken building in Stalingrad you've seen it before you have an objective where you must take a German bunker on top of a hill and replace the flag with the Soviet flag it's actually a great take on the corridor shooters that still exist on the console at the time and the methodical clearing of the trenches all the way to up to the top gives it a real feeling of pride in an accomplishment once you've actually reached the top when you compare this mission to the rest of the game - it becomes clear how much of a marvel it is for the console and the time it came out I have a lot of great memories playing the console version of these games I found that hilarious replaying it for this video because I remembered this game so clearly and let me tell you it looked a lot closer to enemy at the gates then well this it's funny how our memories of video games are so insanely different from the product just take a look at Final Fantasy 7 versus the recent remake that came out recently I feel like the remake is how I remember the original game looking even with the notion that these games are somewhat actually lesser than our ideas and memories of them they still have some stellar set-piece design that is derivative of the PC releases but consistent in their excellence and presentation the Stalingrad opening doesn't miss a beat and setting the tone for the game and certainly the introduction and speech day of the beginning isn't shying away from its name this game is bordering on adorable and it's adoration of the titular call of duty the opening cinematic while giving me goosebumps of nostalgia could be argued to be a tone setter that prepares you for such an unrealistic optimism of the middle pterri that it could be seen as condescending and look the reality is my interpretation of these games is largely colored by the fact that I played them all in a row I saw the tides come and go of anti-war narratives to pro-military narratives to a little bit of both and I guess where this leaves me with finest hour is a feeling that Call of Duty only Call of Duty games deal in absolutes if we're gonna criticize the future games for being downright fatalistic and their interpretations of humanity and its relationship to war then we should also look to see how its nuanced lists approach to military duty is also a simplification of a complex set of circumstances at times finest hour approaches propagandistic levels of wartime adoration these are games after all about maybe as horrific as a wartime location can become like in Stalingrad which is it to take away from the heroics at all these men and women were as heroic as the games make them out to be you would just never guess it in this one because of how dramatized and exaggerated the messaging here is it comes off less as a meaningful tribute to the heroics of the men and women fighting in World War two and more of a Saturday morning cartoon from 1944 to get kids into the military we're gonna see how Call of Duty actually responds to this in games like world at war where it attempts to portray a side of the war that these games arguably and sincerely ignore my point is when we talk about these games devolving from game to game about the literal call of duty in heroics in battle we can't assume that they started out on perfect footing and went downhill each of these games carry a frustrating degree of either fatalistic nihilism or pro-military justification some obviously worse than others it's kind of up to the reader to decide which is the least palatable and this has got to be in the top five least enjoyable Call of Duty games for me at least to play the Russian campaign shines here just like in the first game the nostalgia was fun but for every good mission which this game does have two or three we get a three or four painfully linear corridor shooting galleries we didn't know much better back then but goodness does this game drag on this is a whole without commenting on the fact that Dark Souls has a more forgiving checkpoint system than Call of Duty finest hour I had more than one absolutely soul-crushing death that set me back 20 minutes or more this game is no joke guys you will die and the static health that you have to regain with sparse health pickups around the map make taking a hit and absolute chore to recover from the future games had the red idea by adding regenerating health by the way I'm just gonna go ahead and spoil that take right now and I obviously can't comment too much on the multiplayer but I do remember playing the game split-screen 1v1 with my brother quite a bit growing up we're gonna talk quite a bit more about the console exclusive version of these games when we get to big red one so let's go ahead and move on if we're talking about ranking our favorite Call of Duty games then I have to say Call of Duty 2 is high high up on that list this game is the essential World War 2 shooter in my book as a product it iterates on a lot of the progress that the first game excelled in while adding a good deal of production quality and set design this game was the first to introduce regenerating health which streamlined to the frenetic pace the games have established until this point it brought forth a cleaner more accessible multiplayer as well as a more diverse theater of warfare than many other games were showcasing at the time that's the game as a product but as media as a piece of rhetoric about war and about the call of duty it succeeds as well I think one of the most important aspects to note about this game successes is that it finally takes you away from a lot of the same old World War 2 locations you will be fighting in North Africa crossing the Rhine and defending ok Stalingrad ok yeah I won't lie opening these games with Stalingrad missions gets a bit grating when I am certain there are a number of better places to be fighting Germans in Russia I still love how in the first couple of missions they start to flex their new graphical prowess by putting you in a pipe above a snowy German emplacement this scene is still great to this day as the bullets open the pipe for light to stream in it goes on the list of iconic Call of Duty moments for me and is one of the first times the series begins to establish itself as less of a history driven shooter and more of a supremely high polished rollercoaster that is themed toward realism and ultimately this is the right call and Call of Duty 2 starts this process Call of Duty single-player succeeds fully when it embraces what the developers exceed most at Infinity Ward our literal industry powerhouses when it comes to creating visually interesting and clever scenarios look say what you will about these games in their linearity or how they are mindless shooting galleries but I struggle to think of games that were pulling together so many artistically focused levels properly timed in tonally consistent music and clever situations so effortlessly in a Call of Duty game presentation is both king and queen it's as if all of this in three aspects that go into building an interactive presentation act in the same way that Call of Duty believes the military to act which is to say that each element is reliant and enhanced by the other elements involved Call of Duty is a questionably good to great series of video games but their visual flair their presentation their commitment to the compelling that is what sells me on these games take a look at the last mission crossing the Rhine it's a whirlwind of just about everything that can make a good Call of Duty level good and if you analyze the whole mission you will realize the Infinity Ward created the blueprint and Call of Duty 2 for almost every single Cod single-player game going forward and that's really not an exaggeration the mission herbs and flows sure but more than anything it hits the player with at least four different key pillars to a Call of Duty mission I think these four key pillars inform every good Call of Duty mission going forward the first one I would describe as a moment or stick in this level it has to be the beach landing and turret sequence a lot of levels will try to have at least one stick it could be the reconnecting of the telephone wires in the Soviet campaign mortar throwing in the end mission of world of war or the ghillie suits in cod4 here the level is actually starting with an inversion of the previously played Beach landing of Normandy by putting you in a situation you don't normally see in World War 2 media I tend to dislike the turret sections in these games but it works here because the target is suppression and aggression rather than defending against hordes of enemies the second pillar to a successful Call of Duty level going forward is diversity diversity in casts diversity in action and diversity in arenas a good Call of Duty mission has you doing an appropriate amount of things in an appropriate and amount of time but all in good balance there should never be too much corridor shooting too much of a tank driving or too much of wave defense crossing the Rhine as you go from turret section to Beach landing Street clearing to building clearing then open-ended objective clearing in an open area the third thing a Call of Duty admission tends to have is some sort of calm an integral moment of respite in the chaos of a twenty years skirmish the placement changes a lot in these missions they never have to be at the beginning or the end oftentimes they will exist somewhere in the middle giving the characters a chance to talk a bit in the player a chance to wipe the sweat and cheeto dust from their input device of choice quiet time does a lot for a war game like this and so far that it doubles as tension and finality tension in the sense that well I mean it is war after all snipers don't wait for you to finish your break in that sense you can't really ever be calm but for what it's worth there has to be some sort of note that must ring out so the player knows they're safe and that's what we see here in crossing of the Rhine they calm happening right at the end of the mission and subsequently the end of the game it marks a thematic ending as well as an interactive one and that the crossing of the Rhine will actually begin to mark the end of the war the final is a bit harder to pin down because it's not exactly specific but I would just call it forward level design Call of Duty to me is all about progression and forward momentum the worst levels I can think of are the ones that have you sitting in the same spot for a long time shooting down upon hordes and hordes of enemies when you think of your favorite mission in a cod game often times it has you moving forward through an area through the fields and all Gilad up through the beaches of Normandy or through the neighborhoods of the United States under Russian invasion crossing the Rhine really exemplifies the building to building combat necessary at the end of the war it contrasts so well with the catastrophe that was Market Garden and so far that the Allies here are confidently moving forward and clearing as opposed to running and well dying Call of Duty 2 is all about these sort of near perfectly crafted 20-minute menageries of gunfire if there is a lasting legacy for Call of Duty 2 it's this it's a game that hits on a lot of the same theme attic and historical objectives that the first game and its expansion intended to do but with more confidence in bravery in its diverse presentation of the lesser portrayed theatres of war it's a notable improvement in visuals graphics and presentation more importantly however you could argue that Call of Duty single-player was not born here but had its formative years here the very construction of some levels that you will see in modern warfare 3 or blackops 2 or advanced warfare can be traced back to some of the levels in this game and I think that's awesome especially when you play all of these games in row well goes for its single-player must go for the multiplayer as well although not quite to the degree that we will see with Call of Duty 4 some of the main aspects of a cod multiplayer match were born in cod 2 which weren't present in the first iteration aspects such as red dots on the radar appearing when someone shoots and of course regenerative health a lot of the map design was taken from the first game however with the most memorable hit being Tunisia a map that started Call of Duty rifles only Search and Destroy as a genuine eSport to be taken seriously people competed in cod 2 and while the scene was small for sure 3 Lane 2 bomb site map design started to make its name in maps like Tunisia cod 2 was also very much a PC game despite it being released as a launch title for the 7th generation of consoles modding server browsers and 64 player servers were ever popular on Cod 2 back through 2006 and really to 2007 given that the third installment was never released on PC I spent a lot of time on Call of Duty 2 multiplayer growing up and while no map ever reached the heights of harbor for me returning favorites like KarenT an occupied hundreds of hours for little David hours that if I had them back I'd probably just play more cod 2 multiplayer matches I remember them that fondly it wasn't until playing through Call of Duty - big red one that something occurred to me about the console exclusive versions of these games look they're not bad take it from me that they occupied a lot of time for past Dave but I am confident that they don't hold a candle to the main line Call of Duty games what occurred to me is this do you remember how up until about the ps4 generation every big-time movie that came out also got a video game adaptation often times they were bad sometimes they were okay very rarely were they very good there were the Wolverine games the Star Wars games the spider-man games the Lord of the Rings games those were awesome bacaw of duty finest hour Call of Duty 2 big red one and call of duty world at war final fronts were the video game adaptations of the analogous films that were Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2 which again is not necessarily a bad thing or an indictment of these games a game like Call of Duty - big red one hits on all of the thematic objectives of Call of Duty 2 and puts the player in slightly new places with slightly new situations some of these work and some of them absolutely do not this game was far and away the most frustrating and least enjoyable I had to play for the whole series a lot of that is just the ps2 jank but a lot of it was just an astounding lack of polish and another riche owing of the punishing checkpoint system what happens when you played these games all in a row is that you realize you were just getting a watered down version of the source material and ultimately I can't really criticize this about the games because this is much more of being commercially advantageous rather than an artistic failure the ps2 was owned by millions upon millions of people and to ignore them was to miss out on a tremendous amount of money a lot of the feelings contributing toward the game feeling like a watered down version has to do with them being developed on lesser Hardware by developers with less time and resources which is funny because especially in the case of bigger at one these games actually carry a huge amount of forward-thinking ideas and mechanics that find themselves in most Call of Duty games going forward most notably in this game is the fact that this is really the first Call of Duty game the introduces the sort of character-driven story that becomes a standard for most every single Call of Duty game going forward previously these games have been less focused on the individual and more so focused on the universal heroics of members of multiple countries militaries starting in this game you start to see individual characters start to be built with individual personalities and roles in a story it follows the same sort of narrative direction of Band of Brothers a story built around getting to know a squad of soldiers as opposed to the sort of theater hopping we saw in the previous games it actually has a lot of the actors from that series voice acting the characters in the game also what really matters is that this is Trey arcs first real shot at developing a Call of Duty game and it is certainly notable that the rest of the Call of Duty games going forward seem to follow this trend of personality driven stories it's a franchise staple that actually started in big red one and I think that's really cool to point out the game even has this non chronological mission structure that starts you in a mission titled we've been through worse and then throws you back to invasions the squad has been through previous to the starting mission it's nothing earth-shattering but it is a change of the fundamental structure of a campaign and a Call of Duty game and really solidifies Treyarch as the developer who zags when Infinity Ward zigs for better or for worse Treyarch will always take the odd way through its stories and they make that clear in their first go at a cod game I think there's a tendency to say that Treyarch started to push the Call of Duty games in a different more pulpy and gruesome direction with world at war but I find it interesting that you can see them laying the groundwork for those games with both big red one and Call of Duty 3 by nature of the more character-driven stories you will find more opportunities to solidify both the individual heroics and tragedies of warfare where the battlefields of previous Call of Duty's showed the collective heroics and tragedy in its body stone fields these games look to hammer home the pain and sacrifice of your brothers in arms one shows how unbiased were can be in its slaughter the other shows has sometimes war can seem absolutely biased in the way it can systematically rip apart squad of your best friends both are their own forms of tragedy neither are inherently more cynical or idealistic on their own of course though Call of Duty wouldn't be Call of Duty without a fair share of performative idealism and as we've mentioned before big red one pulls frequently and unashamedly from a fruitful legacy of Second World War media one thing I've always loved from World War 2 media is the legacy in the lore of the German Tiger tank it was for lack of a more sensitive way of putting it as close to a final boss as reality can get I've read that the Allies would need roughly 5 Sherman's to every German tiger tank it was an incomprehensible terrifying mechanical monstrosity a force of nature seemingly unconquered belite radition 'el warfare I don't think people realize how ahead of its time this machine was and how frightening it was for the Allies the opening level actually puts you against one crucially showing well a lot of people dying to it it's interesting in the context of a Call of Duty game because in no small terms a German Tiger tank is a straight-up videogame boss fight there's a lot to like here and even with me calling these games essentially the licenced movie games of the franchise I was still left with a pleasant sort of aftertaste after playing these games as if I experienced something really neat in the wider history of the franchise a lot of great ideas were experimented upon in these games almost all of them hiding behind financial and technological concessions that make the moment-to-moment gameplay a bit of a chore in that sense I loved these games as a sort of period piece in the legacy that is Call of Duty and not so much as actual video games call of duty 3 isn't actually that bad and if you remember it being bad you're probably thinking about the multiplayer or maybe I'm just easily impressed the unfortunate reality about this game is and it has to be said early because it covers the entire reading of the game is that it was rushed through development in about eight months it was running on a bizarre engine by a developer who was pushed into following up one of the best World War two shooters of all time there was always going to be few universes where in this game was actually good almost none where it was excellent like its predecessors and look I won't lie I've been playing a lot of color duty games and we have a lot of Call of Duty games to go but I am getting pretty tired of shooting Germans and French alleyways and hillsides in terms of its setting an art Call of Duty 3 does little to separate itself from the games we've already covered in terms of thematics however Call of Duty 3 is the first mainline game that really starts to bring Call of Duty forward to what people know the series as now heroics from individuals from a select few a select few that the game deems important - and beside player 1 however we're not quite there Call of Duty 3 is still absolutely concerned with the valor and the call to duty that men stood up for in the 20th century it's still willing to show the massive troop movements the collaboration of all parts of the military toward a greater good it's still a relatively idealistic war shooter mainly looking to just showcase not recreate the very real sacrifice that occurred in France Cod 3 even has you taking on the role of some of the less spoken about factions in the Second World War such as the Canadian and the Polish forces through the light of the glory and valor emerge occasional shadows that we will soon see enveloped the entire franchise though shadows of cynicism of the brutality of war of pain and gratuitous violence in Call of Duty 3 we begin to see death and destruction in quantities not seen so far we hear screaming and burning and dying louder than ever we see an approach to conflict that we haven't actually gotten quite yet from a Call of Duty game that war is disgusting it's full of misery and your friends will die they will die in unfair ways we'll die for dumb reasons and they will die for each other it is punctuated by the character-driven storytelling that is new to these recent games and it comes as a bit of a shock to the system when compared to the idealism of something like finest hour however this isn't all bad the comforting thing is that these unique campaigns don't feel like the cynical interpretation I had of them going in they are earnest and appropriate windows into the specific sacrifices that these armies made not necessarily just Call of Duty running out of ideas on how to portray the conflict in Europe and scraping the proverbial bottom of the barrel the game in turn makes an endearing attempt at hitting on every war movie stereotype it can in its characters from the archetypal war weary sergeant the painfully stereotypical French Resistance storyline to the coward who redeems himself and sacrifice at the end Call of Duty 3 takes its tropes more from the characters than it does the settings in that sense cop 3 veers towards the cinematic more so than any of the other games to this point it veers but oftentimes into a median rather than the exit lane toward cinema look no further than the awkward and uncomfortable QuickTime events that confusingly made it through development developed years after the first god of war game cod 3 finds itself having you play a rhythm game of specific button jamming and analog stick caressing to do things like plant a bomb yes what was once a single button now involves a tedious series of flicking and gyrating and for what it does nothing for the player in terms of immersion and its presentation feels gamy er than ever as your Xbox controller buttons appear in front of a German you're killing and cold blood it's a baffling design decision that lies under a wider problem with the moment-to-moment gameplay in general I dunno why however Treyarch was making an effort to solidify themselves as the developer who really shows it how it is and really puts you into the war you can often see throughout this game the beginnings of the violence and brutality that will characterize so many Treyarch odds going forward and the close quarters combat QuickTime events were one of the first glimmers of exactly this oftentimes people will attribute world at war of this role saying it started the fetishistic obsession with violence fueled interactivity that Call of Duty embodies when in reality they were doing it briefly here in cod 3 look we will quickly learn to see Treyarch as the more arcadey of the two developers but the chest high cover filled battle arenas and enemy density well in this game to be played more as a quake campaign than a military shooter for better or for worse and this is just something we are going to have to acknowledge in my analysis is that I played these games practically back to back to back to back to back to back and my entire interpretation of them is colored by exactly that Call of Duty 3 is more video gaming more transparent and it's mechanical and interactive objectives and it becomes distracting to the overall experience more than anything though it masks a truly endearing and oftentimes exciting take on the Normandy we have seen 5 times prior there's a genuinely good Call of Duty game here it's just abundantly clear that at this point in time Infinity Ward had written the book on how to create a mainline blockbuster Call of Duty game Treyarch is just playing some serious catch up with Call of Duty 3 the trailer Call of Duty Trail is being blazed in 2006 though which i think is a really cool thing to map out they even implement some non-linearity in the mission designed to give the player the opportunity to take on objectives in different ways even though oftentimes it goes down to either going left or right Treyarch is playing catch-up sure but it is a catch-up worthy of appreciation and acknowledgement I find myself appreciating that more and more as I play through these games as they grow older and reach further and further into the formulaic when you hear someone say all Call of Duty games are the same it often brings back fun memories when people didn't think that was the case it brings memories of when Call of Duty wasn't a product closer to Madden than Band of Brothers golf Duty as we know it is now a product a commodification it is Madden it is the Superbowl its Grey's Anatomy sure the proper nouns might change but it still is Call of Duty each year I tend to like it still but I know what I'm getting every single time each year when I purchase a Call of Duty game I know that the men and women develop again are building off a foundation of almost two decades of sculpting around the same material but this wasn't always the case this wasn't always what was going to happen when you purchased a Call of Duty game at the store and for that I'm oddly nostalgic for games like big red one and Call of Duty 3 Call of Duty games that tried new things mainly underperformed and then tried a new thing it's really hard to find a game nowadays but the game did the same thing for its multiplayer mode which included radically different gameplay opportunities including 24 player matches and vehicles the multiplayer in this one attempted to reimagine what Call of Duty United offensives multiplayer mode succeeded in and what Cod threes campaign attempted to capture large-scale conflict with arcade style movement and hitboxes if it sounds like they were trying to have their cake and eat it too well they were the multiplayer is nowhere near as polished and experienced as found in cod 1 or 2 and in terms of large scale it didn't commit nearly enough to be compared to the likes of something like battlefield 2 at the time but even then we saw things like new game modes objectives weapons and even classes to choose from like a hero shooter this game was trying ladies and gentleman again endearing an earnest attempt at creating something worth distinguishing from Infinity Ward absolutely effective in closing I think what I want for these developers is to just quit making tank missions I'm so tired of them look I guess this is pretty subjective but they might as well be my least favorite Call of Duty thing out there and every single one of them are functionally identical to each other they're dreadfully boring can we just get like a hashtag hashtag tank missions are over party in the chat please baseplate this is a virtue form we have visual on the target eta 60 seconds copy to pork thirty seconds going dark seconds Radio check no need to care ciao green light go Coco [Music] I mean come on come on we're looking at one of the most influential most powerful premier I mean the Platonic ideal of a linear first-person shooter okay okay I cannot understate the ways in which this game has aged in such interesting captivating ways I cannot overstate how this game has avoided being overrated it maneuvered real-world social and political topics with confident aggression and grace it weaponized a real authorial II consistent stance on something it maintained an ideological position on a post Iraq world about the insincerity of Western militarization of the imbalance of powers in the 21st century and about the role of countries in their obligations to the world at large and it also managed to define an entire generation of competitive multiplayer scorching the earth of every other shooter at the time and fertilizing that ground with the seeds of future FPS clones and out from those ashes grew a forest of ubiquity of experience bars killstreaks and camel unlocks the multiplayer video game world can and really should be understood as being a world of two ages pre cod4 and post Cod for its impact was that noticeable call of duty 4 stands tall as a genuine stalwart to the Call of Duty ideal that people long for today it was positioned confident opinionated and purposeful that alone is one of my favorite memories of this title a memory that stands in such stark contrast to the Call of Duty's we will cover this was a game developed by human beings with authorial intention and opinions with diverse opinions and motivations its stances may age poorly or beautifully but they aged because they exist I just can't say that about the sort of boardroom built Call of Duty games that peak their way into the future titles Call of Duty 4 is a phenomenal video game I am certain of it but Call of Duty was always a little bit like The Bachelor especially in its early days I know I know the show clearly isn't real right it obviously isn't meant to be taken as a real exploration of love but it is close enough that one can for at least two hours at a time suspend their disbelief in a way that allows for you to get into it you see one can't over explain the main thesis of this whole video right Call of Duty is meant to be a window into war just like The Bachelor might be a window into love it's not that The Bachelor is hated for being entertaining or not that was never the question the problem becomes when the show drifts out of its lane into trying to convince the viewer that it is real that this really is people trying to find love because it is it and call of duty is not war and it's best when they keep that in mind so up until this point we have seen in games like Cod 3 and big red one that Call of Duty was willing to crack open that window a little bit to let the viewer in a bit more on what the experience of actually being in war might be like the violence and the horror that terrifying realities of war that can actually be showed in media I'm not saying that it's impossible for the media to represent war but the Call of Duty's mechanics in action movie set pieces are closer to Tropic Thunder than Saving Private Ryan I say this because I think call of duty 4 modern warfare kind of solves this problem at least in theory Call of Duty speaks about war and its mechanics and thematics it has a real point to be made about real war and unlike The Bachelor it is actually saying something about love I mean warfare sorry when Infinity Ward titled this game modern warfare they were not praising the uncapitalized idea of modern warfare they are saying with meaningful brevity that this experience is going to address the tonal and mechanical intricacies of modern warfare it was never a celebration if anything it was a cautionary tale of the stark fear insecurity an uncomfortability of a post war on terror world this game is the story of modern warfare not just a game that includes it so let me just dive in a bit on one of my favorite things about this game if you watch a lot of my videos you will probably be rolling your eyes right now but look modern warfare has some darn shootin good ludo narrative synchronicity insofar that its mechanics instantly support the main theme of the game this game is crucially not the sort of Soviet or American missions that you found in Call of Duty's of your the mechanics and level design of this game are not to imply that the might of warfare comes from the collective nonono cod4 insists that the might of the military comes from the absolute precision of as few people as possible the fact that your guns in cod4 shoot with laser-like precision that your guns come equipped with silencers and gadgets galore these are all absolutely intentional in their design because guess what you are the big brother in this game you are the bully you are the six-four high school senior in gym class and your enemies are the incoming freshman you are meant to cut through your enemies with deadly precision with gadgets and gizmos a-plenty you are meant to kill with modern warfare how many people do you kill in this game that have absolutely zero chance of ever fighting back the precision of the gameplay is important and so far that the sound design with silencers combined with the laser without a of your rifles to create a feeling of you being absolutely technologically and skillfully ahead of your many many opponents does it ever feel uncomfortable gunning down people who have absolutely no business being in the same weight class as you probably not it's a fun video game right but should it I don't know I think maybe it should at least get you thinking about how different warfare is in the 21st century ultimately this is the legacy of Cod for to me the fact that the game captures the power fantasy of a super soldier and contextualizes it into a commentary on modern warfare it is asking does our superior military and technology mean we should be the world's police force just because we can exterminate with immaculate precision should we in that sense it captures two different questions one of the task force 141 Special Forces operation and the other of the United States military both forces carry different interpretations and both connect in that they are almost always wiping the floor with whomever they are fighting take the first mission as Americans for example an absolute blitzkrieg of militaristic might the opening images of our military should instantly strike memories of television screens showing newscasts of the wars in the Middle East dozens of helicopters soar over militia who have RPGs with no guiding capabilities rifles propagated in the 1960s and little to no advanced arms training you swoop down to electric guitars and Newroz only to mercilessly cut through waves of enemies who have no business fighting the forces of America you arrive at your destination only to hear that the Intel was wrong the objective you arrived there for wasn't there you are told that you need to move out and keep looking as if nothing had changed in the last 30 minutes of bloodshed the mission isn't intended to be a celebration of American military might it's a cautionary tale if you get excited about the music and the killing you're missing the point it is supposed to capture the skepticism of an Iraq war upbringing the insecurities of action the ever-present nagging what are we really doing here it focuses in on that insecurity and contrasts it with such tight and mechanically interesting construction that it and I don't use this often perfectly captures both the tonal and a mechanical beats of what a war post-2001 looks like it's frightening men to see how the future games on ironically embody everything this game intends to critique about warfare in the 21st century specifically the titular identical most recent cod when you hear about call of duty being fetishistic Lee Perot military people are not talking about this game this game is firmly against the sort of aimless policing showcased by the West in the 2000s and that sentence is not an interpretation of the game it is a summary look no further than the blinding mushroom cloud that envelops hundreds of thousands of innocents in the middle part of the game not only do you die here but so too does your squad your friends your enemies innocence and any idea that this game was pro-military the invasion leads to suffering and death in the hundreds of thousands you the player are killed you do not escape with heroic excellence you burn and die in the dirt alongside every other casualty of this uninspired conflict no amount of red dot sights are underbarrel grenade launchers could change the fact that war war absolutely changes this is modern warfare and the rules are very much different now there is no such thing as a clean conflict anymore that is what the title modern warfare means the medium of video games seemed obsessed with manufacturing the feeling of combat of warfare where so many games create conflict few wrestle with the implications and mechanics that lead to that conflict in the first place in the catastrophe that occurs in the moments after your combat cod4 does and I just wish I could say that for the rest of the games in the series but I'll stop there unless some of that steep a bit because it is pretty dense I'm actually going to take a second to say that while I am confident about my analysis of these games I don't actually have a good idea of how people feel about these games in 2020 I do read every single YouTube comment for my videos and I think this topic in particular would be interesting for you all to weigh in on do you see where I'm coming from on this game I am interested in hearing what you have to say because despite the sort of collegiate highfalutin analysis nonsense I have to say it still remains that this is just such an incredible game in its levels and set-pieces got the boat level at the beginning is just such an incredible tone setter for what you're going to be doing in this game I can't even feel like I'm qualified to say anything about all get lead-up a missions so iconic and immersive I find myself wondering how you would explain this mission to someone who doesn't play video games we started out this video talking about how people remember Cod games differently and how most people hit some sort of wall that made them less interested in the series this is the closest game to universal appreciation I can imagine exists in the series and it was an absolute pleasure to play through again for this video I cannot say that about all of these games funnily enough I can't say the same for the multiplayer a mode that I think actually has aged a bit more poorly than you might think it's here I have to apologize to anyone who might be mad that I am playing the remastered version of the game this video was extremely expensive to make and I was actually able to get caught for remastered in the addition of infinite or fair I got which save me some money so sorry well it's maps remain iconic for their ability to funnel action toward hot zones of action there are still remnants of the Infinity Ward developers trying to figure out how to make a good Call of Duty multiplayer game the balance is the main thing there's just far too many easy choices for weaponry and perks in the supposed to drop Paper Scissors battle they wanted to encourage with juggernaut and stopping power doesn't work nearly as well as I think they intended because first off it makes any other perk choice in that slot useless because the game necessitates at least one an issue I ran into revisiting the multi players just how inconsistent this rock-paper-scissors game makes each individual gunfight because the truth is you're engaging in four different possible engagements at a time jug versus jug jug versus stopping power stopping power versus jug or stopping power versus stopping power or I guess the other combinations of perks in that slot I constantly forget exist it creates inconsistent frags that happen one after another that kind of takes away from what I think is one of the main appeals to a Call of Duty multiplayer match which is the rhythmic switching from target to target while consistently moving forward one of the worst engagements you could have in the game is jug v jug especially when every second of combat matters like it does in the Call of Duty game when you pair this with the ubiquity of the meta guns you get a sort of match to match experience that doesn't allow for much expansion outside the lines sure guns like the m16 and mp5 were stronger than others but most of the guns were incredibly lethal anyway a bit of a staple for Infinity Ward games going forward the maps themselves remain iconic however crash and vacant backlot and crossfire while the maps play fine enough I think that they made such an impact on people due to the iconic moments and unique things each map can bring to the table when I think of Cod formats I think of specific moments in specific places sniping the cross on crossfire fighting over the third floor on crash hiding in the tall grass on overgrown these maps had such a unique character to them that would allow for specific experiences on each map and where I think that the future games had maps that maybe are more or properly balanced or designed with that consistency comes a bit of a sacrifice in character I think Infinity Ward really had started to figure out how to create emergent moments in their multiplayer matches that felt unique and specific to just you but they were really a matter of how the maps were designed to encourage those moments truth be told Call of Duty for its laps it slaps hard man it really says something and has identity something that shares with the next game in the series for better or for worse you might be surprised to hear that I like world at war okay at least like 85% of the time I'm not so high and mighty to find the violence immoral or unnecessary I do think more than anything though world at war Believe It or Not had a lot of the same artistic objective is that cod4 did it just struggles to reach the same thumb attic mountaintops let me explain cuz that sounds ridiculous I think both this game and cod4 were more or less direct responses to the previous games in the series and their valor fueled expressions of the Call of Duty both of these games deemed it necessary to address the ways in which warfare isn't always as black and white as the previous games made it seem where cod4 does that through politics and mission design world at war does it through its aesthetics like it or not world at war is one of the most instantly recognizable Call of Duty games in so far that the blood and the viscera the gray and the dirt in the flying body parts set it apart from every Call of Duty game going forward the aesthetics of world at war are meant to emphasize this idea that war hasn't been properly represented in the series up until this point in the previous games when you fired upon someone they would die with little to no blood emerging from their wounds as mentioned that was far from the intention of Call of Duty games it wasn't concerned with putting you in the war as much as it was showing the parts they considered important at the time however for Treyarch world at war was their real coming-out party the game intended to be a more mature more gritty more realistic approach to the conflict in the 1940s it was also the first Call of Duty game of the series to showcase the Pacific Theatre as many of you know those two things are no accident the Pacific Theater was specifically bloody and gruesome with tactics and wartime rule breaking that shattered every preconceived notion of how to fight a war previous this creates what I consider the first of a good amount of philosophical questions that world at war brings up both inside of the game and outside of it first being is this really necessary the violence and gore that is and I think I have an answer to this well an anti a answer I guess they don't care if it is or not that's the answer call of duty world at war has this protective layer of nihilistic teenage angst surrounding it that almost says to the player this ain't your daddy's world war two game right at the start of the campaign it shows right at the beginning f-words and gore flying that this was going to be a very different experience from the previous Call of Duty's and I think this has different results for different people I find that the game succeeds in ways the series is all but refused to but also fails in a couple of ways that sour me on a fraction of the game as a whole for one the actual construction of the game has hardly changed at all this is still very much a Call of Duty game hilariously even in the sense of the nitty gritty back-end stuff there are still remnants of the coding that was in the first couple of Call of Duty games and I even discovered that the audio call-outs of the German soldiers actually sound identical to the same ones used in the very first Call of Duty games it's here that I hilariously exposed myself as a dirty ignorant American but I feel like I hear the Germans yell Sally Tator quite frequently and I know it isn't actually sadly Tator but that's what it sounds like to me you can hear the Germans yelling this exactly in the first couple games even the set pieces and level design just scream call of duty it's a shame then that the main difference in this game really tends to be aesthetic and thematic not at all mechanic there's no real synchronicity and tying this game into it's more gritty themes because we are still gunning down the same amount of people in the same laser accurate way I even once had Rezanov compliment me on a particularly cool noscope one time trust me it was jarring for me to given the whole trying to be more realistic thing the same animations exist the same models exist and the overwhelming level of uncharacteristic cheapness really solidifies the fact that Treyarch was still very much the younger sibling over the Call of Duty franchise they were given the hand-me-downs of what was its more successful older brother and told to make it work which is almost even more commendable and so far that the game frequently does work honestly probably in more ways than it fails more importantly it works as a dramatic and thematic foil to the previous games take on valor and glory in war war is oftentimes more to do with the muck and the mire than to do with the glory and awards the sort of whitewashed bloodless combat of the previous games clearly was an issue to Treyarch in this game you're gonna be blasting limbs off of German soldiers burning Japanese soldiers and gunning down hordes of soldiers into a bloody mist does this work for you it feels like personal preference but I do think the game comes with some great missions that emphasize the grittier theme more effectively when it is explicitly compared to the first game think back to what I think is the most iconic mission in the game or at least up their meeting Victor Rezanov and the bloody strewn fountain of Soviet Stalingrad is such an obvious message to the player we have seen these streets before we have retaken Stalingrad to the rising strings and orchestras leading us to a glorified unified victory here we are back just you and one other no unity no hordes for Mother Russia no orchestras this is the game showing you the sides of these conflicts that the other games had zero interest in showing you and I guess in that sense I really am appreciative of these games and their vision towards showing those sides and while I certainly appreciate the more mechanically metaphorical approach of cod4 there's something really compelling and interesting about try arcs brute-force attempt at making it very very clear that this is a type of Call of Duty that's different it's for that reason I think that the European front missions are far more interesting and well-designed than the ones that take place in the Pacific well I think personally I do think that the missions play on questionable stereotypes of the Japanese military I think it does so in a way that is hardly much different than the ways in which it plays on wartime stereotypes everywhere in history I don't think that this makes it better or in any way passable but it does act as a general through line for the sort of scorched earth call of duty if ocation that both Infinity Ward and Treyarch do two cultures and countries everywhere much has been written about the jingoistic American exceptionalism on display in Call of Duty games or it's racism and while I don't have intentions of thinking I have much novel or anything worth even saying as an American myself but as off-putting as I find some of the representations of the Japanese in this game I guess I can only feel comfortable saying it adds to the pile of hoards of Soviet soldiers and possibly tone-deaf action sequences in Brazilian favelas Vietcong Jolly Ho British soldiers and adidas jumpsuit donned Russians one should not forget this in playing Cod games but be aware that if and when you do find the racism on display in these games that it is a racism fueled by a sort of indiscriminate carelessness let's be real still racism still pretty bad however it creates a hilarious irony insofar as cements the final stereotype in its canon which is that of the culturally ignorant Americans okay to bring it back a bit because I know how much you all love a good dose of social commentary in your Call of Duty videos this is why I think I prefer the European front in this game because instead of just being stereotypical with no commentary the game starts off with deconstructing the stereotypes on display about Stalingrad it juxtaposes this new tone with maybe its most hilariously opted to stereotype yet Rezanov himself such a brash and brave Soviet soldier that it is almost endearing in its ridiculousness world at war also takes on its own version of the storming of the Reichstag with some pretty similar level design and imagery to the original game it actually lends a lot of credence to the theory that this game is a sort of direct response to the pg-13 impressions that the first game made you enter into a lot of similar places a lot of similar set pieces but with a certain grime enos that juxtaposes the first game much has been said about how the of this mission compares poorly to the ending of the original game in that the game makes you the player the person who mounts the flag on top of the building at the end compared to how the first game has you assisting and observing an NPC doing the same thing and I think where it may appear to easily see this as the player one off' occation that the series undeniably employs later on i think this is an interesting example of a bit of the thematically consistent narrative choices this game can make Rezanov always felt a bit like your version of virgil escorting you through the rings of hell of world war ii there was this very weird relationship between you the player and him that encouraged this idea of you being even somewhat comparable to some sort of chosen one he gloats consistently about you embellish his stories and adores your bravery if anything the player won worshipped that the Call of Duty games take on is actually thematically and narrative Lee supported in this game in a really interesting twist on the series's worship of the collective and it's important to note just how people were beginning to whisper about the derivative nature of these games at this point and cherrick knew that if they were headed back into world war ii that they would have to change the formula having you hoist the reichstag above germany is less about the game posturing toward power fantasy and more about the game responding to its franchise's overly polished and idealistic beginnings the blood and the guts can only get you so far in terms of building semantics but as a rhetoric a response to the game's previous shortcomings in naivete call of duty world at work kind of succeeds and for that I guess I am pretty positive about this game overall I just wish that a the Pacific Theater missions were just better designed especially the very last one and B that they were a little more interested or concerned with confronting some of the nuance behind the savagery of the Japanese not just playing upon stereotypes that they did with the Russian theater in the first Call of Duty game but for every step the game makes in trying to separate itself from its predecessors it really fails to do the same thing with its multiplayer mode call of duty world at war is multiplayer mode is a less consistent poorly balanced version of Modern Warfare's multiplayer success 10 MP 40s and far too big of maps made world at Wars multiplayer a sort of black mark in terms of the Arkady fans appreciation of Call of Duty games it wasn't a bad title it added modes like war that insisted that the player be more objective minded rather than just frag minded and the maps were far too gray and dreary to be remembered in the same ways other iconic maps were it's hard to say why world a war didn't have the same sort of ubiquitous appeal that caught for did it could be its movement it's underpowered sniper rifles it's more wide and open map of design or even just people being disinterested in another World War 2 multiplayer game again a lot of people liked this game's multiplayer but a lot didn't it's hard to find out why in 2020 due to the game being unplayable because of low population and BOTS however this game is one of the most popular Cod games on Steam in 2020 so why well it isn't because of the multiplayer and it certainly isn't because of the campaign world at Wars main appeal in 2020 is its zombies mode a mode that was originally developed as a fun joke near the end of the campaign but later developed to become one of the most interesting and frustrating pillars of a Call of Duty game going forward world at war zombies is some of the most fun I've had in a Call of Duty game and I particularly loved the map verruckt an asylum that has been overrun by undead we will get far more into this later on but for me a zombies map quality starts and ends with its atmosphere game plays nice wonder weapons and perks and bosses are all extremely interesting but as a casual zombies fan myself what hooks me first above all else is if the map itself feels believable and interesting thematically and aesthetically Varrick does the closest the Treyarch games get to making a zombie map horrifying and it works it is absolutely a difficult map one that has tension that rises into some of the more memorable last stands of the first game the simplicity and straightforwardness of its map design has you fulfilling similar tasks each time but the difficulty in atmosphere makes it so each playthrough is a bite-sized enough to not warrant 45 minutes of setting up the map I generally love the maps on offer in world of wars Amba swith derice probably the best design mechanically I just love verax atmosphere so much and in writing this I feel like I convinced myself into liking this game a bit more than I thought I did I think I am probably a bit more negative about this game than I let on but overall positive I think we do that sometimes as writers if we love something we nitpick if we aren't huge on something it's positive as shine a bit brighter unfortunately I wasn't able to legally obtain a copy of world at war final fronts however I imagine it tried to carry on the darker more brutal thematic notes world at war tried to change the course of Call of Duty games going forward but it would be the next game that solidified the series and a lot of people's minds as being more of a superhero game rather than a game about being cogs in a machine I won't lie to you YouTube audience I won't lie to you us writer types want you to think we enter into these projects with an open mind with no biases or preconceived notions I went into mw2 expecting to hate it I loved it I actually non ironically loved it I didn't like it I liked world at war I loved modern warfare 2 it was probably the most fun I had playing a Call of Duty single player and has probably the widest discrepancy in fun level in its multiplayer and before I even go into the game itself I want to make clear some of the reasons I think this game rocked my socks off the first reason is clear to me immediately this game is absolutely ridiculous in the best way possible it is a snowball of self-indulgent absurdity cascading down a summit of preposterous Ness one cannot understate how disinterested this game is with reality and it is better for it and we spoke about how Call of Duty 2 built the foundation for a good Call of Duty mission it becomes clear why Infinity Ward decided to take its game toward the modern age there is so much more a developer can do creatively with modern warfare than you are able to accomplish with the military technology of the 1940s every step of the four-part framework that we spoke about can be turned up in intensity for a game about nukes thermal sights and heartbeat sensors take for example one of the game's most memorable sections the ascent of a Soviet occupied mountaintop everything about this mission could not be possible we're not for the developers drawing every bit of energy from the game's modern setting had you heard about a heartbeat sensor before you played call of duty modern warfare 2 I sure his fiddle faddle did not the game gives you the opportunity to both learn about and experience some of the military's most absurd methods of murder the game also emphasizes one of the other pillars of a good Call of Duty mission we mentioned earlier and so far that it gives you probably the most diverse campaign we have seen thus far the same mountain scaling mission as you go from platforming to stealth wave defense to chase sequence to literal downhill snowmobiling race sections now that I'm writing it out I'm realizing that this mission titled Klinger might actually be one of the best missions in the whole franchise if you compare it with the four elements to a good con mission it hits on every single one the second thing that I love about this game is how it ties together an aesthetic feeling for the modern warfare sub series that I feel like hasn't been able to be recreated since the 3rd game it's a bit of a struggle to describe however I feel that modern warfare as a sub series in particular has a charm and consistent aesthetic that for me at least powered a lot of the after-school Xbox LIVE parties and conversations my friends that I would constantly be talking about the weapons and gadgets at use and quoting certain parts of the series for me I could never stop saying what the hell kind of name is soap my friend's gamer tags always had 1 for 1 in them in memory of the task force Captain Price has always remained somewhat of a mascot for the Call of Duty franchise that neither the trailer games or the sledgehammer games have managed to recreate the text and glowing night-vision goggle aesthetic is instantly recognizable for anyone who is around video games in this time the characters the world the art the weapons and the artistic cohesion of the story I'll create a consistent universe that is modern warfare in a way that few video games can actually reach to me the modern warfare games were the Avengers of my formative years popcorn entertainment designed to emphasize a universe of characters and thematic motifs take for example the fact that the games have a consistent through line of cigars being used as a motif is this some veiled metaphor about how war burns down a man until nothing remains of course not it's a fun reference that ties together each of the games in a way that perks up my ears and makes me smile these games relish in themselves and their absurdity and preposterousness it was always a fun time to experience and talk with friends before and after school and while I and many others felt the series fall apart a bit with the third iteration there is no doubt that we would consume any and all modern warfare related content as long as we got to see what our friends in task force 141 were up to if you haven't noticed I've not cared to talk about plot much at all any of this video so far this is not an accident the first reason is because Call of Duty cares little for its plot and so neither should Dave to an extent this video implies that you will have an understanding about these games so I should say as the game's going forward become even more nonsensical and chaotic with their plots I won't waste any time trying to parse them out in an illogical way I mean they certainly don't the second reason is Call of Duty has never really been about the plot it's always been about the tonal accomplishments its aesthetics and a thematic s-- it has always been about the set pieces and explosions why don't work for two does well to acknowledge this and leave you the player with 86 different guns in a helicopter that runs solely on chaos modern warfare 2 in particular does this best in my opinion and it's not even really close if you ask me remember when we spoke about how the original modern warfare was titled as such to be a critical examination of modern warfare itself modern warfare is the sort of title that it says what it is this game is modern warfare it wants to give your little child brain every single idea could come up with when you read a Wikipedia page on futuristic tech in the military it is self-indulgent ly adorable in its commitment to childlike naivete and imagination this is the height of that Avengers level self referential popcorn fun it is not at all the politically motivated Iraq allegory that the first game was no this game is almost certainly caught up in its own fiction a fiction that has a thread that runs in and around itself so many times that you can't help but spend a couple hours picking at it just to see where it all leads unfortunately all of this is why the game's biggest failure by far is its infamous level no Russian a completely impotent attempt at shocking the player's parents into free marketing on cable news in this level you will be gunning down helpless civilians in an airport well okay you don't have to gun them down you can't proceed without hitting a single person not like the game has anything interesting to say about that choice either I cannot stress enough how poorly this mission does it accomplishing anything it sets out to do least of all creating any sort of compelling statements on interactivity or games about war it's a sophomoric attempt at doing exactly what the first game did which is to force the player into questioning roles and blame in a global conflict without defined countries or sides where the first game absolutely had something to say about how war in the 21st century is unquestionably different than any war previous modern warfare to surrounds its most shocking level with absolutely zero and I mean zero critical or introspective analysis on the reasons how this shooting came to be and any dream of having you question its complexities nope instead they put this mission between you getting in a snowmobile chase down a mountain and a nuclear bomb being purposefully deployed overhead as an EMP device oh and then they made the place a multiplayer map just to really sell the point here my point here is this and it is one that should help inform my entire perspective on these games a Call of Duty game decides whether consciously or not whether it is going to be a game of critical examination like Cod for world at war a game of historical observation like the early games or if it is going to be a summer blockbuster like most games after this one all three of these are fine within reason one can occasionally dip into the pot of the others however most major failings of these games come when the game gets temporarily confused with which type of cod game it wants to be and violently detours into another it happens here and it happens later on with sledgehammers attempt at a world war 2 game because to bring it back to the positive when modern warfare 2 does decide to stay in it's metaphorical Lane boy does it do it well outside of no Russian there really isn't a part of this game that slows down in any meaningful way it is wall to wall with interesting set pieces and unique combat encounters I think that at this point it's hard for almost anyone familiar to the series to look at the Call of Duty franchise without years and years of jaded cynicism and disappointment there have been way too many Call of Duty games iterating on the same thing for far too long but it's here in modern warfare 2 where if you can just somehow bring yourself back to 2009 where you played this for the first time you will realize that this was such a tremendous leap in the Call of Duty formula for better or for worse the bombastic childlike absurdity that powers most of the games going forward was born and bred here that is one warfare two's legacy to me a game that defines a noticeable chapter break in Call of Duty's long history goodbye to the historical observations of military valor and reverence on display in the original games hello Ramirez hello uncritical power fantasy in hello burger town and it's not enough to just say that modern warfare 2 defines the start of the more Hollywood side of Call of Duty's history one has to begin to think on how it impacted this series specifically this game sold like crazy and it is not insane to say that a light bulb may have flickered for the suits over to Activision and infinity ward they may have thoughts of themselves buyers love the crazy Call of Duty was no longer about the call of duty Call of Duty was becoming a self-referential icon a motif a name that represents a guarantee to the consumer rather than a potent commentary on wartime valor that guarantee explosions headshots camouflage a slow-mo in a 5 hour or so stroking of your childís dreams of being GI Joe I personally love this about the game I'm happy with how the previous games handled the Call of Duty but I can honestly say I'd rather storm the White House under rushed invasion rather than storm the Reichstag even one more time even modern warfare 2 secondary mode SpecOps is one of my favorite Call of Duty experiences on offer in the catalog I especially love the co-op missions of which I played through with my friend slide drum I loved these missions because they essentially concentrate and iterate upon those four pillars I've mentioned so many times but do so in a way that you are getting is condensed and effective a gameplay opportunity is possible these missions are entirely gameplay driven the best of which give you a couple of different opportunities for progression such as stealth or action one mission had me in slide drum infiltrating the snowy camp like in the mission mentioned earlier but this time with a real partner you know those parts in like every Call of Duty game where you are to take out one soldier while your partner simultaneously shoots the other one it is a next level of immersive fun when you have to claim and countdown your shots with another real player buying in is the name of the game for these spec ops missions I cannot recommend enough just letting your child like wanderer open up for these missions and just playing them like you are 10 years old playing cops and robbers in the backyard using call signs saying Roger and over using your imagination and whatever other nerdy flares you can bring up makes the SpecOps modes one of the most joyful Call of Duty experiences out there and speaking of joy let's finally talk Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer alright quick what do you think of when I say modern warfare 2 multiplayer ok are you done because I'm gonna take some guesses did you think of the pre-match lobbies screaming into the microphones unapologetic racism maybe your first thought was quickscoping the intervention 1v1 me rust terminal someone thought of terminal Vasquez uninstall birkin controllers commando pro oh god the akimbo model 1887 s an unquenchable need to play every day despite every session ending with a sinking depression that leaves you questioning why you spend so much time grinding for Imaginary camos on an imaginary submachine gun I imagine some of those are most of those ran through your mind just at the mention of modern warfare 2 modern warfare two's multiplayer is absolutely confounding to me in 2020 how did we play this game is so much this game is unforgivable it's borderline immoral it is unfathomably frustrating and no I don't just suck I had my fair share of nukes back in my day I think that it is pretty clear why this game is so frustrating and also so iconic Infinity Ward decided something very deliberately in this games multiplayer when everything is overpowered nothing is overpowered the weapons and gadgets on display in this game are so ubiquitously powerful so astonishingly lethal that anyone with an eye on you and an angle for engagement might as well be firing predator missiles at you at 550 RPM an ACR and mw2 will take you out with such immaculate precision you will be left wondering how someone got an automatic sniper rifle in modern warfare 2 war is hell the multiplayer will chew you up and spit you out step on you with a pave load dig a hole under your body with a sim Tex and pound you into the dirt over and over again with a chopper gunner in a c-130 you remember that Tom Cruise movie where you like dies and comes back again endlessly a Jeff tomorrow mw2 demands you live the Sisyphean existence with an absolute brutal disregard for your enjoyment level sure sometimes you are the one laying down the pain but my god is it frustrating to emerge from the womb of the killcam only to be rained upon by a hellfire of missiles launched by XX big-booty destroyer 69 XX but still modern warfare 2 might just hold the most iconic Call of Duty multiplayer mode of the whole franchise and for that reason it still holds up as a landmark moment in videogame history I'm not certain if it has anything to do with the gameplay itself being special as much as it being the right game at the right time Xbox Live had just started its zenith as a routine meeting place for friends and strangers lifelong friendships were forged on high rise and night long rivalries were created and destroyed on rust and despite a lot of the verbal abuse you were subjected to on a daily basis there is a disheartening Melancholy to entering a modern war to lobby in 2020 and hearing absolutely nothing it's like being in an auditorium or concert hall and hearing silence sure it's no less effective in its purpose but shockingly vacant like it's missing a vital organ there was something captured in mw2 that escaped us since wisps exist in future Call of Duty games sure but something will always be left with those years back on terminal I think that something wasn't just in the game but somehow connected to us as well and we lost it alongside the game eventually we played that game for the last time ever eventually we said see you tomorrow guys for the last time ever we thought that the max prestige would mean something we didn't stop to think that we would one day never launch the game again what happened with modern warfare two's multiplayer how did we all universally decide this is the game to plug my mic in for this is the game to stand up lean forward crank your headset and yell at my enemies for how did we decide to all show up and make so many friends and how do we access that again I mean I don't have an answer for you all I can do is smile while I write this and be happy it happened at all my experience with the call of duty black ops series can be weirdly defined as being a tale of three modes there is no sub series in this franchise more confusing and varied in quality than that of the black ops series and I find parsing out my thoughts on the game's difficult when I love so much and dislike so much more black ops black ops 2 in black ops 3 has some of my least favorite campaigns in all of the franchise you have my most loved multi players by a considerable margin there's little doubt in my mind that black ops co-op mode zombies is the best co-op offering in the entire franchise so what is more important to you really think about that by the way it's not rhetorical what is more important to you in considering the purchase of a Call of Duty game the reason I posed this question is that the black ops games feel more to me like three separate products bundled together in one rather than any of the other offerings in the series thus far there just isn't that degree of consistent homogenous Asian that I spoke about being so critical to the modern warfare sub series is success and each game is left floundering in a wealth of twisting and turning settings the maddox and motifs that it just can't find its footing in the total package of these three and a half games over the course of almost a decade don't exactly inspire the same sort of consistency that we got from the MWC you there multiplayer and co-op modes are far more similar amongst the games mechanically than they are thematically the multiplayer and zombies modes in particular undergo such dramatic and absurd journeys in terms of thematic objectives the trying to map them out as the same series will leave you with a painful tonal whiplash I could never really decide what black ops wanted to be as a piece of media was it playfully conspiratorial was it actually conspiratorial was it Pope nonsense in the same way modern warfare was trying to be or was it actually trying to be some sort of meta narrative on warfare was the black ops series trying to solidify its place in the Call of Duty Canon by being different or were they selling an orange box style product where he could experience three different experiences ala carte I'm not sure I know even after writing this godforsaken video black ops as a series still confuses me but let's start with focusing in on my favorite of the three campaigns on offer here Call of Duty Black Ops is a game that stands out enough from the mana warfare series to both establish Treyarch as an equal pillar in the franchise but also as an equal worthy of content that can succeed that of modern warfare how can it succeed over modern warfare though well it does so only sometimes but it does so in character in daring black ops carries alongside the series most insane and chaotic plot lines a sort of animalistic forward momentum that can only be described as absolutely necessary without this story momentum without this breakneck pace the holes in the plotline become unag Nora belong the road with it however the holes just blend into the path that's harmlessly and significant the worst thing you can do with a black ops game is analyze its story this is not a game to be poured over this is a game to be gulped to be ravished Bacchus demands more suspension of disbelief than maybe any of the other games especially with its tenuous connections to world at war you see Victor Rezanov might just be the best part of this game not because he makes any attempt at coherent sense but because he acts as a microcosm for the blackops sub series as a whole is resna of real are the stories of CIA black ops missions being told real is Rezanov an absolute caricature of Soviet stereotypes and pulp nonsense I mean isn't that what black ops is as a whole is Victor resna of a real meaningful attempt at commenting on the results of warfare and torture in a man's mind after years and years of it is Rezanov an example of exactly the sort of consequences and realities of warfare that I criticized world at war for completely ignoring or is he just there for the shock the bombast the hilarity and the heroics can't I ask the same thing of these games consider what is by far my favorite mission in the first game Vorkuta which has you and old resi escaping a dramatic fashion from a gulag now it won't be the first and acknowledging that the explicit intent of this mission is to be unreliable and unbelievable the events of this mission are designed to stoke skepticism in the player a skepticism that should prevail throughout the entire game by the way I also won't bore you with another explanation about this but this mission absolutely hits all four pillars as well but the mission so is a seed that should sprout and grow throughout the four hours or so of runtime of this game does that seed grow or does it fester and die in a pit of cynicism the first steps of the mission because after this admittedly incredible Call of Duty mission if you are still on board with the ridiculous nature of the game then it might just grow into something special for you in that way this mission acts as a sort of weird test or quiz moment to see if this game really is for you going forward it's sort of like a boss like the asylum demon from Dark Souls it asks you are you ready is this game really for you and there's your Dark Souls reference for you stream watchers add on to this the fact that you see appearances from figures like John F Kennedy and real-life locations and events like the Bay of Pigs and what you're left with is a menagerie of mayhem that I think only appeals to certain people's interests and it wasn't until the very end of this game where I made my decision on where I fall in this game and when I say the very end I mean it in the ending credits it is implied via one of the most unintentionally hilarious video game moments of all time that you were somehow involved in the assassination of JFK in Dallas was it you did you help were you the grassy knoll I will never have any idea I will also never have any idea why they decided putting ps2 looking Mason in a real-life picture of JFK moments before his death was it all a good idea I immediately burst out laughing at the absurdity and self seriousness of the moment it affected me so much that I instantly was confronted with the fact that I had to reevaluate the entire game I had just played I had to come to terms with the fact that black ops that Treyarch seems 100% earnest in their desire to show you that nothing is ever as it seems open your eyes man nothing is true everything is permitted it's this overwhelming teenager fueled nihilism that is the underlying ethos of the entire game and it wasn't until I saw a polygonal Mason standing amongst his very real counterparts that this became abundantly clear to me whether or not it is true that the government hides in shadows many devious and extrajudicial actions from the common people and it most certainly is by the way black ops decides to pander to the lowest common denominator of conspiracy theorists nonsense instead of tackling that governmental and conspicuousness with any meaningful tact it arrives at it in the same way it arrives at Rezanov which is to say with little subtlety or subtext unfortunately unlike Rezanov it doesn't work here I enjoyed black ops quite a bit for the first four hours and 30 minutes it was unfortunately the last to this soured the game a bit for me going forward which is a shame because somewhere underneath a lot of the self seriousness is a game worthy of love and appreciation from old Dave but that's of right now in the series I'm gonna go ahead and stick with my friends over at task force one for one Mason is just a little much for me the blackops still remains a high point in the series for me however despite the campaign varying from decent to laughably incomprehensible it remains high in my rankings because of such a stellar improvement to the zombies formula and a pretty great multiplayer that suffers from a couple near fatal flaws let's start with the zombies a mode that could easily be argued to be the best of the many zombies iterations throughout the series black ops zombies was where the mode hit it's crucial middle ground between mechanical and level design complexity and replayable simplicity where the first Maps became dull within a couple of goes black ops 1 zombies maps give you enough interesting mechanical opportunities to give the mode a happy and healthy life of experimentation and perfecting maps like kino der toten and ascension - well p master classes in producing the essential zombies experience of chaotic class stands and carefully deliberated plans there are clear enough objectives that fulfilling the process of setting up in these maps is never so daunting that it sucks the fun away from just playing the maps themselves there's an understated simplicity to these maps that when compared to the overly obtuse and self-congratulatory Easter eggs and item builds in the future Maps makes black ops 1 zombies feel like a gem lost to time in some way like the developers are never going to be able to go back to this kind of map due to the demand for bigger and better because I don't know I loved these maps and while I'm pretty bad and a novice a zombies as a whole these were some of the maps that didn't make me feel like a giant stupid Dumbo head every time I tried to play them before watching a 50 minute YouTube tutorial there's something to be said about that I think my favorite map on offer here is ascension with call of the dead in close second at least favorite maps are moon in shangri-la mainly because they are hard and I suck at zombies the multiplayer on offer in black ops 1 I think is probably a bit more contentiously appreciated than other multi players in the franchise I love it I think it masks a decent amount of balance issues with some of the best map design and gunplay in the series it's funny while Treyarch was so determined to stand out from infinity word in their campaign design what they actually did was stand out most in their multiplayer design a rift begins to emerge here in Call of Duty circles once black ops 1 is released it is made abundantly clear with black ops 2 either you are a Treyarch multiplayer lover or an infinity ward multiplayer lover one always prefers one over the other I want to save some of this conversation for the black ops 2 section in which I speak about trioxin multiplayer ethos with a lot more detail and short I love how black ops uses its high time to kill for more engaging longer gunfights in a more arena based map design I think this ultimately shifts the game towards being a bit more team focused where team shooting and organized objective captures are more effective than in modern warfare where you can die in two to three bullets I always loved how the game had such a detailed combat report - with stats and heat maps telling you where you are most effective on the map and where you decide to mainly shoot your targets I wish the game just didn't move away from that kind of thing moving forward my only issues can be found in what I choke up to intentional game design differentiators that ended up hurting the final product more than doing the game any sort of unique favors one being that it addresses the lethality of modern warfare weapons with a sort of flaccid mediocrity in most of its weapons with the standout guns outclassing almost everything else I'm looking at you from us finally they wanted to de-emphasize aggressive sniping in the game so they nerfed sniper scope in time so much it almost makes sniping on fun not a fan of the direction there my favorite maps in pod cups are summit grid and zoo it wouldn't be long for even my heavily praised maybe modern warfare to start letting me down - unfortunately because as critical as I was here black ops 1 is going to be the last Call of Duty campaign I can say I genuinely enjoyed for quite a long time the launch trailer for call of duty modern warfare 3 was released on the 21st of October labeling the game as the most anticipated video game in history I'm not totally sure they're wrong actually with maybe Halo 3 or Grand Theft Auto 5 in close pursuit at this point of the franchise it is absolutely mandatory that we established the fact that Call of Duty is a popular cultural icon at this point an annual monolith of industry dominance consistently charting the top spot on every sales board every year call of duty and modern warfare in particular is one of the biggest entertainment franchises in history at this point certainly in terms of money with that however comes a not insignificant amount of pressures and stipulations that absolutely influence the finished product as a piece of media and art was the game poured over a board room after boardroom of suits at Activision HQ to produce a product rather than an art it certainly feels that way Modern Warfare 3 is by far the least interesting and most soulless title to arrive in the Canon so far even games I preferred playing less than modern warfare 3 like big red one and world at war have spirit an identity that at the very least emphasized an artistic intent that allows the player to get an idea of what the game is trying to say about its subject matter call of duty modern warfare 3 feels as polished as mechanically focused and visually stunning as any Call of Duty up until this point so why do you most Call of Duty fans find it disappointing why do I insist that it's one of the worst Call of Duty's to date to answer that I unfortunately have to revisit the Marvel comparison here for a bit it isn't controversial to say that I generally really love the Marvel superhero movies that have come out recently especially the really excellent ones it also isn't too controversial to say that these games carry ubiquitous similarities a sort of framework that scaffolds the visual and narrative design of each movie some of the least appreciated Marvel movies are normally the ones that are most affected by this the ones that feel most generic in their design like a boardroom of writers or just filling in proper nouns into a narrative ad-lib if we acknowledge that the modern warfare series is excellent in the same ways of visual and narrative coherence like the Marvel movies are we also have to acknowledge that the same sort of opportunities for soulless profit prioritizing ubiquity exist as well unfortunately for Call of Duty this is the first time that has really reared its ugly head modern warfare 3 fails to exceed its predecessors in any way other than bombast at which it often fails as well it is running short on locales running low on world MA to blow up everything about this game feels like a profiteering response to modern warfare 2 as if to say you've seen modern warfare but have you seen modern er warfare as far as the single-player campaign goes the game feels like it has to reiterate on everything that made modern warfare 2 so popular and appreciated vehicle chase sequences gunning down random militias and destitute unfortunate countries fighting around iconic world monuments some obtusely violent moment to get the moms all worked up at parent-teacher conference meetings all of that it is a polished relatively fun creatively bankrupt product in the series doesn't recover from it for a long time my main issue with the game stems from a problem of soul and character not plot model warfare 3 may very well have the most nonsensical plot structure and beats of any call of duty to this point at least until the next game that is but even that has never been enough to truly bother me I've heard people complain about the fact that URI is a character retconned into the series seemingly without concern the entire Russian invasion into the United States a huge focus of the second game is wrapped up within an hour of the game starting I don't even care that the Russian army invades Paris for whatever reason none of this has really bothered me because none of it was ever compelling enough and the games have always been carried by the ferocity and beauty of their set piece in art design and bothered because each game so far has even when they failed tried something new in terms of their stance on warfare politics bloodshed or even video games modern warfare 3 is the first game in the series that refuses to try anything new in that department creating another version of modern warfare twos absurd action rollercoaster without any of the charm or novelty that accompanied that game it's a darn shame too as I grew to love the modern warfare sub series more than I ever have during my replaying of the whole series for this video and while this section of the video may appear to be lacking in content it has far more to do with me than it does the game I have never been one to write criticisms in my videos I far prefer to celebrate a game's triumphs than to cry their fail it's why I've been almost overwhelmingly positive about the series until this point mw3 is my tipping point however I find so little about this game enjoyable in terms of what I normally find enjoyable about these games I wanted to know what happened to prices gang I wanted to know how they were going to escape being fugitives but that's all that mattered to me going forward in this game I was never interested in anything but what happened to the characters that made me fall in love in a previous game is that a good sign it can't be that one of the only things worthwhile about a game is the results of the previous games in the series I was sad to see soap dye so unceremoniously on a table I was sad to see price light his cigar at the end of their Odyssey a tobacco filled motif that stood for something in the context of the series I was sad knowing price had to dig two graves on his quest for revenge not for him in Makarov but for his best friend in Makarov I was sad knowing price was never going to quite recover from all that happened in these games he like myself was probably wishing things could have gone a little bit different in this game he like myself might have been asking what the hell kind of game is Modern Warfare 3 so Dave maybe the co-op modes or multiplayer can swing the game for you nope not only is this the worst co-op experience added in since the series began adding them but this is also the worst multiplayer since world at war and maybe my personal least favorite of them all modern warfare 3 takes all of the parts of modern warfare two's multiplayer that I mentioned finding infuriating the lethality of the weapons the emphasis on head glitching and camping the oppressive kill streaks the drab and absolutely chaotic map design it's a complete cornucopia of misery in my opinion and was one of the only games growing up I never completed a prestige on I mean I completed a prestige on the newest game man and I'm like 26 with a wife and a job now it isn't hard to get me to play a Call of Duty game if I had a ranking for these games and I don't at this point of the script modern warfare 3 would be very near the bottom it is the worst of what the Call of Duty series has to offer nothing to do with the literal Call of Duty nothing to do with nuance nothing to do with originality and everything to do with derivative obtuse junk it is a confirmation to the critics who say Call of Duty is the same game every year the Call of Duty is glow brow American exceptionalism it isn't the worst game the franchise has on offer please take your guesses on which is it's still coming up but it is shockingly bad and frankly I don't wish to talk about it anymore call of duty black ops 2 is my single most played Call of Duty game by such a large margin that I would feel comfortable saying it might just be my most played a video game of all time although counter-strike might have a disagreement I want to be very clear going forward in this particular analysis Call of Duty Black Ops 2 is far and away my favorite multiplayer call of duty to be released and will probably remain so for a long long time I definitely get the feeling that this video is trended toward being far more about the single-player modes and their artistic objectives and while I'm happy with that I want to take this particular section to really go into what I think makes a good multiplayer mode and how black ops 2 succeeds is an anomaly against the rest of the series if you're really interested in bi ops 2 story I'm sorry if this is disappointing to talk a little bit about what I think the blackops storyline does well before we get too deep into the multiplayer mode because as a general rule I don't really like black ops twos campaign I think it is relatively position-less and what it is trying to say about the machine if ocation of warfare and it comes off as wanting to tell a melodramatic war story with an absolutely absurd and incomprehensible set of postmodern time jumps at this point you might be thinking to yourself man there are a lot of villains in these games whose main motivation is a hatred of America and you would be right that's true it really gets at the half-step almost their approach a lot of these games have that make them so frustrating they appear to be self-aware politically fueled critiques on American imperialism and military might but so often they come short of actually making any point about it besides God for that is ultimately it is a game that has you considering the ethical and logistical cost of warfare fueled by machines all the while having you play through scenes like this 240 element 1 call of duty black ops 2 continues the trend of these games developing identities for themselves not through interesting or meaningful stories or statements but through aesthetic design and imagery black ops 2 rests its entire identity on this techno infused quasi future brutality and not much else it's hard to write about a game like this without going into such enormous lengths to try and explain its plot a plot that is told to you from a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy unreliable narrators in mind-control are already two very difficult plot structures to include into a story and when you add the modularity of a video game player it becomes almost impossible to craft a narrative worth putting the time and energy into trying to understand I am not lying to you when I say I am still to this day unsure of everything that happens in black ops 2 single-player it's a fever dream of dubstep and robots a dream I couldn't wait to wake up from I do appreciate the attempts at changing the formula though like how this is the first Call of Duty story mode that has the ability to be changed based on your actions and the missions again I like the idea it's almost there but the execution is oftentimes not made clear or just obtuse the point is I think to encourage replayability in the campaign as I'm sure the numbers were saying that players would play the campaign and then never revisit again they even added side content in for what it's worth as well as a loadout system similar to that of multiplayer I think it's clear that the people developing single-player we're starting to realize just how insignificant Call of Duty's single-player was becoming and while I think their attempts at change are just that attempts it does show a willingness to change and look toward improvement I feel similarly about the zombies mode which has a lot of effort and intricacy with little payoff I think that black ops 2 is probably the division point for a lot of zombies fans and I say that with little to no knowledge about the zombies community's opinion on these games the maps start developing into twisting caverns of confusion and often times cannot be fully experienced without the help of a youtuber a couple of hours of free time and infinite patience which is weird because black ops 2 houses my very favorite zombies map of all the zombies iterations mob of the dead this map without a single shadow of a doubt slaps it absolutely nails every corner ideal I wanted a zombies map with its atmosphere being the most enjoyable to me zombies as an idea absolutely gets away from its horror elements and themes for a more science fiction driven art design but mob of the dead fur goes that progression and instead routes itself in a debilitating crime an absolutely soul-sucking bloody film that covers the entire map from front to back this map feels like it could be an Xbox one or ps4 generation map and its attention to detail and fidelity more than anything though the map isn't so hard that it's impossible to play for me a casual zombies player this was the only black ops 2 map where I was able to complete some sort of objective without having to look something up I found the parts did the task to gather them place them on the plane and went to the Golden Gate Bridge all from exploring the map and using the contextual clues on my own this may sound funny to you zombies veterans but I had no idea how to do any of these tasks on these maps and it went a long way for me and my enjoyment of the map for it to be clear and interesting enough for me to figure out on my own now that I think about it mob of the dead buried and origins are all pretty incredible zombies experiences in terms of atmosphere and creativity and ultimately that's what I love about this mode when they go forward and say [ __ ] it let's have you fight zombies and Alcatraz or hey get this what if there were zombies but you're in the trenches of World War 1 and there are giant German automatons walking around it oh and wizards you got to have wizards basically if the creative team isn't blasted on reefer while creating these maps I don't want to play them zombies is a great thematic foil to the obsessively self-serious and painfully overdramatic story beats of the single-player modes especially for Treyarch games so what are you looking for in a Call of Duty multiplayer game are you looking for a casual experience a competitive experience a fun time with friends or a disposable waste of 30 or so minutes every night are you into unlocking the camos watching the tournament maybe do you only played a hardcore mode maybe you loved searcher destroy but can't play any of the respawn game modes with the sheer amount of multiplayer experience that are on offer and Call of Duty nowadays I feel it necessary to establish my preferences going forward because to a degree Call of Duty multiplayer is relatively subjective so here is what I like in a Call of Duty multiplayer I know nobody asked I like a longer time to kill in my multiplayer I think three to four bullets to kill with an assault rifle is much better than 2 to 3 I think some machine gun should be 4 to 5 or even 6 I like maps that are developed with gameplay more in mind than aesthetics maps should be consistent and should be developed around a three-lane philosophy but within reason I like when my Call of Duty games have higher dexterity movement options which is to say that I should be able to aim down sights faster shoot out of sprint faster and be able to move my character more smoothly with jump shots and air strafe rather than jerky animations or drop shotting I like my Call of Duty game to have a ranked playlist and well-designed team-based respawn modes like hardpoint finally I like my Call of Duty games to have consistent and manipulatable spawns even if it means they're more rigorously enforced the concise way to say this is I much prefer my Call of Duty multiplayer games to be created with an arcade sensibility rather than trying to be more realistically focused I much prefer gunfights to be more focused on accuracy and positioning over time rather than who saw who first the weapons in black ops 2 are much much less lethal than their modern warfare counterparts and the recoil is a little less forgiving as well what this does added upon the higher time to kill is give gunfights an opportunity to be won and lost on a larger amount of variables where a quicker time to kill games usually come down to less factors due to how quickly the engagement ends and look I get why you might like that more it probably encourages more careful slower paced play that rewards positioning over raw gun skill however I found that longer engagements in black ops 2 allow for not only a higher skill ceiling but a much less stagnant set of players in a lobby if sitting on a head glitch in camping spawns doesn't 100% guarantee a kill like it might in infinity war titles then players will be much more likely to get creative in the ways they approach their engagements what you end up with is a lot more jumping around corners picking up and down around cover and opportunities for 180-degree desu emissions they ultimately encourage a much faster paced in arena style gameplay the maps emphasize this sort of raw skill priority as well giving as little camping opportunities and dead-end windows to hold up as possible black ops tubes maps were the first to really commit to the three lane map design a design they would see itself run into the ground going forward into the series a middle lane usually with two power positions on either end and simple flanking routes with minimal hiding spots around the periphery of the map just think of almost any map in black ops 2 standoff has the middle courtyard with the playground side and the alleyway flanking it hijacked is practically nuketown with the two opposing buildings in mid area raid is the same way with a middle courtyard with a poolside and a ringside on its left and right what this means is there is a consistent opportunity for sides to appear which ultimately makes spawning way easier on the algorithm because it can clearly decide ownership of which team owns which side of the map the more arcade focus also gave way to the real explosion of Call of Duty eSports something that is its own legitimate franchise League right now cod eSports existed prior to black ops 2 but it was black ops 2 and specifically optic gaming that sent MLG Cod tournaments into the next level of popularity so many of my weekends were spent watching match after match from the incredible last game of fariko impacts miraculous champs victory to the incredibly disappointing Search and Destroy collapse at Full Sail University I watched them all live cheering alongside my now life one of my favorite memories was when pro player karma and other pros took on a renowned pub stomping team in a competitive game of hardpoint that team was convinced that they could take on the pros because well being good at Call of Duty is being good at call of duty the match ended in an embarrassing blowout with karma just spinning around in his desk chair with minutes left in the game because his team didn't need him I will never ever forget at the summer of 2013 the same summer I graduated high school in the first summer of me and my now wife being in love I will never ever forget being excited to watch every ounce of content that came out of the optic gaming house with Merck Big Tymers Gump and nadeshot I watched their live streams their videos their tournaments I became crazy crazy like a girl in the 60s for the Beatles for a bunch of teenagers in a gaming house by themselves sleeping on air mattresses and playing a video game all day Call of Duty was starting to become way more about the game this year it had already and was continuing to explode on YouTube and twitch it was a cultural icon at this point and black ops 2 sold its position as an icon so so well when you talk about Call of Duty in a retrospective you have to acknowledge this for people my age pow of duty was institutional it was a language of social status of competition of passion every lunchroom had conversations about which gun was most opie who got diamond camo first who hit the sickest YY fakie ladder stall last night every text was yo did you catch homogeneous new catalysts montage or did you see scum left optic to go to envy understanding Call of Duty as a franchise is understanding that it existed outside of the series itself it was without a doubt a moment in history for a lot of people of a lot of ages I am confident that I will go to my retirement home and be able to ask someone what their favorite sniper and black ops 2 was I'm confident they will reply immediately by saying the ballista my point with all this nerdiness is black ops 2 took Call of Duty to a level that I loved a real competitive minded experience that also has an incredible public match experience with great kill streaks and great Maps I will never ever forget black ops 2 multiplayer and I will weirdly always remember 2012 and 2013 as the black ops 2 years considering just about all I did was grind League play matches with my best friend's masters by the way oh boy Call of Duty ghosts I guess I had to write this section eventually look I'm gonna speak for a lot of Call of Duty fans when I say this was the game that finally cut a lot of fans off from the series this game was disappointing for a lot of people and while there is certainly fans of the game I have to say that I am NOT one of those people ghosts is a genuinely unenjoyable Call of Duty campaign especially with the perspective of playing all of these games in a row aesthetically it might be the worst looking Call of Duty it is painfully drab unenthusiastically monochromatic and offensively unoriginal I mean guys and gals this game is not good this is not a good Call of Duty single-player and maybe it's most offensively bad aspect is that it was the first and foremost fails as a Call of Duty video game as interactive software the level design and mission design suffers the most in this game with some of the most incomprehensible boring missions like this one where you pilot a helicopter toward an enemy position I cannot believe that this mission made it into the game it's an all too long vehicle sequence that rivals even the worst vehicle sequences of the classic Cod games it puts you boots on the ground for a couple of minutes only to send you right back up and have the mission int missions in this game regressed to previous Call of Duty games in such painful ways with turrets section after turret section with chest high cover filled rooms and spawning bad guys ignoring the dog missions in a kind of obtuse but admittedly very enjoyable space mission I'm not completely sure I remember a single moment or schtick in any of these levels a critical part of the Call of Duty formula as we spoke about earlier to this point most Call of Duty games could forfeit praise and what they're saying are their narratives because the gameplay has been so solid and polished they can reasonably afford to have lackluster stories and still sell copies because of how many can aesthetically pleasing gameplay opportunities there are Call of Duty ghosts denies anyone the opportunity to praise it at all insisting upon being mediocre to straight-up unplayable in every way visually the game comes off as a tech demo more than an interesting take on post-apocalyptic it has that annoying beautiful destruction aesthetic the Gears of War popularized in 2006 the urban grays and absolutely personality list Browns are such a relic of the last generation so much so that the game feels like it's in some sort of visual Arrested Development the violence on display in this game is also completely indulgent without commentary let alone criticism even with what I've said about the black ops games they treated their violence with a healthy side of cynicism and teenage nihilism as if to encourage the player to think about the meaninglessness of it ghosts is neither critical nor affectionate of its violence it is completely disconnected from it displaying it only as trashy wrapping paper as opposed to any sort of meaningful rhetoric I want to celebrate these games in this video I really really do ghosts maybe is the most difficult to celebrate for me because of how it refuses to acknowledge any of the things I appreciate about a Call of Duty game it is like black ops 2 completely position-less saying nothing about warfare or violence and certainly nothing about the literal Call of Duty because essentially the ghosts are the most awesome the most unbelievably unstoppable soldiers on the planet they are jacked and not only that but they wear the freshest clothes eat at the chillest restaurants and hang out with the hottest dudes and call of duty ghosts you are a superhero it's not even up for debate at this point the opening cinematic basically confirms it the game basically postures these men is the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae in the beginning of the game has you thinking that the ghosts are something otherworldly it wants you to believe it but I couldn't I couldn't stop asking questions the entire playthrough is it possible for men to be so elite so powerful so much better than everyone else in war war seems so random so in humans so unbiased it's a complete reversal of the very ethos of the Call of Duty games we first spoke about where anyone could die anyone could run into a room and check left when the enemy was right is there any room in real war with real bullets and real death for someone to be practically impervious what is that saying about the actual role of soldiers of heroes on a frontline it's why I think this game is actually an ironically offensive like actually offensive actually offensive to those who have served suffered and died in the military I have a lot of patience for these games but this one took it way too far for me at least in so far and how it's so distantly strays from the core philosophy of the series's origins my friends and family who have served in the military were ordinary men and women who felt compelled to serve voluntarily they were not elite people they were not superheroes they were heroes on the basis of the normality but having you play as an alongside these ghosts it completely ignores the real subtext of what a war game should strive to be about sacrifice and valor about participating as an individual towards a collective cause what sacrifice is there to make when you and your buddies aren't even regarded as human when they are so preposterous ly skilled they aren't even putting anything on the line what sacrifice is there when you can't die so okay maybe they are subverting the expectations of this earnest idea of valor and the call of duty well they suck at doing that too I think the biggest offense of call of duty ghosts' isn't how it positions itself to be a subversion of Call of Duty's tropes of player empowerment and American exceptionalism but proceeds to confirm each and every one of those stereotypes regardless and ghosts America is losing the war you were absolutely in danger of annihilation you are hit with strikes so devastating it practically begins an apocalypse in America the game wants you to feel your backs against the wall but the game never once manifests this in its levels or game design or its narrative you are consistently winning in this game you are always pushing forward always dominating ghosts misses a crucially important opportunity here to be the anti kodkod game it could have told a story that played off the ridiculousness of the Treyarch games and could have even been a cool message from Infinity Ward that says hey you remember how mono r43 kind of went off the rails and you didn't like it as much here we listened try this but instead what happens is they created a modern warfare 2 fan fiction a bastardization of every rhythm and beat of what they thought was the golden ticket towards selling a lot of copies they just didn't succeed in telling a Call of Duty story they didn't succeed in subverting a Call of Duty story and they never succeeded in telling a called to duty story but strangely enough ghost would surprise me and a lot of other people by including a co-op mode titled extinction extinction mode by all accounts was looking to be another instance of derivative development by Infinity Ward trying to catch in on the absolutely absurd popularity of the black ops zombies mode what resulted was an actually kind of novel experience that without being too critical again overstate its welcome a bit on the macro and micro scale what I mean to say is that extinction mode is a good mode that much like you could say about Cod as a whole keeps going for far longer than it really has any need to it is an enjoyable romp through decently designed levels that have you stopping and popping for a lot of fast reaction quick thinking action they're just far too many great drill sites and far too long of a time to drill them in the macro sense the maps also overstay their welcome by being absolutely absurd by the end of the in-universe story a story that is so abominably dreadful I can't even believe that it isn't presented tongue-in-cheek so yeah nothing can be pure with ghosts I guess even a co-op mode I really truly enjoyed even that has to go on for far too long it's here I guess I'm gonna bring us back to the very beginning of this video do you remember that oh so long ago shout out to you by the way if you've made it this far I'd mentioned how everyone had a moment in the cod series where things just began to fall downward a little bit where our love didn't go away for the series but it began to fade I think for a lot of people this could have happened to any where between mana war 4-3 and black ops 2 I would get that really I would personally however that moment for me is Call of Duty ghosts for a couple of reasons the first is that I was confronted with the undeniable derivative nature of the game as someone who has played each and every one of these games up until this point this was really just the one that broke me especially that ending my god in a long legacy of nonsensical and astonishingly pulpy endings ghost carries far and away the most embarrassingly incomprehensible series of events what I said where's sacrifice what someone is incapable of dying I wasn't kidding the members of ghost castes are incapable of dying from Riley to Hesh and Logan today ever memorable Roark the only impossible feat in this game is mortality but the second reason this was the beginning of the downfall of my love of Call of Duty is a bit more dastardly a bit more messy a bit more sad ghosts was the transition title from the Xbox 360 generation and the Xbox one generation this was the game that would launch Call of Duty into the next generation this was the game that would launch Call of Duty into the next generation all the tournaments were to eventually move all the exclusivity and all the best graphics and gameplay I was playing ghosts daily with my friends friends I still play games with to this very day we took the game very seriously would play game battles matches every night hey and stay up until 2:00 in the morning working on search-and-destroy nade spots in that sense cod ghosts' is incredibly heartwarming and memorable but unfortunately I saved up with alle Thea to get an Xbox one that year unfortunately my friends were never going to get that console unfortunately I wanted to keep playing I wanted to grind to compete to stream I was streaming at this time and making it work for myself I was 19 or so I wanted to get bigger on Twitch I wanted to join optic I wanted to make it big and compete on a main stage I can find an old Instagram post from the night the game came out of me saying this is the year I go pro naive now I guess but I believed it at the time and just like I believe I can make this YouTube channel work I believed I could make Call of Duty work for me what I guess I didn't realize is that the relationships you build playing Call of Duty is where a lot of the enjoyment comes from after playing it for over a decade at this point it isn't wrong to say that Call of Duty's enjoyment became about the friendships we made along the way this game marked a pivotal break in my years as a Call of Duty fan as if there was a pre ghosts and post ghosts timeline ghosts as when my gaming squad and I departed for different consoles at the time it broke my heart I never went pro I never joined optic eventually quit streaming on that account what did happen however is derp lol touchy bunny 14:53 and DS ORN were all able to reunite in the wonderful world of PC gaming what came next was college 1,500 hours of counter-strike and a whole lot of virginity totally kidding about one of those it's strange then that it broke my heart so much if I didn't even like the game right well ghost is one of the rare multiplayer Cod games that was actually awesome in terms of competitive but sucked in terms of public casual matches Search and Destroy in this game was an absolute blast I had a ton of fun playing game battles in this game and found that I actually got pretty darn nasty at this game it was probably the best I ever got at a cod game at least in terms of competitive play my favourite maps were war hawk for Search and Destroy octane for domination and Freight for blitz it was a flawed multiplayer experience with shoddy attempts at balancing guns like the vector and poor sniping dexterity in the game but it was an experience that I was at the height of my cod multiplayer life looking back I yelled so much about this game I yelled about the spawns I yelled at my teammates when they didn't watch flank I yelled at my best friends for not calling out I want to say it was all for nothing that I shouldn't have done it at the same time I believed dear in Call of Duty ghosts I believed that I could be a streamer a pro player a competitor I really truly 100% thought I had the skill and ability I mean yeah I was probably delusional but honestly screw that way of thinking I missed that belief about myself and something I wanted so bad I want it back can we talk a little bit more about the title Call of Duty I know it seems a little bit late to be getting into pretty foundational things like the title of the franchise in question especially with how many games we have covered up until this point in the video we have yet to cover a game developed by sledgehammer games though a newcomer to the cod series who is very much interested in shifting things up both thematically and mechanically the first Call of Duty I think it should be pretty clear by this point that the title is much more of an iconography than it is any sort of meaningful commentary on military service it is a signpost a message to the consumer of what they can hope to receive when they give the GameSpot teenager $60 that November I can expect my friends to have also purchased this game to get a 6 or so our campaign and for it to have great graphics and first-person shooter gunplay it really isn't very complicated Call of Duty is as much a marketing title as it is a rhetorical one and that isn't inherently bad this is overall a good thing for the franchise and contributes that sort of consistency that you can expect from a series like Cod unfortunately what it does mean is for franchise veterans and old-timers like myself there's a fundamentally important part of the cod experience that just it just doesn't exist anymore the showcasing and celebration of ordinary men and women the powerful display of combined might through individual heroism the historical observational window that was on offer in the first couple of games we covered I missed that after nearly a decade at this point without it in the series I miss it well I did miss it because sledgehammer games advanced warfare looks to address a lot of these concerns with the franchise all while making the phrase Call of Duty be a front-facing thematic question at the core of their game I have a strange bit of theorizing about the sledgehammer games that well I guess I'll never know if it's 100% true or not helps phrase out a lot of my opinions about the developer in their Call of Duty games alright here it is sledgehammer helped with Call of Duty's in the past but wasn't given their own game until advanced warfare when I play these games and think about them critically all I see is a game written from the perspective of a longtime Call of Duty fan this is to say that aw feels like a response to the rhythms peaks and valleys of the series to the state a game that intends to both critique and harken back to the lot of the thematic objectives that the older games tread upon in that sense it is a self-referential meta commentary on call of duty itself a meta commentary that could have only been written and designed by a group of people who gave a crap about the series to begin with I mean this sounds great on paper right who else would you want developing the next iteration of your favorite franchise but the folks who love that franchise the same way you do unfortunately a lot like the series itself it works and works until it doesn't the matically advanced warfare looks to uncover the route of military service why we do it why someone might want to do it in the 21st century and why it isn't just about the killing when you play his soldiers in Call of Duty 2 there was never the assumption that you were playing as someone who enlisted because they were superhuman freaks of nature like that in ghosts it was usually made explicitly clear that you are here in Stalingrad at Normandy because you had to be ethically morally or sometimes even by something like a draft the men and women the first games valorized weren't there because they wanted to kill a bunch of people or even that they were particularly good at it they were there because they were called so what advanced warfare really wants to uncover I think is yes what is the call of duty but more importantly when the Call of Duty arrives who is it that it's calling particularly advanced warfare is much much more optimistic and much less skeptical of the United States military in its practices than Call of Duty 4 where Cod 4 was concerned with the ways of which Western military might has advanced in such a way that encourages extraneous bullying and interference aww seems to think the same can be said about the emergence of private corporations advanced warfare posits not explicitly but through its story that a military that represents a private interest is becoming more and more dangerous as we advance into the future it acts as a bit of a cautionary tale in the same way that we discussed how the borderlands games do and how the ways in which late stage capitalism will inevitably lead toward the commodification of bloodshed Kevin Spacey's character has a vested interest in the ejection of it's from rifles bullets sold by him and rifles sold by him his character should be instantly recognizable as a villain in the game if not by his ominous and foreboding introduction as a demeanor then by the fact that he literally pays to manufacture weapons and he gets paid when people need them irons being a villain isn't supposed to be a twist because advanced warfare is distinctly skeptical of anyone who would insist on profiting off of warfare it is saying that anyone who confuses service and valor with self-interested profiteering is inherently bad I don't even think this means it is harmful II pro-military either it is for better or for worse dreaming about the ways in which militaries act in the best interest of the people that they serve not the people that control said militaries a naive interpretation sure but an endearing ly aspirational one your playable character Jack Mitchell voice acted and mo capped by Joel from The Last of Us is the very embodiment of that endearingly aspirational soldier he is a marine and a damn good one too and enlisted on his own with his best friend that best friend is will irons Johnathan's son who dies tragically in South Korea as the United States is protecting its allies from invasion the reason I insist that this game wants to hit on all the same notes that a classic Call of Duty game can all be found in the first part of the game an ironic military exceptionalism who Roz and gun cocking alike the United States putting boots on the ground in a foreign country in order to protect its allies the mission ending with a noble sacrifice without fear in the face of danger there is volunteerism bravery and sacrifice and abundance in the first 25 minutes of this game of course nothing can stay pure because Jonathan irons offers Jack a second chance at military valor after he loses his arm in the war a quote-unquote second chance at military valor should be the first red flag of a man like irons who is taking advantage of Jack's willingness to serve and profiting off of it Mitchell even says at one point in the game I've known of good men who fought for the wrong causes you see sledge hammer isn't saying that the people fighting and wars are always wrong they are saying that oftentimes the people at the top contributing to the wars guineas are the ones worthy of criticism as the plot goes through its normal Call of Duty paces you get to see a lot of the house of cards begin to fall for old mr. Jonathan irons and what has to be the most technically impressive Call of Duty game up until this point Irons begins his massively insane idea of basically just blowing [ __ ] up it always has to happen this way doesn't it no matter what the intricacy of the plot or the aspirations of its themes we are always going to be blowing up internationally-renowned monuments this time on Call of Duty the Golden Gate Bridge ultimately Irons begins to win but not before mr. Spacey begins his maniacal villain monologuing in which he says to the player that he will spare them because he still has some level of humanity left inside of himself he says that he was just saving the world from itself and Gideon accurately and effectively responds that many twisted people throughout history have used the exact same argument and in a moment of heavy-handed poetic justice Jonathan irons has cast into the fires of his own creation by none other than another one of his own creations Jack's mechanical arm that he made to recruit him in the first place and Gideon was right you know twisted people have used that logic I mean they still do it's what separates advanced warfare a bit from the Call of Duty's that preceded it it is a distinctly moral tale a cautionary look at something a genuine attempt at taking a stance the accents stark contrast to the position list aloofness and teenage dismissiveness that permeates throughout the edgier Call of Duty games advanced warfare is closest to modern warfare in almost every single way possible more so than even modern warfare 2 Jonathan irons even mentions how he grew up seeing the failures of our response in Iraq and how he wishes to address them this game is very much answering the same call of Call of Duty 4 I don't think it's an accident that it is titled so similarly I don't think I'm crazy in saying that sledge hammer had a lot of fans of caught on board a lot of fans of Cod 4 specifically advanced warfare is a bit more of a positive interpretation of Western military but it remains skeptical of war and the motives behind why wars are started in advanced warfare however sledgehammer is telling us to pay a bit closer attention to business owners rather than present little did they know the funny thing is even though I am overly positive about advanced warfare as a Call of Duty game I don't think it is remembered as fondly as some of the others most of that is going to be because of the exosuits or because of the advanced movement that made its way into Call of Duty multiplayer there are three different instances of advanced three-dimensional movement and Call of Duty games from this point on advanced Warfare's iteration might be my least favorite unfortunately the sort of herky-jerky back and forth of of gunfight and AW does not lend itself to being enjoyable on a console and the randomness of movement led to a randomness of engagements positioning map knowledge and even gun skill to a degree we all were invalidated when someone could leap in the air slide air dash or ground pound at any moment I never loved the ways the gun fights felt in aw I thought each time I would emerge victorious that I only did so as a result of me looking into the right order of analog stick mashing I felt liked a goalkeeper against a penalty kick like one had to make up their mind which way to fly before the engagement even kicked off fully hopefully you choose the right direction and hopefully they choose the one that's advantageous for you overall AWS multiplayer mode is solidly averaged to me with some highlights being the uplink game mode as well as maps like solar the balance of this game was also completely out of whack and maybe even most disastrously gave way to a loot box system of tiered loot that would go on to dramatically corrupt the way Activision chooses to monetize these games advanced Warfare's co-op mode EXO zombies is another endearingly derivative attempt at renewing and refocusing a classic Call of Duty game mode I played all the co-op modes for all of these games and all the DLC and everything well Treyarch zombies particularly black ops 1 rains far supreme in my book sledgehammers attempt here deserves recognition EXO zombies is an interesting enough take on the formula that has you being able to survive with a bit more empowerment this time due to the ability to harness the power of the exosuit as a result EXO zombies felt far more condensed and empowering than though deliberate setting up and careful planning necessary in a Treyarch title I could get further into EXO zombies despite being bad as zombies as a whole because I could often double jump my way out of sticky situations I liked that in the co-op and it was a refreshing twist funnily enough advanced warfare will be known in my head going forward is exactly that refreshing despite being what I call with all good intentions Call of Duty fanfiction I believe that aw is one of the better Call of Duty's to come out of this weird middle period of the franchise the lack of nihilistic brutality and milquetoast stances make me appreciate this title even more when I play all these games in a row it would be such a shame you know for the series to immediately pivot back to that nihilism and sophomoric edginess call of duty black ops 3 was finally the game that made me want this video to be over I'm not even totally sure if it's a bad Call of Duty campaign after playing it I'm not even sure what to make of it at all much like a certain conservative writer for The Daily wire it confuses talking fast and incomprehensibly with intelligent commentary black ops 3 is when I started to say to myself do the plots of these games even really matter anymore no really that isn't hyperbole do they do Call of Duty games in 2016 need a linear plot with characters and stories and lore and twists and turns because I'm not totally convinced they do especially after playing this game take games like the more recent battlefield 1 with its vignette style single-player that has you put into different non connected stories of soldiers and heroes throughout war doing things that even in a war fetishistic game like Battlefield probably didn't happen the way the stories are being told no this is explicitly the point of some of those war vignettes in pf1 single player they are exaggerated absurd recollections of the battles that went on it allows for the hilarity and nonsensical nature of a blockbuster single-player to play out without destroying the history of a very real war black ops 3 is so chaotic in its presentation so incapable of making sense that it actually gives you the ability to play the missions in whatever order you see fit that isn't a joke black ops 3 for gos linearity for a single-player experience as disjointed and discombobulated as the characters on display in the game I can confidently say I didn't really like black ops 3 single-player mode I wish they had done it differently it is the full progression of what I've been saying over and about these Treyarch games they are wholly unconcerned with any sort of formal interesting or even comprehensible story structure and instead confuse narrative novelty with the storytelling equivalent of an acid induced fever dream I mean can you tell I've never actually dropped acid but even that isn't my biggest issue with replaying black ops 3 my biggest issue with black ops 3 single player' important to note given that this game is one of the best multiplayer and zombies experiences on offer is that it set back Call of Duty storytelling and campaign design quite a bit under the guise of moving it forward in progressive new directions when compared to the ways in which advanced warfare created a Rhian stuff Call of Duty games that mean something I soon found that black ops 3 takes Call of Duty back to the sort of edgy pulpy schlock that characterized the whole middle area between mw2 and ghosts look do I blame black ops 3 for contributing to a lot of the lack of faith and Call of Duty that we see universally today actually a little bit yes it did so in a number of ways the first being it continued the further descent into madness that was Call of Duty's fascination with futurism look a lot has been said about the whole three-year or so conflict that surrounded Call of Duty and its advanced movement bringing back boots on the ground was a rally cry for hundreds of thousands for years upon saying Call of Duty transition toward the future and toward more and more mobility this is a whole other conversation one we will have soon but it is important to note that a divide was beginning to form in terms of Call of Duty fans secondly black ops 3 goes against the grain in its own borderline embarrassing way by dealing with a lot of the same themes and motifs of the previous game but immediately turning them as edgy and dark as possible I'm going to read for you the official marketing text used to encourage people to want to purchase this product call of duty black ops 3 - poise players into a dark twisted future where a new breed of black ops soldiers emerges and the lines are blurred between our own humanity and the technology we created to stay ahead in a world where cutting-edge military robotics define warfare with three unique game modes campaign multiplayer and zombies providing fans with the deepest and most ambitious Call of Duty ever it's funny one of my biggest criticisms of the later Treyarch games was so far in how they insist on dehumanizing the experience of war showcasing conflict as brutally violent exercises in nihilism more so than brave sacrificial or even human with black ops 3 they literally go on to dehumanize conflict by using discount brand inception level twists of transhumanism confusion one thing that I do think deserves a recognition is that there is this motif between all of the advanced movement games of arms or limbs being dismembered and arms being in some way representative of remaining humanity and a trans humanistic future it happens in advanced warfare and it happens here limbs seem representative of something of autonomy I'm not saying that black ops 3 doesn't have interesting concepts I'm saying that they refuse to do anything else with them it is a frustrating side-effect of playing all of these games in a row and an even more frustrating side-effect I'm sure in developing them year after year to say that black ops 3 is scratching the bottom of the proverbial barrel of creativity what'll actually be an insult to the men and women who work on these games even if it does sound like the easy criticism of the story the reality is Call of Duty is at this point in its franchise history more of a commodity than ever has been it may not be selling as well but it absolutely is at its zenith in terms of being sold as a product as a yearly service at this point calve Duty is more related to Amazon Prime that it is something like the Marvel Cinematic Universe which is what I compared it to during the modern warfare years it is a yearly trip to the digital or physical stores in which you re up your subscription your guns and your maps your new mechanics and stories Call of Duty for better or for worse is a yearly $60 subscription service at this point in its history look at the way it includes the sort of dopamine releasing leveling systems and unlocks from multiplayer in both zombies and single-player single-player has become an extension of the wider Call of Duty Factory crafting expendable 20-minute forays that start with action and end with action without much thought of the players part this is unfortunately most evident in its mission design which that's some of the worst presentation in the franchise's history in a franchise that is almost entirely carried by its incredible history of excellent presentation the voice acting the motion capture and the level design all suffers here to an alarming degree upon playing the very first mission it is a huge downgrade from the attention brought into advanced warfare and when you compare those two games what you're comparing is a workplace that has a fresh new face looking to impress versus a guy who has been working there for 30 years and has no desire to try any harder than he absolutely has to Call of Duty's future is a future of absolute despondency it is a depressing uncharitable and frankly bad faith interpretation of what a future looks like in the direction we are heading in my disagreeing with the thought that this dystopian theorycrafting is impossible of course not I just find myself frustrated at how poorly and dismissively the game goes without explaining why the world is this way why transhumanism and robotics has created a world such as this and how it relates to the story being told at all this disconnection between the and let's not sugarcoat this overtly political and social commentary on display in this game setting and the non-committal story is shockingly disappointing you will hear plenty of games writers talk about the dreaded ludonarrative dissonance and games but black ops 3 wants to introduce you to a much much more deadly concept narrative narrative dissonance in black ops 3 it isn't enough to have humans be as impersonal and dehumanized as possible no they want to literally dehumanize conflict my point is black ops 3 is the final boss of the descending confusion of every trailer game so far in its lasting legacy to me at least is that it might just be the very furthest the series ever gets from the original intent of the series as origins that is why so many people felt the series begin to lose its way officially here that is why black ops 3s campaigns artistic and thematic goals are so disappointing to me finally I'm not totally convinced that this game didn't fully convince her to just do away with campaigns going forward in the future and yeah that bums me out a bit I bought black ops 4 I mean I enjoyed it I guess I still hate that they abandon single-player but like I said at the beginning of this section if they're going to do this if they're going to do the bare minimum at telling a story that means anything past what is happening on-screen at the very moment why do it why spend the money so yeah I kind of blame black ops 3 a bit not totally but I do I blame them for not trying to create something interesting anymore I blame them for giving up which is a real gosh darn shame because holy cow who did they nail it in the other two game modes look the amount of a depth design and passionate world building on display and both the multiplayer and the zombies is almost unbelievable when compared to the overwhelming mediocrity of the game single-player let's start with multiplayer which most notably added wall running and boost jumping to the formula as well as a set of hero classes with their own forms of Ultimates all the while very much keeping in line with the strengths and consistencies of black ops 2 I think Treyarch probably knew that they had structs some sort of Arkady gold with black ops 2 multiplayer and while loving that I think they did right by upping a lot of the intensity and mechanical complexity in this mode the addition of the specialists do little to change the complexity or metagame of a match moreso just giving a player a killstreak on a cool-down I do think these are over tuned a bit in the game although I don't find a game breaking the three lane Maps returned here in full force to my happiness and I'm certain other players disappointment what I am left with when playing black ops 3 multiplayer is a relatively consistent experience a consistency I just cannot find with the high time to kill messy map design and opaque color palettes of an Infinity Ward title my favorite maps are fringe and stronghold and if it isn't clear as far as multiplayer goes I am fully team Treyarch let's talk about the real star of black ops 3 here for a second and look I'm not going to say this lightly and you know that I especially mean it because even still I'm not so big on the mode black ops 3 zombies is one of the most impressive things put into a Call of Duty game and I've played them all you see I am stunned at the offered on display here in the level of excellence in art design and level design that is basically every single one of these maps there is some absolutely insanely good game design going on in the black ops 3 zombies maps especially in maps like shadows evil and der eisendrache there's something genuinely special about being able to play these maps for the first time exploring them in this entirely new content and not knowing what is around each corner no hyperbole it reminds me of the first time I explored yharnam or the undead burg for the first time in a souls game there's a prevailing fear of total annihilation that is always in the forefront of your head but instead of the fear causing you to turn and run backward it encourages you to run away forward toward a new ground I think that this is a mark of an excellent game and this isn't even to say the insane amount of story content that if we're being totally honest here is about outside the scope of what I hope to accomplish in this video there are so many steps and buildable x' and easter eggs and secrets that I can't even confidently say how much content is in these zombie maps because I just don't know my first time playing these maps is always a real treat for the folks watching my stream because my face goes through so many different expressions of disbelief excitement horror confusion anger and pure joy in such a little amount of time do I have any gosh darn clue why at the start of gorod crow V our heroes were falling out of a portal from the sky passing by a dragon on the way down and landing next to a war-torn Stalingrad do I have any idea why there are two of the Russian dudes down there and one has a mech warrior suit do I need to I almost felt like it was more fun this way I'd be happy to explore the stories and do the Easter eggs but there is something so joyously juvenile about not having any earthly clue what is around the corner I would say that the only time it works against zombies is in the case of the map Revelations in which the storyline content seems to take such precedence on the flow and rhythms of the gameplay that it starts to interfere with just the normal zombies gameplay systems revelations felt more like a nostalgia fueled self-congratulation that it did any interesting zombies map and while it mechanically works I guess I never felt like it developed its own identity in the ways that maps like guatt kirbey orders up the horizon track do by the way I have no earthly idea on how to pronounce those maps names clearly I'm honestly just trying my best out here the switching round music of shadows of evil the grotesque and gothic art of the reason the reimagined maps of the original games the absolute mind-blowing absurdity of Revelations all contribute to one of the most consistently excellent content offerings available in the whole franchise as a non zombies fan this made me a zombies fan one day maybe sometime in the channels future I'll do a video just about the zombies Maps Easter eggs are not stories and all and if you've made it this far in the video and think that sounds kind of interesting let me know in the comments black ops 3 zombies while a little complicated and sometimes difficult for my puny peanut brain might just be the most impressive piece of content I will cover in this entire video they really freaking nailed it here and I am the first to admit I did not have the time to even scratch the surface of what is on offering maybe later remember when we mentioned in the last game the conflict surrounding Call of Duty fans and their desire to return to boots on the ground it reached its zenith on that fateful day when call of duty infinite warfare was announced to the public look I think a lot of us now in 2020 can comfortably say that this response was a bit overblown it was a frustrated cry of impatience more than anything else one that I can empathize with a bit Call of Duty 4 a lot of people had lost its way Call of Duty 4 a lot of people meant something to people it was a decade long and after school or work routine longtime Call of Duty fans felt a connection to the series they felt involved in some way and that involvement encouraged participation like fans of the series should have some sort of say as we saw with that released trailer for infinite warfare the fans of Call of Duty felt thoroughly unheard I don't think I have much stellar piping-hot commentary about what this is supposed to mean other than the pretty tepid take of yeah I mean I get it but ultimately artists should be able to make what they won despite what their fans are demanding which is funny because a big reason for the inclusion of advanced movement in future tech was an overwhelming clamoring from Call of Duty fans to reinvent itself and avoid derivative mediocrity in that sense I feel for the developers as well a Call of Duty game takes around two to three years to make and when the culture and public opinion around what is good or bad in a Call of Duty game can change so radically in those two to three years I can't help but feel like the developers are fighting an uphill battle it is amazing how daring this detour and Call of Duty's mechanics so many fans were begging for the return to old Call of Duty I get it and I don't mean to insinuate that cod fans don't know what they really want but I do want to argue that for a bit that the single players in both infinite warfare and advanced warfare are as reminiscent and derivative of classic Call of Duty than any other campaign since modern warfare so what do they even do they can try and create a game that is mechanically separated up from its predecessors but still rings true a lot of the thematic objectives people have come to expect from a Call of Duty title well that's exactly what infinite warfare does and it ends up being one of my favorite Call of Duty campaigns to be released yet in what might just be the most mechanically and chronologically distant Call of Duty game from the first Call of Duty game infinite warfare still wants to be considered a classic Call of Duty game it's official marketing says Call of Duty infinite warfare returns to the roots of the franchise with large-scale war and a focus on cinematic immersive military storytelling as I'm sure this quote probably drove thousands of angry gamers crazy they kind of aren't wrong with this assessment of their game advanced warfare was a deliberately anti private military morality tale and while it was straightforward and heavy-handed it was earnestly interested in showing a favor for the militaries of countries and the people who served in those militaries infinite warfare has a similar affection for the military in its narrative although less focused on the geopolitics as much as it is focused on the bravery and valor of men and women fighting in the military so if we understand advanced warfare to be the spiritual thematic and artistic sequel to modern warfare then in a lot of ways infinite warfare is absolutely the sequel to Call of Duty the first AI I know it has a charming admiration for bravery and undeniably naive but loveable appreciation for the strong man who puts the safeties of others ahead of himself has large-scale battles that encourage the sort of jaw-dropping recognition of combined military effort toward a common goal it is so fun to see how the games shew in some of the same mission structures in this game that were present in the first like storming the Reichstag and clearing trenches there's a clear attempt here at modeling the mission structure off what a classic Cod game would look like and I really appreciate it for that but the game isn't trying to recreate the first Call of Duty game it still comes chock-full with a lot of new additions that are actually good there are actually good additions that don't exist for the back of the box marketing but for the actual betterment of the game fleshed outside content that is better than a majority of the missions and their most recent attempt ghosts makes this game immediately stand out ahead of the most recent campaigns it has a hub world a set of side activities flight missions loads of new text space combat and loadout systems designed for single-player not just ripped for multiplayer cod games in the past have come out and tried and failed to change up the single-player formula with the only real success to this point being the modularity of black ops 2 s plot infinite warfare makes genuine attempts at being a quality video game not just a serviceable mode in a Call of Duty game so much so that I think if this game came out as its own single-player experience separated from the rest of the franchise it would be considered an excellent cult classic for those who actually played it I mean yeah I'm actually that positive about the game I don't even know if I love the sort of uncritical fantastical adoration that the game gives the military but I can appreciate its attempt at implicitly arguing that heroism and bravery are inherent to humans regardless of nationality or race an infinite warfare your enemies are the hilariously evil settlement defense front a group of military stick conquerors insisting on the hatred of earth dwellers led by Jon Snow these enemies are evil evil like not just bad they're evil evil and guess what earth has to stand up to them not America not Europe the combined forces of Earth there's this implication baked into the very core of the story that morality is not of a country or a set of ethics but of a commonality between good people everywhere the bravery and valor isn't something independent of the greatest generation but instead true of people across history it is saying that the call of duty will be answered across human history regardless if there are bad doers there will always be good doers in opposition and their strength is in their combined forces it is unapologetically affectionate of the military but it is far more charming and convincing than the depressing nihilism that characterizes a game like black ops 3 which has practically nothing to say about the call of duty itself if anything I'm learning I am a sucker for these kinds of stories because I am a sucker for the classic games they grew up on I didn't give this game a good enough shot I like many other gamers chose to be disinterested in this game because well everyone else was here's a fun fact for you I have bought every single Call of Duty game on release except for two of them the first one Call of Duty which my brother and I bought a week or so after Poe seeing it played at a friend's house in 2003 and Call of Duty infinite warfare which I got on sale about six months after release every other game I have purchased the very day it releases little did I know I was missing out on what was an excellent campaign experience definitely one of the best that franchise has to offer if you are like me and intentionally avoided this game go give it a shot if you can get it on sale it is hard for me to say the same about the multiplayer which there's a lot of the similarities at least mechanically with black ops 3 I guess my most distracting problem with infinite Warfare's multiplayer might just be the reason it got so much hatred from the internet the setting takes away from a lot of the identity and recognizable elements from its weaponry each weapon acts shoots and looks like the exact same to me they all pew pew like a gun really shouldn't pew and there's no easy way to tell what is a shotgun what is a sniper what is an SMG or what is an assault rifle it's a confusing mess of futuristic fiction that really did not resonate with me the zombies mode however in this game is also an interesting departure from all of the previous attempts at zombies in this franchise and it is one that doesn't take itself seriously at all it's much better for it as well with zombies in space land being one of my favorite zombies experiences to date I'm not sure how the wider zombies community feels about these maps or if they hold up in terms of gameplay or mechanics but I absolutely loved the departure from self-serious storylines and long time eternity Wars and multiple universes nonsense this zombies experience was probably the most fun I've had with a zombies experience so far overall infinite warfare is a really really great Call of Duty story it captures a lot of the valor and heroism that the series built itself on so in that sense I guess I can't recommend it enough it's funny Call of Duty World War 2 once in every single way to be a classic Call of Duty game like infinite warfare it wants to be about big capital letter themes and wants to be about valor about bravery and sacrifice it wants to be about soldiers not the player in its own adorable sledgehammer way it wants to be one of the big boys it wants to be emotional and thought-provoking philosophical and debatable it wants to be that same observational booth we talked about oh so long ago and carry with it an edifying an emotional set of characters and circumstances that introduced a whole new set of players to the events of the Second World War it tries it tries really really hard doesn't make it to the save heights of the Call of Duty games it tries to celebrate well it does but it does so falling forward through the mud the strength of the story comes from its attention to showing the tried and true moments of the liberation of France through a beautiful presentation that only videogames can provide it nears the uncanny valley frequently but this is the best that Normandy has ever looked in my long video game life I recently went to Normandy like me myself I've seen the monuments and the museums I've learned about the sacrifice I've shot the guns and been in the bunkers it is hard to represent this struggle in real life you want to respect the violence but not make it gratuitous you want to be honest about the bloodshed but not give people an experience they won't enjoy you want to make the landing intense but you don't want someone to actually go through the pain and horror of that Beach landing so while you can do is your best to create an immersive experience that doesn't overstay its welcome and emphasizes the bravery of the soldiers involved sledgehammer nails this in a lot of ways by highlighting the fear the soldiers were feeling enroute to Omaha Beach but also make sure to highlight the moments where the men choose to move forward despite that fear it is gory it is violent and it is horrifying to a degree but it moves quickly enough that it doesn't relish in the ferocity much like the men on the beach that day it decides pretty early on that the main objective for itself is to get up the beach and start making it safe for the allies this is about all you can ask for in a video game about jus six 1944 I've never seen anything like this and when I remember back to the days of where I was playing medal of honor this is how I remember the beach landing looking like after the landing you basically get a who's who of 1944 and 45 with a great deal of observational booth viewing pleasures it is a stunning wartime presentation the smoke in the mud and velop s-- the experience in a non-trivial way making vision tough on the player and movement confusing often times I would see teammates bursting through a door through smoke and almost lay on the trigger only to recognize the uniform just in time to not blow away my squad mate I did like this about the artistic mannerisms of the game it contributed to its themes of chaos and war being thoroughly unenjoyable and not at all a heroic thing on its own unfortunately however the game chooses to undermine itself and these thematic objectives frequently by adding in dreadfully video gaming elements such as heroic actions completed in which the game gives you opportunities to complete heroic actions mid-mission like saving a fellow squad made or sparing a german pows for a reward of action points toward using cheats like a wallhack so of course in David oszi way I made it my absolute goal to never complete any of those I shot every German prisoner ignored every squad mate and was consistently told that I completed no heroic objectives each mission even after single-handedly taking down an armored train carrying v2 rockets it is a hilariously ignorant way of describing the very thing that the game seems to want to venerate which is to say that the game is saying that ordinary people are heroes for even fighting this war in the first place despite this it does carry a candidate for best Call of Duty mission in the whole franchise wherein you take the place of a French Resistance member infiltrating a Nazi stronghold in Paris France if we are using the four pillars of a good Cod mission this one hits all of them with a great amount of atmosphere on the side cod has never really done this before right putting you so close to the enemy like this it is a strategic move to better emphasize a lot of the themes that the game admittedly forces into the game quite frequently teammates will often ask all the time hey they're people too right and then someone will always respond with nah man there are Krauts kill them all they obviously want the player to think what almost all people think with consuming world war two media were these men being killed these Germans standing in front of our heroic soldiers monsters or men were they just following orders or were they all irredeemable people I have no interest in having this conversation but I do think that World War two insists on saying that they are indeed humans who need to be judged as humans by human standards in which they overwhelmingly fail the judgment by the way it is a cool peek behind the curtain that feels responsible and reasonable it isn't a caricature of the Nazis because they do that bad enough themselves they do a good enough job of making themselves out to be monsters just based on the knowledge we have about them already World War two as a game does well to acknowledge this and the mission sets itself apart from the rest of the series in a really special way still though Cod World War two remains as a very beautiful absurdly well produced example of the very surface interpretation of a Call of Duty game it has everything you want from World War two Call of Duty game but I guess that's really it in that sense when you look at a title like World War two it is a bit of a straightforward title is it not it would be kind of like me titling a video like this a retrospective and analysis of the Call of Duty franchise I think it's not wrong I guess but it doesn't exactly carry the same sort of subversive potency that modern warfare did that is ultimately the lasting legacy of world war ii for me a game that is straightforwardly honest in its presentation lending the title to be one of the least interesting in the series is history but most beautiful the zombies mode however insists on changing things up not only does it totally shift away from both the Treyarch mode and the Infinity Ward mode it also mechanically changes the mode by giving the players more of a laundry list of objectives rather than telling the player to get in there and just survive I appreciate this about the zombies mode here and well I think the scary and gritty approach to zombies kind of falls flat mainly due to the hilarious voice acting of the zombies I really had a great time through these zombies maps I got to go through and actually complete a set of objectives and Easter eggs in these maps whereas I was never able to do that on my own on the other maps I don't mind getting babied when I rarely played these maps to begin with and I appreciated the slower pace and easier structure if they ever decide to make a full-on zombies game with a story and a narrative I think that sledgehammer should look to design it Cod World War 2 is the closest multiplayer - black ops 2 and mechanical design than any other non Treyarch multiplayer game its movement and hit detection alongside with it's longer than usual time to kill creates an experience that is evocative of black ops 2 multiplayer but struggles to find the same footing because of the lack of similarly excellent Maps I think that Cod World War 2 multiplayer is decent if not uninspired and while I played it quite a bit on release I remember this one falling from my consciousness quite a bit faster than the others apparently the suits at Activision saw some data on the players and their relationships to each mode because the next Call of Duty game would not include a single-player look black ops 4 is sort of forced my hand here know I write videos about themes and narratives about statements the games are making about culture and politics where is my role in talking about a game like black ops 4 I don't even have a lot of commentary about the mechanical successes and failures of the multiplayer it honestly feels like a plan B attempt on the multiplayer mode the whole game feels that way now that I think about it leichter Ark was gonna do something different and found out too late that it wouldn't work so they took the engine characters and design of the previous game and hastily put it together in time for a release the multiplayer plays off all of the nostalgia for Treyarch multiplayer by remastered versions of weapons and guns and carries the same movement and shooting mechanics of the game that came out just three years earlier - the jetpacks I don't like this game I even played it a lot and they still don't like it it was another attempt at making Call of Duty closer to Amazon Prime or something like Madden rather than a product with anything meaningful to say I love Call of Duty I love Call of Duty single-player I even thought the zombies mode was average in the multiplayer mediocre this game has very little for a guy like me to speak about unfortunately so here it's my analysis of call of duty black ops 4 call of duty black ops 4 is a first-person shooter game developed by Treyarch games and released on October 12 2000 18 a lot has been said about this game so far a lot needs to be said about this game funnily enough not a lot is said in this game I'm not the first person to know how call of duty modern warfare struggles to find its position on the very politics it wishes to examine plenty of people have rightfully criticized the game for doing any number of irresponsible things with its setting such as blaming the Russians in the game for doing an action that the United States actually did an actual you know actual real life a lot has been said about how the game chooses to create fictional Middle Eastern countries and towns as a politically correct stand-in for Syria the real-life location the game is transparently modeling off of all the while having no problem using cities like London a lot has been said about how a core moment in the game has the enemy using chemical warfare and how the story mechanics and characters of the game treat this as an abhorrent choice even for war the game has you Colin white phosphorus on its first mission with no commentary whatsoever it's also a killstreak in the multiplayer a lot continues to be said about how Infinity Ward refuses to acknowledge the fact that their game is in any way political despite every single mission having a real-world inspiration that can be tracked to the last 20 years of us-led foreign intervention despite the fact that this is about counterterrorism about what is right and what is wrong in warfare about the cause and effect of intervention in the Middle East does Infinity Ward need to be clowned on for being so non-committal and historically revisionist almost a year after release for these events and their single-player yeah absolutely they do a lot has been said but I'm not using that as an excuse to not make it abundantly clear to you how immature the developers of modern warefare think you the player are it is such a gross misunderstanding and infantile manipulation of consumers intelligence to even consider the fact that this game is not political albeit I understand completely making your games political has just become a dog whistle code for people to use when they're afraid a game has some sort of agenda and its themes or stories it is a preposterous thing to be feared but gamers everywhere are mighty concerned with the idea of people inserting their own personal opinions and ideologies into their art despite it happening for as long as creativity has existed modern warfare positions itself in every single which way in terms of being a serious artful meaningful game about lowercase modern warfare it wants to be as close to real as possible it has a fetishistic relationship to its weaponry to the intimacy of battle to the smoke and muck and blood of a real counterinsurgency it wants all of that without any of the baggage of being taken seriously as media most of you watching this insist on video games being art most of you would argue against the crotchety stance of saying there or not I certainly know there are art call of duty modern warfare is a great time for video game players everywhere to start walking it and talking it and finally acknowledge that with great art comes great responsibility in this game needs to be called out I cannot stress enough how important it is to not fall under the trap of believing them when they say this game is not political and as bad as that is it is just a line in an interview I am being critical of so let's look at the game itself the text and not even the litany of problems I mentioned earlier the team at Infinity Ward likes to use this phrase ripped from the headlines quite a lot when talking about this game like in an interview with the verge they mentioned how they want to create experiences that are near indistinguishable from real-world events but not tied to them completely so as to be flexible and inoffensive okay fine I get it but not fine not fine at all holy crap not fine not even close to find not only does this game cite real-world places and events and conflicts that really happened and not only do they freely attribute war crimes committed by the u.s. to other countries in the story but they are ignoring the fact that slapping different proper nouns on things is not at all making your story a political or inoffensive it does not take a rocket science to attribute real world countries and ideas to each in every single of in this game political allegory is yes still political but goddang is it's not even political allegory frankly this is just propaganda not only does it explicitly lie to you it wants you to think things it doesn't even believe I cannot stand the way in which this game thinks it is doing something I cringed when I imagined in the board room meetings going over the story of this game we want to tell a story of grey areas of the amorphous blob in the middle of right and wrong we want to get players thinking there's nothing more embarrassing to me than when a game overstepped its boundaries and to thinking it is smarter than it actually is in reality were you frustrated with the heavy handedness that went into the last of us two's messaging about revenge and the cyclical nature of violence then you should be frustrated with this game's inability to achieve subtlety about a morality embedded into 21st century conflicts they want to show complex situations but don't tell you what you should believe that's why it isn't political we're not forcing ideas down your throat they say this a lot the warfare is immoral and modern warfare that the truth hides somewhere between the binaries that the real world lies somewhere in the middle of the prism they want to have you experience modern warfare as it is without any filter to sway you either way do you see how absurd this is do you see how a franchise called Call of Duty Western developed where you play as one side throughout the entire game where you fulfill objectives they design in which you have no choice but to carry out do you see how it's impossible to be in this gray area modern warfare wants so desperately to be intellectually pure so central in its presentation that it either straight-up lies or just fails to realize that anything made by humans cannot be an objective understanding of the world modern warfare by virtue of its interactivity wants you to do certain things kill certain people not kill other certain people and fulfill certain objectives for very real political goals shout-out Jakob Keller in his video titled does Call of Duty believe in anything and which he mentions how you can shoot the baby in the terrorists hideout but you cannot shoot Captain Price this is not intellectually pure this is not center modern warfare by virtue of its ineptitude wants you to believe it just showing you the facts you make up your own mind they will show you a lot of torture in this game I mean a lot of torture with little filtering of the content modern warfare wants you to sit up close and personal and feel the depravity of actions levied against you and the people around you does practically torture porn sound like an amoral presentation to you do I get to show people undeserving people getting brutally waterboarded and say oh well that's just the old moral gray area right there man well what to make of this situation who knows certainly not us sorry modern warfare you don't get to claim you are showing the realities of modern warfare for me to interpret then say your game is not political you can't have both so why am i throwing a fit about this game and not the others well partly because I'm a human and the arrogance smugness and smarm they present this game with drives me up a freakin wall and I wanted to dunk on them a bit but also because this is a soft reboot of a game that did exactly what this game wants to do but actually succeeded call of duty 4 modern warfare was a game about modern warfare through and through we spoke about it in length but it's true it has positions and aspirations and objectives and a theme and a message it is it's skirting responsibility under the guise of a political purity it expresses the uncomfortability and a morality of modern warfare through its mechanics it shows the effects and consequences of the very imperialism it wishes to critique in its story it is a political game just like this one it just isn't so afraid of reactionary gamers that it won't admit it Call of Duty 4 and call of duty modern warfare have both have this theme this ethos of well if the ends justify the means then so be it and Cod for at the ends justified by the means was nuclear hellfire and decades of intervention and vocht pain in modern warfare I'm not sure what the end was supposed to be I guess that the good guys went out by whatever means necessary the good guys good either there are no ends in sight for Modern Warfare's means or they just made a moral judgment in their game dedicated to a moral presentation try and make some damn sense Infinity Ward how has Call of Duty a game series about war and Valor about celebrating heroism understanding sacrifice and observing history becomes so position 'less so as to not even admit that their game has a position that is my beef with this game it betrays everything I've talked about positively in the last couple of hours Call of Duty was never exactly the paragon of moral righteousness and mature storytelling but it had identity ahead authorial intent I had a character that could make you say oh that game is modern warfare 2 or oh that one's black ops 1 immediately you could always tell every Call of Duty game is not the same they are similar in mechanics and presentation only each carried individual politics character themes and motifs if Activision continues to encourage this sort of apolitical milquetoast design and their cod games going forward Call of Duty will actually begin to live up to their incorrect reputation of being the same thing every year so how do I feel about the game itself as a product as a Call of Duty game I mean it's incredibly technically impressive and absurdly beautiful I think Captain Price looks really goofy and I think the famous clean house mission isn't nearly as effective as it thinks it is given the force linearity of the mission I think generally a lot of the concessions the game makes toward feeling more grounded and realistic just make the moment-to-moment gameplay a bit more choppy and obtuse I enjoyed my time with price and gang however and I would say that this campaign doesn't even come close to the level of terrible I thought campaigns like black ops 3 and ghost said so yeah despite the politics and all that stuff it's kind of middle of the road for me mechanically the multiplayer however is a bit more interesting to me given how divisive I think the opinion is about the game I did my research on this one and found that there is a bit of a divide between the public match audience and the more competitive minded audience many of which are watching or competing in the newly franchised Call of Duty League Call of Duty pros like scum pansy row have been fined for saying it is the worst Call of Duty multiplayer ever whereas reddit forums would have me believe this is one of the most enjoyable Cod experiences to date I bought em W the day it came out and played quite a bit I've the game extremely boring extremely quickly and was frustrated with the focus on realism despite each gun still shooting straighter full auto than a mounted sniper rifle the maps are some of the worst I've played in a Call of Duty game with some absolutely confounding spawn logic that still to this day refuses to make sense to me I found most games came down to getting ground and holding angles on head glitches for the entirety of the game if you were on the team that won the ground initially good for you you will have fun this game if you're trying to get the ground back prepare for an insufferable experience of checking 57 different possible headglitch spots on your way to the exit of your spawn in every way possible this game is the bits of cod I tend not to like it is the least Arkady the least movement focused and the least competitive in terms of map design I have played yet and its quest for realism I believe it has forgone a lot of the enjoyable parts of an arcade II arena style Call of Duty game my same reasons for disliking it might as well be yours for appreciating it I guess I'm not sure what I am certain of is this game has single-handedly returned Call of Duty 2 near the top of the gaming consciousness with one fell swoop war zone war zone a battle royale has made Call of Duty cool again I don't know how I don't even know why but it's true people are playing call of duty again they're playing like they did back in the day after school war zone after dinner war zone 3 a.m. war zone I'm not even sure I like it that much but when my 14 year old cousin told me that he didn't want VIII bucks for his birthday this year and said he wanted Cod points I knew it was all over Call of Duty was cool again I think I'm a little too old now maybe my window is closed but my heart grows three sizes thinking of a whole new generation hopping on after school every day to play some modern warfare brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it hey everyone I want to thank you so much for watching the video this was so was a long one wasn't it a lot of work went into this a lot of time and energy I really really appreciate you sticking all the way through the end go ahead and tell me everything that you thought I'm sure when I cover 18 games that some of those 18 games you guys are gonna have opinions on so let me know in the comments you know I just usually like to in my videos with sort of like a state of the channel type of thing just say hello to you guys so today is a really really really big day for me in the channel for a lot of reasons a this is the biggest project I've ever done you know Call of Duty means a lot to me it's but I've had it a lot look I got the advanced warfare t-shirt I don't know where I got this and even better is the modern warfare 2 sweat pants you see that I've had these for like over a decade now I think I wear these all the time so yeah it's Call of Duty for better for worse has been a hugely influential thing in my life just like Borderlands was and in weird way finishing this video in the borderlands video is really special to me because it's like I'm in my own way giving back in a way to the franchise's but the point of all of this is is that for the first time in a while I don't exactly know where I'm going next with the channel I mean it's not like a it's not a bad thing at all I have a couple IV ideas but you know I don't have that one franchise that I've always wanted to cover I don't have that one white whale of a video that I've always wanted to do that was always kind of this Call of Duty video and so it's gonna be interesting for me to figure out where I want to go next what kind of content I want to cover if you like this kind of thing most let me know but if you like my other videos like if you like the ones about travel or if you like the ones about the sex and video games video then maybe maybe that would be good too for you guys to let me know because chances are I'll probably do another one like this and then do another big analysis so I wanted to talk about two more things real quick the first one I just wanted to just show off because I mean come on the first one is this is a gift that my wife gave me for Valentine's Day that I just thought you guys would find really interesting and kind of a horrible she actually just went out and printed the book of rock star games cuz like I don't know she's just so sweet see it she went out I guess she got my Google Docs she made a little cover for trying to make it the book of Rockstar Games and she went out and just did it and look single-spaced all the way through this thing is so many pages I mean it is like it is 77 pages I think it's around 60,000 words to put this into perspective I think that I think this video was around 40,000 and so you know this is just really cool because it's a concrete holdable evidence of what I did and that I actually wrote like a significant amount about a bunch of rockstar games and I think that's really really cool and I love that second thing I want to talk about is just that the launch of my patreon what you can expect from the video or what you can expect from the patreon and what I hope to do with it so I've never really done a patreon before I don't really know much about it I give to a couple creators but I've never made one so you know I'm gonna be kind of learning as I go but really all I want to do is just make it very clear that the patreon is not like a store in which you can buy David O Z things the patreon is very explicitly just like for you to decide if you want to support me financially I'm not gonna give you like water bottles I'm not gonna give you t-shirts I'm not gonna give you anything this this patreon is going to be this is David Oh Z you're gonna get your name in the credits you're gonna support this person whose content hopefully you enjoy and you're gonna get directors commentaries on each videos so that's the one thing that I will include with it is that I'll go over each video and I'll pause it every once in a while I'll talk about the editing process I'll talk about what went into what part I'll go back and do it for all my videos talk about which things I don't like or respond to comments that I gotten I'll go back say on my red dead video and say you know I really like this part what I wish I would have done this differently or I've replayed this since and I kind of feel this way and I'll do more unscripted content there so if you're interested in that kind of thing my thoughts behind my videos if you're interested in talking to me personally any of this kind of stuff and if more importantly if you feel comfortable giving you know however much money to my patreon to support me financially then do it but otherwise please please consider supporting me in another way supported by comment by liking by watching my videos do not give financially unless you are 1,000 percent certain that it is comfortable for you to do so and finally I mean I just want to learn and if I come up with good ideas to include in the patreon rewards I will do so the link is down below I would really really appreciate it if you least took a look and let me know if it's something you're interested in and supporting financially so other than that thank you so much for watching the video again oh my gosh we're done 18 games I think it's 18 something like that oh we did it boys and girls we did it

Channel: DavidOZ

Views: 5,172,556

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Id: cDvHd4QjGLw

Length: 207min 38sec (12458 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020