Activision has recruited Sledgehammer Games to help
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 meet its November release date, according to the
LA Times. Last March the heads of Infinity Ward, Vince Zampella and Jason West, were fired, taking many of IW's talent with them. They started a new company, Respawn Entertainment, leaving what was left of Infinity Ward to develop the annual
Call of Duty in time for November. Sources close to the situation say Activision has asked Sledgehammer Games to help finish
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Sledgehammer Games is made up of former Visceral Games members, the team behind Dead Space. Shortly after their formation Activision announced they would be working on a "Call of Duty game that will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre." This game was slated for 2011. However it seems that this project has been put aside now that Sledgehammer is taking on half the weight of developing CoD: Modern Warfare 3's single player. Raven Software has been recruited to work on the multiplayer.
NEWS: Infinity Ward's Next Project "Something New," Not Modern Warfare 3?
In the past Infinity Ward was the only developer behind
Modern Warfare games. This is the first time Activision has sought help to reach their deadline.
Call of Duty games are unofficially released every year. If the next
Call of Duty game was delayed or seemed rushed it could be detrimental to Activision Blizzard's reputation and wallet.
There is no questioning the success of Call of Duty. It is by far the most profitable console gaming franchise of the last decade, and perhaps of all time. However, even with the successful Call of Duty: Black Ops, it seems that 2011 is a potential turning point in the franchise, and I don’t mean for the better. Gamers are starting to illustrate signs of backlash because of the various problems associated with the last couple releases, mainly when it comes to the multiplayer. There has also been a heavy level of criticism from other game developers, such as Epic’s spoof, Duty Calls, which specifically calls out Call of Duty’s USA propaganda-esque campaign and what they consider “boring” gameplay.
Although it is expected for the most popular game in the business to receive the most criticism, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer and Raven Software should not turn a blind eye to the community outcries. It is a very real possibility that new games such as Battlefield 3, which is gaining hype as the next potential “CoD Killer,” could knock Call of Duty of its pedestal without some changes in the formula. We’ve come up with a list that explores the various aspects of Call of Duty that need to be fixed or at least looked into for the benefit of the game.
Here are eight ways the eighth installment of Call of Duty can stay on top of the competition.
1: IMPROVE THE CONNECTION ISSUES
This is by far the most important issue challenging the franchise at this point. For many, including myself, the multiplayer experience is tarnished by the ridiculous lag and connection problems found in Call of Duty: Black Ops. I can still recall the first time I tried to play in a full party back in November. It took over five minutes to find a game. When we found that game, we would all lag until we got kicked and had to try the entire process over again. While the lengthiness of matchmaking has been fixed (to an extent), the problems during a match still remain. The first is getting kicked out of games in-progress. Players will see the “Connection Interrupted” sign pop up on their screens multiple times per session, something that is inexcusable in modern online gaming. And then there is the general lag experienced during gameplay. Personally, I play on two different kinds of connections depending on where I am, either a high speed Verizon connection, or a slow and clogged college connection. You would think that the college internet’s lag would be hell to play on when compared to the high speed connection, but it doesn’t work out this way on Black Ops. It seems that no matter how strong my internet is, every lobby of Black Ops I join is incredibly laggy, sometimes to the point where it is impossible to shoot the enemy in front of you.
The biggest repercussion of the lag is the knifing. The knifing was supposedly toned down (as compared to Modern Warfare 2) before release, and it was also addressed in a patch, yet it feels like every knife makes me want to find the nearest knife from my kitchen and take out my 360 with it. Whether it is the inhumanly long lunges or the invisible 360ยบ stabs, it often makes the game unbearable to play. I am no technology expert, nor am I a trained game developer, but Infinity Ward needs to put time into fixing this problem. Understandably it will probably take a lot of time and effort, but this issue deserves it.
Connection Interrupted: The bane of gamers' existence since 2005.
2: HAVE A PUBLIC MULTIPLAYER BETA
This has been a complaint over the last two years which really has not been addressed at all by Treyarch or Infinity Ward. Public betas are the easiest ways to point out flaws in a game before the game comes out, and many games are given constructive criticism that really help the game in the long run, such as the melee glitching found in the beta for Halo: Reach. A large amount of problems from Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops could have been fixed beforehand as a result of a beta during the summer before release. One strange piece surrounding this as well is that it must have nothing to do with Activision, as they have released demos onto Xbox Live and PSN for some of their other bigger games recently, such as the well-received racing game Blur. The specifics behind what to include in the beta wouldn’t even be very difficult. For single player, create a simple five minute campaign level or something similar for people to play around in. For multiplayer, throw the players into a game of Team Deathmatch on two maps, giving the players three to five pre-made classes to play with. This could definitely cut down on the work throwing out patches (for things that should be fixed already) every week like Treyarch has been doing with Black Ops.
3: CREATE A SINGLE PLAYER/LOCAL EXPERIENCE WORTH $60
Let’s do a bit of math here shall we? Fallout: New Vegas was the most expansive single player experience released in 2010, with no element of multiplayer in the slightest. Personally, I have spent close to 70 hours on one adventure, and I don’t think I’ve completed even half of the achievements and I still have not completed every ending or side quest. I’m going to assume I put in a little more time into it than the typical player (because I usually do), so let’s say that the average player completed the game in 40-50 hours or so. This means that for a $60 price tag (or $40 which many got it for during the holiday season), you are paying $1.20 to $1.50 per hour of gameplay. Let’s compare this to Call of Duty: Black Ops. For a complete tour of duty for the Black Ops campaign, which would include finding all of the intel and getting all of the applicable achievements, it would take about 10 hours. Just to be fair, let’s add in a bit of time for playing Zombies by yourself, which for many including myself is just a pain. Assuming that average is somewhere around 15 hours, you are paying $4 an hour for the single player experience in Black Ops.
Obviously Call of Duty does have multiplayer, and maybe I’m just being too hard on multiplayer gaming, but full priced games should be able to support their price on the single player alone. The Call of Duty campaigns always have cool storylines attached, such as almost killing Castro and taking down a Soviet rocket, but the gameplay always seems to be very repetitive and annoying, as all you are really doing is hitting the retry button and hoping you don’t get shot in the ass every attempt. Perhaps they could include some decision-making aspects into the campaign, since that is what gamers have cherished over the last year or so in games like the previously mentioned Fallout. Give options into how to approach a situation, and have the ending depend on what you choose. It’s a basic gameplay element in a lot of titles out there, so I don’t see why Call of Duty couldn’t adapt something similar as well.
The campaign for Black Ops was impressive, but it still boiled down to repetitive trial and error levels.
4: MAKE THE WEAPONS MORE VARIED
This is something that Modern Warfare 2 did very well, and Black Ops completely missed the mark on. Sure, Treyarch did add some cool things to Black Ops. The Crossbow and Ballistic Knife were both very cool additions, but think about the rest of the primary weapons. The standard weapons in Black Ops are boring at best, and do very little to stand out from each other. Take a close look at the SMGs they offer. Outside of having a couple different iron sights, the guns play nearly identical to each other. This makes the online experience very stale, and it doesn’t really give a large range of gameplay options like Modern Warfare 2 did. Modern Warfare 2′s weapons were definitely its strong suit, as every single gun in the game had its own discernible characteristics that made it fun to use. There were also the crazy combinations of weapons you could use such as the Riot Shield and Javelin, which while not practical in the slightest, were a hell of a lot of fun. The ridiculous and cool factors really aren’t there in Black Ops, and it suffered because of it. You also have the extreme mediocrity of weapons like the shotguns, making a good set of the guns unusable in a competitive setting