Be Excellent To Each Other

I want to play against ducks.

Oh yeah, so the campaign. Like I say I beat it on Veteran on Saturday night. It was the easiest Veteran campaign yet. Also, it was dogshit. It was completely unexciting. Literally like moving a cursor around a Channel 5 action movie for a few hours. I thought the second was shit as well, but it was better than this one. None have matched CoD 4. CoD 4 was both exciting and filling. I enjoyed it, and I never wanted to do it again. They're just getting worse and worse now.

"Oh look, an explosion."

"Oh, I'm all dazed and I can't move, I think I'll look at the palms of my hands a bit whilst the screen blurs and whooshy noises play through the speakers*."

"QUICK, JUMP TO THE HOVERING HELICOPTER!!" The people who say it's "exciting" must spend 364 days a year in bed. (Alone.) It just isn't thrilling or interesting at all any more. Massive meh for the campaign. At least it was easy.

*Seriously, I'm absolutely fucking astonished how often they use this. It happens at least five or six times in this campaign alone.

The hands thing is a loading screen hiding technique isn't it?

I played 1hr48m of the campaign, then 30 mins of multiplayer.

Then I pulled the disk out and put Dark Souls back in.

The hands thing is a loading screen hiding technique isn't it?

I played 1hr48m of the campaign, then 30 mins of multiplayer.

Then I pulled the disk out and put Dark Souls back in.

If it is, what are the loading screens for?

I love the Spec Ops in this. Much more entertaining than in MW2.

Spec ops in this seems better than MW2 but is far worse than ZOMBIES!

And so far i've about 14 hours in multiplayer about 3 hours in spec ops and 0 minutes in the campaign (i will get around to it at some point)

It's tough, I hear they're quack shots...

and for £25 from Tesco is far better value than paying 1200 MS points or whatever it is for a shitty map pack.

At this point, I really don't think CoD multiplayer has to be explained or defended. You're either sold on it or you're not. Everyone knows what to expect. Like FIFA, really. And I wouldn't call it MW2.5 because I wouldn't have called MW2 MW2... This is CoD4.3!

CoD 3.4, I think you'll find.

CoD 1.0 CoD1
CoD 1.5 CoD Big Red One
CoD 2.0 CoD2
CoD 2.5 CoD3
CoD 3.0 CoD4
CoD 3.1 World at War
CoD 3.2 MW2
CoD 3.3 BLOPs
Cod 3.4 MW3

To be fair, CoD3's multiplayer was light years ahead of CoD2.

I played in a bazillion MW2 games and only ever recall coming across one pair of people trying to 'game' a nuke. So given the MOAB doesn't even end the game, it sounds like an awesome addition.

Also, I can only imagine WTB spends every day saving the world, as an hour or so in it has been brilliant so far.

Easily pleased! It's dogshit! Play better games! Like, seriously? Brilliant? That's not a word I'd use. It would've been brilliant had it came out in 2001 I guess. But its entirely ordinary today and exactly the same as the last five games. With multiplayer, good, it's the human opposition that mixes it up. The practically on rails explosion fest campaign, seen one, seen them all. Brilliant?! I should clarify, it's not especially bad in the traditional sense. It's just shit and uninteresting.

I genuinely think a word like 'brilliant' is seriously overegging this game. It implies that you're sat there constantly blown away by how good it is, rather than a jaded thumb twitcher, occasionally scoffing at how silly it is. Dark Souls is 'brilliant'. This is another CoD campaign. Not a particularly memorable one at that.

The campaign is there for showing off in trailers. The game is made for multiplayer and 90% buy it for that. Infinity Ward know that, and everyone knows that.

Ian Aris doesn't know that - someone should probably tell him quick.

What an idiot!

Sod off you gits! I still like games with a strong single player, so what. BF needed a strong single player to match CoD's package. And it didn't. It was buggy, a CoD rip off and distinctly below average so I was moaning about it. That's all.

Dark Souls is brilliant though.

I've enjoyed the vast majority of it. In the first couple of missions alone I have:



...and that's just the first couple of missions!

Yes, it's an on-rails FPS... that's the genre. Calling it boring for being what it was designed to be is like calling FIFA 12 dogshit for still just being a football game. It's clearly not something you're interested in at the moment, and that's fine, but I've had a massive grin on my face while playing the whole thing.

P.S. Didn't you say that 'more of the same' shouldn't be so frowned upon?

You're misinterpreting what I'm getting at. There's a distinct difference between FIFA or CoD multiplayer - where more of the same is good because of the human element, games designed to be competed in - and a singleplayer campaign against the AI. Seen one, seen them all as I say. Whilst some games genuinely try to mix it up and make things interesting, the CoD solo experience has relied on the same tricks for years. Tricks so overdone that I'd have to have a lobotomy before I thought of them as 'brilliant' ever again.

We've been playing stuff like Dark Souls, Fallout 3, AssCrud, RDR, etc. Interesting and exciting varied singleplayer goodness. Factoring in those two things - samey same same and loads of other better stuff, MW3's campaign is a tedious, dull, predictable series of button presses which cause explosions and improbable (and often incomprehensible) scenarios to play out in front of you. For the fifth or sixth time in as many years!

Again, I'm not hating on the game. I'm chuffed with it as a package. The multiplayer is excellent and exactly what I expected - as indeed is the campaign. And from a purely objective standpoint, the campaign doesn't do a thing wrong. It's objectively a great game. 10 years ago a masterpiece. But today it's just another five or six hours of stuff we've already done before. I simply can't agree with 'excellent'. All of those things you mention in the spoiler tag, I was literally unmoved by the lot of it. Just bloody boring! It's like motorway driving at this point, but someone keeps setting off explosions and stuff at the side of the road. Eventually you just want to reach your destination because there are only so many ways an explosion at the side of a road can make you shit yourself. Or something.

Dark Souls made me shit myself whenever I saw a fog gate.

Had a few games last night with the specialist strike pack on Domination and found quite a good setup.

I dont think they really made it clear that it also uses the same points scales as the Support model so you gain a point for any helpful team action which means that taking down a UAV or capturing a point moves you along the chain so my class is :

Main weapon / grenades - anything you like
Secondary weapon = Launcher (stinger) to take down enemy air support
Perks Extreme Conditioning (pro) / Hardline (pro) / Steady aim (pro)
Killstreak Slight of hand (pro) / Assassin (pro) / Dead Silence (pro)

This means that for any 'good' action you immediately get Slight of hand and its very quick to hit the other two perks , then if you get to 7 points you get *every* perk for the rest of that life - you do rely a little more on the rest of your team for UAV's but it does change the way the game works and even if your not doing that well you'll find for most of the game you have 5 active perks

Yeah it's a cool way of getting extra perks pretty much when you need them. For example, you get sleight of hand after one kill, which is great because you probably didn't need it before then because you didn't reload yet. And then maybe have Scavenger unlock last because you'll be running out of ammo by that point, etc. Plenty of scope for playing about. Unfortunately, I can't stand relying on other people for UAVs and stuff.

And anyone who's played any previous MW games will not be surprised to hear the people who brought you the 'in the rock' glitch now give you the 'in the tanker' glitch :-(

Played a game of Dominiation on Outpost and there was somone inside the tanker near the C flag - he killed me a few times before i twigged where he was so i killed him then looped round to the B flag , and then to the A flag only to find him inside the tanker there :-(

I did kill him a few times as he tried to get in to the glitch but its bloody annoying that they did the exact same thing they did before :-(

The video of it is in my vault (will see if i can put it on youtube tonight)

Well this is the litmus test. They'd better patch it out sharpish, unlike the rock glitch which they didn't patch out for fucking months despite overwhelming complaints about it. Perhaps we'll find out if Elite has done some good. I imagine appeasing your subscribers (and non-subscribers for that matter) with regular and consistent patching is a good way to keep people paying. As opposed to releasing the game and allowing it to rot like they usually do.

I don't see why - CoD 8's doesn't seem to be any better, and 90% of the players will play the campaign of either/both for 4-6 hours and then plough days into the multiplayer, rendering them irrelevant.

Next you'll be complaining that the new Counter Strike's campaign isn't up to scratch.

they really had better patch this soon. Last night playing team death match and some FFA most matches were broken with people exploiting the glitches.

this could be broken, very depressing just like 2 but in a week not 6 months.

Hardcore death DM in still ok. Wish they had Hardcore FFA. last night felt like all the gits and shits were in standard mode while normal competitive players were playing hardcore. Ranks were very different as well most people in hardcore lvl 22 upwards normal games I'm seeing prestige players already. Jesus.

I think it has all the same unbalanced problems they have hidden everything in the levelling system.

Well the game has been out for a week and a day and i'm about level 73 so very close to the first prestige (and i've been encountering Prestige level 1 players for the last few days - the first prestige badge is a red star like icon - I think Jen may already be there)

Look, I know you're bumming BF's still warm corpse, but there are reasons why the campaign exists to give a complete package to the consumer at retail. The campaign gives an identity to the product that a standalone MP package hasnt been able to. Gamers know Price, they know Soap. Its a brand and it demands loyalty to the cause. They also know the weapons and maps inside out. But no one knows the BF characters and they never will at the rate theyre going.

If you want games like MAG you're more than welcome but I still need the variety if I'm going to part with forty quid and invest a large part of my time in something.

It's nothing to do with that. The BF campaign isn't great, I'm happy to admit that. However, it seems that CoD's new one isn't brilliant either. In the grand scheme of things, this doesn't really matter. You put the utmost importance on the campaigns for both of these games, when the fact of the matter is that they'll be played through once and forgotten for most people. If you want great single player experiences, you're quite probably playing the wrong genre of game.

And yes, Battlefield multiplayer is excellent still and I really enjoy it. I got bored with Call of Duty 4 eventually and massively regretted buying MW2, but that doesn't mean they don't have merit - they're just not my kind of game. They are still both predominantly multiplayer games, however.

I don't think you can argue with this. The average CoD player spends how much more time on multiplayer than singleplayer -- 10x? 20x? More?

There must be some decent single player FPS games of this nature though? The last COD game I played was the first Modern Warfare game and I just completed the campaign and then sold it on. I'd be interested to know of some good single player alternatives (not a question aimed at your particularly.. just generally) as I'm never going to play this stuff online, particularly with the ever-increasing rewards for grinding and piling the hours in. I'd rather that everyone was on a level starting point every time.

I'd probably go with either of the Rainbow Six Vegas games. I've not played the Ghost Recon games, but apparently they're meant to be good as well.

Operation Flashpoint: Red River is meant to be good, but I'd probably stay away from Dragon Rising by all accounts. If you like playing on the PC then ArmA 2 is very good from what little experience I have with it.

No one is arguing that. Except Myps who seems to have taken offence that I was moaning about BF campaign being a bit rubbish. I've since expanded to say that the campaign is an important part of the package of both products and I'll happily rest with that point of view.

I really, really haven't. Please read the words that I have been typing.

Right, yeah. Ok then.

Anyone recognise Sean's pal?

Oh right, then I'm confused why you dropped my name in on the last page about people who don't know that 90% of the people play CoD/BF for the multiplayer. Me apparently being one of them.

myp it Wed Nov 16, 2011 9:24 pm
Ian Aris doesn't know that - someone should probably tell him quick.

IIRC Modem Worf Hair the first took me somewhere in the region of 12 hours on Veteran + another 2 for the plane mission. Then I spent about 10 days in the multiplayer

That was a gentle prod because you repeatedly made such a big song and dance about how bad you thought the BF3 campaign was, but not mentioning the multiplayer at all.

Is it Brian Cox ?

I just did.



You just made my point. Thanks.

MW? Good characters? Price is alright, Soap is either faceless cypher or generic grizzled sarge. The only entertaining characters in the series are Gaz and Foley. Of course, the other problem is that you know that that someone is going to die pointlessly, so why bother getting to know them. I'm betting it's Soap this time.

*whistles*

I just read the 'plot'.

Not even Hollywood at its most putrid could come up with something as ridiculously stinkingly stenchsome as that.

The 'shocking bit' this time is disgustingly pathetic as well. Absolutely hilarious attempt at courting controversy. The ideas man behind that one should have his penis sawn off with a rusty teaspoon.

You have clearly not watched or read about very many films. Or video games. Or, indeed, books.

I've watched loads of books!

You're a book

Just trying the campaign and can I say that the airplane level was cracking stuff. Obviously pinched from Inception but bloody enjoyable it was.