RainbowStarFlower

@bonjong23 The Messenger was a fun game, though. I do agree that the writing wasn't for me. Not my type of humor and it really clashed with the rest of the game, in my opinion.

But the game itself was very good besides that.

@Donutman It does have a lot of competition in the action-adventure space but I agree. People should make what they want. Better to have someone make a Zelda-like game in earnest because they want to instead of making something they don't want to make.

The top comment from the developer team on the IGN video is very wholesome.

I'll keep my eye on the game. There's a lot of empty space in this early build. The gameplay sort of reminds me of Hyper Light Drifter, but that game benefited from having relatively tight arenas that made battles quite tense.

Lovely sprites. Almost Minish Cap like.

I always wanted to try these games. I definitely plan on picking up the collection.

When it first came out? Absolutely, I used the Wii wheel. It was a fun novelty and I had a blast. Saying that, I can't say I've played any Mario Kart since with motion controls.

Cool article, Rory. Call of Duty on SD systems has always fascinated me. Never tried them, but I love the tightknit community it has.

There's a YouTuber named iConboy who has a great video on his experience and history with Call of Duty on Nintendo consoles that is worth checking out too: https://youtu.be/6fp6YOVkpjw

@ComfyAko You too, I guess...

@ComfyAko To be fair, there's not really much of substance in the arguments you present worth making a dent in. Your arguments thus far have being either objectively wrong on game history (with regards to BF being any way near the competitive force you present it as) or lack of understanding in how games like FPS' can work.

I think you need to have individual map sense or demonstrate a reasonable understanding of a game's flow before claiming they're random and badly designed, the latter of which is a nebulous and meaningless term. At the moment, your arguments are as simple as saying fighting games are random button mashing or poker is just hoping to draw the best hand. You haven't actually demonstrated you understand one Call of Duty, never mind any of the individual Call of Duty titles and how each of them might be different.

I can at least attest that Call of Duty games have a lower skill floor than something like Counter Strike. Though I think they have a much higher skill ceiling than you present here, and is further demonstrated in recent titles requiring skill-based matchmaking to keep lobbies fair among skilled players. You can easily look at a player like Handler or Futives and say there's much more to this game than randomness, as they are clearly highly skilled players that understand the game and play with intent.

Which is the key difference here - understanding a game enough to know how to play it with intent.

I don't mean to come across as rude, though I think some of my comments will but at the same time, like I feel like I have to put a lot of effort into substantiating arguments around yours that haven't got much research put into them. They're just vague anecdotes at the moment. :/

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"Also, the online is pretty tiny too, with enough weapons and maps to cover another 5 hours of testing"

I think this is a complete misunderstanding on how longevity works and is easily refuted by looking at Street Fighter 2 as an example. Depth carries the longevity of a multiplayer game. Not quantity of content alone. Or look at the comparative quantity available between Melee and Brawl. Despite Brawl having more, there's only one of these games that people still play competitively.

Don't assure me. I know these titles more astutely than you do, so I know how grenade spots works, where to go and where to avoid. As would be commonplace with any game; there is game sense and map knowledge that plays into avoiding getting hit by certain projectiles.

Also, no. At no point in history since the launch of CoD4 has BF come remotely close to the sales of Call of Duty. You need to get your facts straight and stop waffling your arguments. :/

For a snapshot of this trend, here's how BF3 faired compared to MW3 in 2011: https://www.gamingtarget.com/article.php?artid=12610)

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You're too right about Elder Scrolls, though. They are getting more and more simpler. If you want good CRPGs, I do think the likes of Divinity or Baldur's Gate will be the place to go.

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Finally for budgets, obviously marketing is the answer. Though narrowing CoD gameplay down to 7 hours when the draw is clearly the multi-player is a bit disingenuous on your part.

@RadioHedgeFund Mmm I dunno. I think that's pretty subjective, and there would certainly be many who would promote Black Ops, MW2, or Black Ops 2 to that honour.

@rockodoodle I totally would have. Maybe give Mario + Rabbids a little nudge-nudge too.

Classic Nintendo though haha. At the same time, can't argue with the results. The Mario movie is doing so well! No doubt it will have a positive impact on Mario's next video game.

I'm really enjoying the Resident Evil 4 remake on PS5. A little surprised there isn't a boom on Mario game sales what with the success of the movie. Maybe next week? Then again, who doesn't own a copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at this point haha.

It's nice to see Odyssey charting again. The movie definitely helped get people interested.

1. They don't happen much in CoD either. Besides that, the experience of one game such as TF2 don't necessarily translate to another game like CoD. The game modes aren't even the same, thus the knowledge needed on how spawns work, weapon composition, movement mechanics etc. are fundamentally different. I should say specifically, you're not a good CoD player, and the skill-based matchmaking system ensures that players in certain brackets find like-for-like challenges.

It's safe to say, you don't know what the high skill-ceiling in CoD looks like, or much of how that game flows.

2. Even when there was competition, it didn't really do much to make a dent in Call of Duty's market value. Battlefield was never that significant a competitor to CoD.

3. Sorry. I misunderstood.

4. I never said it wasn't important. There's no shortage of unique video games to play out there, but that doesn't deter exactly why these annual launches are so successful at doing what they do, which is providing an avenue of entertainment for a lot of gamers who appreciate something familiar. At most, I can only ask that this familiar is made with attention and care.

5. I mean, you might be right. As it currently stands, we've been getting annual Call of Duty games now for 17 years now, and their sales are stronger than ever.

I also don't know why you're under the impression we won't get another Elder Scrolls games. Besides that, comparing a game like Myst which launched in the early 1990s and cost a little over $200,000 to make is a lot different to the cost of game development now. With indie games closing in on million dollar investments for publishers (https://www.gameshub.com/news/news/finji-indie-games-publishers-success-10330/) , it's an unfair comparison to make when the AAA games of today cost multi-millions to produce.

Mostly, you'll have to look in the AA or indie space still for these sorts of games. Love-letters to Looking Glass like Prey or CRPGs like Divinity Original Sin. There's still freedom to move outside the pop-culture zeitgeist but the likelihood a publisher will risk the same budget as an Assassin's Creed on an unknown entity is just not realistic. At most, they'll integrate some 'pop mechanics' to serve as a selling point to the average consumer.

@ComfyAko (Probably because you're not good at it). Sorry but there seems to be an issue with your comment here. Fundamentally, you haven't the experience yourself to comment on whether or not it's luck-based. I'm a mediocre player, but I don't get spawn killed constantly. I know enough about the map sense and spawn system that this can somewhat reliably factor into my strategy, and gets me to where I need to get too. Watching any of the highly-skilled players on YouTube (I like Handler) gives a good impression of what's possible at a high skill-ceiling play vs. the low skill play where entry level players can feel like it's random fun.

Overall, I think we are talking about two very different things. Call of Duty still enjoys an absolutely massive audience of players annually, netting up to anywhere between 25 and 30 million units sold with each entry. Despite the boom of military FPS games during the 360 and PS3 era, few series' have endured the same continued success as this one. Without it, maybe people would turn elsewhere but the fact that they haven't already is not an insignificant thing. It's something Sony are all too well aware of, hence why they're so desperate in preventing this merger from happening.

It's not a niche at all, you're right. It's a significant market in the current pop-culture.

I think you have your wires crossed in terms of what is a significant game in terms of uniqueness vs. presence in the industry (though I'd wager outside of its amazing aesthetics, Wind Waker is a pretty formulaic 3D Zelda).

As redundant and dull as Assassin's Creed's last entry was, it's still one of Ubisoft's most profitable games and netted them 1 billion dollars in revenue (https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/02/assassins-creed-valhalla-makes-ubisoft-more-than-usd1-billion) . So I don't know where you get this idea that Ubi or Activision are being risky by playing it safe when they're making ludicrous amounts of money on the safe-bets.

@ComfyAko There are many competitive games that employ elements of luck. Heck, there is a whole community of Minecraft speed runners who's competition is dependent on luck. Not to mention games such as poker, trading card games, tabletop games and so on.

I don't think all of the maps are tiny or 'badly designed'. I think that is quite a nebulous term which doesn't mean much. There are good and bad maps, there are small and large maps.

It is played competitively despite its lower skill floor to other FPS games. There is a competitive league and there is enough of a skill ceiling that good players are separated from bad ones (hence the skill-based matchmaking employed in the multiplayer).

To be honest, it doesn't sound like you have much interaction with the online portion of the game. At least not for a while...

As it stands, the series satisfies a particular corner of the market that would be a significant loss without. Despite it not being at the forefront of creativity, it is not an insignificant series. A multi-billion dollar merger is currently on the line now entirely because of how influential this series is...

@DaniPooo Yeah, it runs on IW 9.0, the latest iteration of the engine. It is a direct enhancement to IW 8.0, and made for MW2.

I don't think it's entirely impossible that the engine could work on Switch. After all, IW 8.0 and IW 9.0 are still supported on Xbox One and PS4 platforms.

With some heavy downgrades, I think it could work.

This was fun to look into, actually. I had no idea that Cold War was built on IW 3.0 (The Black Ops engine) with some IW 8.0 tools. That's pretty interesting, as that game did have a certain old-school feel to it.

The sprites are great! I'm very curious about this one.

@ComfyAko I think that's a little unfair. Especially since independent Western developers are cultivating some of the most creative games out there.

Call of Duty, at its core, is a fun arcade shooter. I wouldn't count it as a beacon of creativity either, but it sets out to be a balance between casual and competitive arcade entertainment that appeals to a wide audience, and it does it well.

The AAA space isn't exactly known for its risk-taking. To be fair, the budgets of video games are so high now that there's too much at stake to make that risk. Instead, it's usually in AA and indie spaces where much of the contemporary change lies, and Western studios are not exempt from this creative boon.

@RadioHedgeFund Diminishing returns in what respects? The games are still highly profitable. Quite a number of entries since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare have out-paced that entry.