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(Please note that the below post was written by a guy, me, who has never played Modern Warfare 3 and has no plans to ever play Modern Warfare 3 and only played MW1 and MW2* for a handful of minutes a piece before just plain getting bored with them and moving on to more interesting games. Note, also, that I had zero interest in playing the multiplayer aspects of those games even when I did try them, which most people apparently agree to be the meat-and-potatoes of Call of Duty games, rather than the single-player. Make of that what you will. Yes, it's true that I've ranted in the past about other people who bash things without really playing/watching/reading them for themselves, and if someone wants to try to take me to task for possibly being a hypocrite in this case, feel free. That said, however, I respect John Walker and the other guys at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, much more so than I do the reviewers at most other gaming blogs/news/reviews sites these days, and tend to agree with their views 9 times out of 10, so I'm pretty sure if I ever actually played the game myself, also based on what I've played of the previous two games, my opinions would still be similar.)
I would like to follow up this post about this article with these two articles. (And, for the sake of fairness, this, to which the second article was responding.)
Thing is, gamers have complained a lot lately about many games that they perceive as being on-rails, "just follow orders" un-games. For example, Metroid: Other M. It just seem that, in the case of Modern Warfare 3 here, it actually is so. (Assuming John Walker isn't just completely talking out of his ass in the above articles, of course.) The difference between it and Other M is that in Other M, yeah, you were following orders and such, but you were still Samus Aran, personally kicking all kinds of ass. From a gameplay perspective, it was still a straight-up Metroid game, regardless of any objections one may have about the storyline. To make Other M more like what Modern Warfare 3 appears to be, it would have been Adam Malkovich, NPC, out there doing all the ass-kicking himself, while the player, controlling Samus, just followed along and mopped up the occasional Space Pirate that he missed. People would have gone ballistic were that the case in Other M (even more so than they did over the supposed boot-licking that they nonsensically claimed Samus already did in the game). Yet, in MW3, they have no problem with it, apparently.
Now I can see someone reading the above and going "Wait, but you liked that Jurassic Park game, and it was even less interactive than MW3 (and also despite the fact that your precious RPS hated it)!!1!1!eleven" Well, at least in the Jurassic Park game, the characters that you were nominally controlling were still the main characters, the ones actually doing things (and getting eaten by dinosaurs) rather than just lackey grunt followers who let NPCs do all the heavy lifting for them. And you still were allowed to play some actual game and make choices during the non-QTE sections. (Of course, to be fair, John Walker says there are brief glimpses of actual game in MW3 as well, and that those are actually kind of fun.) I just find it interesting how the tactical first person shooter game that almost everyone is gushing over seems to be just as interactive as the cinematic QTE game that those very same people hate. Huh. What's up with that? (Again to be fair to RPS, at least they are being consistent about not liking games with little interactivity, given that they've posted negative articles about both the JP game and MW3. So, I don't know... since I liked the Jurassic Park game despite RPS trashing it, maybe I would indeed actually like Modern Warfare 3 as well. Granted, I didn't like the first two, but who knows...)
With all of that said, though, if you're someone who just can't get enough of Modern Warfare, then by all means, continue to enjoy them. More power to you. Don't let the fact that I couldn't care less about it and its ilk dissuade you. As long as the video game industry is still making games that I care about and aren't only making soulless shooter games, then they can still make all the soulless shooter games they want as well.
I don't know, maybe I'd enjoy these games more if I just followed Nerf Now's lead.
* - I'm sorry, but when I see MW in reference to a video game, I can't help but think "Mech Warrior" rather than "Modern Warfare," similar to how SMB will always be "Super Mario Bros." rather than "Super Meat Boy" or whatever.
I would like to follow up this post about this article with these two articles. (And, for the sake of fairness, this, to which the second article was responding.)
Thing is, gamers have complained a lot lately about many games that they perceive as being on-rails, "just follow orders" un-games. For example, Metroid: Other M. It just seem that, in the case of Modern Warfare 3 here, it actually is so. (Assuming John Walker isn't just completely talking out of his ass in the above articles, of course.) The difference between it and Other M is that in Other M, yeah, you were following orders and such, but you were still Samus Aran, personally kicking all kinds of ass. From a gameplay perspective, it was still a straight-up Metroid game, regardless of any objections one may have about the storyline. To make Other M more like what Modern Warfare 3 appears to be, it would have been Adam Malkovich, NPC, out there doing all the ass-kicking himself, while the player, controlling Samus, just followed along and mopped up the occasional Space Pirate that he missed. People would have gone ballistic were that the case in Other M (even more so than they did over the supposed boot-licking that they nonsensically claimed Samus already did in the game). Yet, in MW3, they have no problem with it, apparently.
Now I can see someone reading the above and going "Wait, but you liked that Jurassic Park game, and it was even less interactive than MW3 (and also despite the fact that your precious RPS hated it)!!1!1!eleven" Well, at least in the Jurassic Park game, the characters that you were nominally controlling were still the main characters, the ones actually doing things (and getting eaten by dinosaurs) rather than just lackey grunt followers who let NPCs do all the heavy lifting for them. And you still were allowed to play some actual game and make choices during the non-QTE sections. (Of course, to be fair, John Walker says there are brief glimpses of actual game in MW3 as well, and that those are actually kind of fun.) I just find it interesting how the tactical first person shooter game that almost everyone is gushing over seems to be just as interactive as the cinematic QTE game that those very same people hate. Huh. What's up with that? (Again to be fair to RPS, at least they are being consistent about not liking games with little interactivity, given that they've posted negative articles about both the JP game and MW3. So, I don't know... since I liked the Jurassic Park game despite RPS trashing it, maybe I would indeed actually like Modern Warfare 3 as well. Granted, I didn't like the first two, but who knows...)
With all of that said, though, if you're someone who just can't get enough of Modern Warfare, then by all means, continue to enjoy them. More power to you. Don't let the fact that I couldn't care less about it and its ilk dissuade you. As long as the video game industry is still making games that I care about and aren't only making soulless shooter games, then they can still make all the soulless shooter games they want as well.
I don't know, maybe I'd enjoy these games more if I just followed Nerf Now's lead.
* - I'm sorry, but when I see MW in reference to a video game, I can't help but think "Mech Warrior" rather than "Modern Warfare," similar to how SMB will always be "Super Mario Bros." rather than "Super Meat Boy" or whatever.
