More Black Ops 2 observations, and my history with Call of Duty in general.

So there was plenty of less objective things not included in my review of the game. It really wouldn't be pertinent. So I decided "eh, why not blog about it?".

Let me give you a backdrop on my history of playing the series. I actually picked up the original Call of Duty back when it was PC only set in WW2. That was followed by Call of Duty 2 on PC of course, and I loved them both. Call of Duty 3 I have to say I pretty much skipped. I owned it, and never played past the first campaign mission. Don't know why, and I'm not saying it was bad. I really don't know. Then came the ever esteemed Call of Duty 4 we all know and love. I'm right there with you, and this began the dreadful cycle we are now in. I played hardcore almost exclusively in CoD 4, and more specifically I loved Search and Destroy. I even liked the campaign, and scored 1000/1000 in achievements. My KDR was something like a 1.4 overall online, and this started the stats check revolution.

World at War came next, and in the beta I rounded up a 4.6 KDR. The only time a beta was released for CoD on console, and they haven't done it again since. I assume because it hurt sales, and had they done this every year after it wouldn't be nearly as popular I bet. People would see despite claims it was the same old, same old. After the release your stats were wiped, and my KDR settled to a 2.6 or so on live. I also loved the campaign in this game, and zombies were introduced! People loved zombies. So did I. Sadly I got 1500/1500 achievements, which included the zero score "reach prestige 10" achievement. Wow, what a pain. Also the first time we started playing Game Battles to a good degree of success.

That leads us to Modern Warfare 2. Again the campaign was decent, but it was starting to get stale. You could tell they hardly changed the AI, as somebody who plays on Veteran straight out of the gate. Nothing innovative really, just high action as usual. Lots of fresh weapons, abilities, perks, and various other things to keep you interested. Yet again I reached prestige 10, got all the achievements, and my KDR was something like a 2.4. Dropped many nukes. Credit to my brother who dropped 9, in 9 games straight. I wish I was making that up. This game for me marked the downward spiral of the series. Oddly enough I'd rank my top 3 favorites almost in the order of release starting with CoD 4.

Then came Black Ops. I owned the game a week, and sold it on Craigslist. I was just so frustrated for some reason, even though I had a 2.3-2.4 KDR again. So many hit makers, not enough time. Never finished the campaign because it was so stale at this point, and never delved in to the zombies much either. It was losing its appeal. After about 2 months and a few patches, I purchased Black Ops again from a guy on Craigslist. How silly. I continued to play on to about prestige 7 where I maintained that KDR until MW3 launched. Looking back, it wasn't a bad game. I still hated the campaign and zombies...

At this point I vowed to bow out of Call of Duty. I figured Modern Warfare 3 was going to be more of the same. I got caught up in all the Call of Duty Elite nonsense, as I had people wanting to get a clan together. Sounded like a cool feature, so I was sucked in. After release I did finish the campaign and most of the Spec Ops missions. I started an Elite clan where we had a tight group with an average KDR of 2.2. After playing a few months and Infinity Ward waited so long to release the Clan Operations feature with the instability of Elite, most of the clan disbanded. We continued to play, but gave up on the clan stuff. After they finally released the Clan Operations I attempted to resuscitate the clan. We regained most of our members, and after 2-3 Clan Operations we realized it had absolutely nothing to do with how good you were at the game despite scoring gold ranks. I put Call of Duty down for 182 days exactly (according to XBL), before I came back.

After coming back and freshening up on my skills, Black Ops 2 was upon us. That brings me to this past Tuesday. I don't know how, or why I keep coming back, but I do. I'm going to blame my brothers for spewing propaganda. Monday night home from work, I pick up my copy after midnight Tuesday. Ah, here we go again. Fresh in the saddle. After a few hours I quickly realized something was wrong, as did everybody else. I'm still not sure if it's the hit detection, host issues, or what. Good players, are just doing so much worse than in all the previous installments. Everybody I know is a 2.0+ KDR player. Let me just say that I know KDR doesn't mean everything, but it is a pretty good gauge from which to judge. It doesn't paint the whole picture, though. Anyways, by the end of the night everybody I played with was sitting at a 1.5-1.6 KDR. Everybody noticing they just can't get it done in this game. It was like 1.5 is the new 2.5. Everybody was losing face offs they shouldn't have lost, kill cams didn't make any sense, and people were loving sub machine guns. You still die around corners, so don't buy that "no lag compensation" crap. One guy who rocked a 2.8 in MW3 was sitting at a .95. So when people were saying we must be worse, I can't seem to wrap my head around 6-10 people with stats practically cut in half. The math doesn't add up. I can't put my thumb on what the culprit is, like I said. I just know it can't be us. I'm hoping for the future patches, but I'm reluctant. It's rough going right now and we are still above average, but we will still be in the fray until it's clearly a lost cause.

Hope you enjoyed reading my first blog! Don't take it as boasting about decent stats. I just wanted to show the contrast of my history to the latest game. Lets say you are a theoretical pro quarterback. You put up 40 points a game, you and your team are pretty damn good. Suddenly the rules change, and your team has to play with a completely flat football. Now you are struggling to even move down field. It might be because the ball is flat, that's all I'm saying. Comments, suggestions, your take on the game, and feedback welcomed! Much love!