Reinstall invites you to join us in revisiting classics of PC gaming days gone by. This week, editor Sam Roberts returns to the fury of Call of Duty 4's singleplayer campaign.

With Titanfall jettisoning the idea of a traditional single-player mode and Battlefield 4 s campaign inducing widespread sighs, this has become a disposable bolt on to most of today s big shooters. Titanfall is able to create much of the drama of a single-player game in the midst of its impressive systems, but it s worth remembering that the old Infinity Ward were really good at making campaigns, too.

But it might be that Titanfall s lack of a true single-player mode is a sign of the times: COD s rigid campaign formula has been exhausted. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was its peak.

The single-player is, in levels without a significant story beat, a slog to get through today. Perhaps this is because its ideas have been mercilessly recycled in the last seven years by both copycat action developers and Call Of Duty s own teams not really successfully expanding on that formula (full disclosure: I haven t played Ghosts doggy campaign, though I ve completed all of them prior to that).



How many times have we seen that moment when your character gets knocked to his feet by a blast and his vision blurred, before you re picked up by an NPC and finally handed back control of the game? It s in the first mission of COD4 as the tanker is bombarded by MiGs. Every variation of this and many other scripted set pieces borrowed from Modern Warfare, and it s not COD4 s fault that people ripped that off. It just turned out to be pervasively influential.

I think the lack of self-expression offered by its linear structure is a bit too cloying by today s standards. There is some extraordinary visual design in Modern Warfare s real-world environments, but wander too far out of the intended path and you always find dead spots in detail or convenient fences and barbed wire. I forgot you don t have the power to open doors in Call Of Duty you have to wait for the NPCs to do it for you. The lack of interactivity reduces the value of replaying a COD campaign, admittedly, which is probably part of the reason it s become a disposable aside in multiplayer-heavy FPSs generally.

COD4 s success hinges on the quality of replaying those scripted moments, and they are still pretty decent even when you know Infinity Ward s tricks. The storyline isn t particularly entertaining, but it s a lot sharper than the increasingly ludicrous sequels are, and benefits from not overdosing on silly. Individual moments still excel and highlight the developers narrative chops.



You know the ones I mean. When the pilot rescue goes awry during Shock and Awe and your player character is consumed by a surprise nuclear blast, you crawl through the rubble for a minute before your character dies alone in a horrific blast zone. Having played that twice before, I thought the impact would wear off. It doesn t. Yes, you re basically just crawling in a straight line out of a helicopter, but struggling through this blood red wasteland is a scripted moment of real design merit. The sound effects of your character s death are a bit more disturbing than I remember, too.

Then there s the level everyone talked about in 2007. Breathlessly sneaking through the irradiated landscape of Pripyat in All Ghillied Up demonstrates the real craft of a linear story-driven FPS; it remains Modern Warfare s strongest level, and has a nice arc that begins with stealth encounters before escalating into a brilliant last stand. The abandoned backdrop is strikingly beautiful.

Playing it today, I m reminded that DayZ has thrown up a number of equally dramatic scenarios as Ghillied through its systems at random, while also allowing scope for personality and freeform set pieces. Ghillied is just following a guy down a linear path, as impressively paced and scripted as it is. You can t repeat it and have a different experience that s a problem with replaying any Call Of Duty title. But even without the feeling of newness that it had in 2007, you can see why other developers tried to emulate Infinity Ward s storytelling sensibilities.



I realise I sound a bit down in revisiting Call Of Duty 4 s story mode there s a reason for that. Before replaying the game, I considered the idea that the single-player part of an FPS might be becoming a lost art, but I actually think it s just this very specific type of linear shooter that s becoming irrelevant. And that might not be a bad thing. COD4 s memorable tutorial of running through a fake cargo ship of pop-up wooden enemies isn t far off what playing a COD campaign actually feels like today. When you know the beats inside and out, there s not a great capacity for surprise.

It s part of the reason why Titanfall only has a story mode functioning as a multiplayer framework, in my opinion. After Call Of Duty 4, I m not sure this type of single-player experience ever really improved in pacing or storytelling. It had a finite lifespan that has perhaps reached its end with the failure of Medal Of Honor, the broad apathy towards Battlefield 4 s campaign and COD s dog-related sagas.

Modern Warfare s impact was all in the multiplayer, of course. After many yearly Call Of Duty sequels it s hard to recall or appreciate how refreshing Modern Warfare s progression-based multiplayer was Titanfall is getting a similar response now, in that it reworked a genre we maybe didn t realise needed a rethink in the first place.

Maybe COD4 s campaign is just a relic, then but it s still a fun one.

On March 1st, 2010, Activision fired Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West. Things were said, lawsuits were filed, Zampella and West formed Respawn Entertainment, half of the Call of Duty studio's staff walked out, EA jumped in and got sued too, then Yakety Sax played until everyone got tuckered out. Amid all that, Respawn seems to have developed a very blurry game, which may come into focus at E3 according to a pair of tweets from Zampella.

I've gotten a 'few' questions about @e3expo plans this year. Yes, we will finally be at E3!— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) February 25, 2013

I have no intention of showing up empty handed! I can't say anything else right now.— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) February 25, 2013

The news is notable because Zampella and West are notable, and not just for their role in creating Call of Duty. Before forming Infinity Ward, they were at 2015, Inc., where they designed one of my favorite shooters ever: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The duo is partially responsible for two of the best-known FPS franchises ever, making Respawn's next game potentially a major competitor.

But if they do announce a game at E3, just how will they announce it? At EA's press conference? Maybe, but I think it's also likely Microsoft or Sony has snagged the announcement as a card to play in the battle between the PlayStation 4 and Xbox DifferentNumber. Even so, that won't necessarily make it a console exclusive, whatever it is. And by "whatever," I of course mean, "probably a shooter."

Outspoken Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was recently the subject of an extensive profile by The New York Times which charted his rise as the head of one of the most prolific publishers in the industry. As part of the interview, Kotick said the decision to fire Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella after they were planning to switch publishers in breach of contract was an easy one.

"You find out two executives are planning to break their contracts, keep the money you gave them and steal 40 employees," Kotick said. "What do you do? You fire them."

West and Zampella, now in charge of Respawn Entertainment, initially filed a suit for $36 million against Activision in 2010 for unpaid royalties from the Call of Duty franchise after Activision fired them. The claim ballooned to an astounding $1 billion earlier this year before EA, Infinity Ward, and Activision settled their cases for undisclosed amounts. Court documents later revealed Activision apparently considered terminating West and Zampella as early as 2009.

Kotick also strongly rebuffed several offers from Hollywood studios over the years to create a Call of Duty film, telling the Times that silver screen adaptions of games rarely succeed and could sour the franchise's reputation among gamers. Considering the horrifying movie treatment of games like Alone in the Dark, one of the lowest-rated films on IMDB, Kotick may have a point.

Tyler Wilde, Associate EditorThe first player-controlled action in Medal of Honor: Warfighter is to shoot a guard in the back of the head with a suppressed pistol. I can’t move the pistol away from his head. An icon indicates that I should press the left-mouse button to fire. I don't want to.

After a few missions, I don't want to keep playing Warfighter's campaign at all. It isn't fun. It isn't lonely, either: along with Battlefield 3 and the last couple Call of Dutys, I don't think I like military FPS campaigns anymore. They've changed, but my taste hasn't changed with them.

So I went back to a classic. Ten years ago I loved Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (MOHAA) so much that I saved both discs and the CD key for my future self to play. Thanks, past me! I still love it (no rose-tinted glasses), and comparing MOHAA's opening mission to Warfighter's opening vignettes convinces me that I'm not the one with the problem. Spielberg, the devs who went on to form Infinity Ward, and their old WWII shooter have some lessons for the modern crowd.

Missions vs. puppetry
 
I’m not squeamish about violence. I don’t want to shoot this guy in the back of the head because I don’t have a choice. My soldier is a puppet. I have one of the strings—I can pull the trigger—but Warfighter is gripping the rest and won’t let me move on until I give in. Forcing the player to commit violence can be used for an unsettling effect, but in Warfighter it’s just a tutorial. It callously teaches me that, yes, as in every other shooter, the left mouse button shoots people.

So, why am I shooting this guy again? Because he's there? Oh, OK.

True, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault doesn't let me choose not to shoot Nazis. That's what I signed up for. It can't be played nonviolently, but it doesn't force my hand. It says, “Here are your objectives, and there are going to be a bunch of Nazis who’d really rather you didn't complete them. You’re going to have to shoot them. Good luck.”

You've got to earn advancement in MOHAA. There’s player-directed work to be done before you’re rewarded with the next chapter. In Warfighter, the mission has been programmed into my soldier, and I’m just there to help him aim. When he needs to walk so that a set piece can crumble at the appropriate distance, he walks. When he doesn't feel like holding his gun anymore, he puts it away. Warfighter wrestles me for control because I can’t tell its story competently.

As soon as I'm off the truck, it's all up to me.

Max Payne 3 also steals control when it needs to transition into a cut scene, but it’s consistent. When I’m in control, I have full control and I’m responsible for finding the correct path and shooting the dudes in my way. If I slack off in Warfighter, the puppeteer will take care of the hard work for me, because the show must go on even if one of the marionettes isn't cooperating. I tried playing the first mission firing only when I absolutely had to. I fired twice, and the game took care of the rest.

The M1 Garand vs. the Heckler & Koch HK416
 
In MOHAA, it's shoot or be shot, but I have the advantage that it's completely unrealistic. No one could fire an M1 Garand as accurately as I am while standing still, never mind in mid-sprint. As I invade an occupied French village to rescue a captive SAS operative, I run, strafe, and fearlessly twirl around German riflemen, haunting them like a whimsical, armed specter.

I can still die, but I have time to line up good shots and each hit is a little victory. The pop of my gun and the sight of a Stahlhelm whizzing off a Nazi’s head are great feedback. Clearing an area is a bigger victory, and once I’m sure everyone’s on the ground I’m rewarded with a moment of calm to look around before I charge into the next section.

Realistic? Not at all, but it's fun.

Warfighter isn't realistic either, but its modern approach is all about crouching behind chunks of concrete and watching out for falling set pieces. Any time I take to aim is time that I'm exposed, and as long as I'm exposed, I'm on the verge of death. It's not realistic, but it's a little closer to reality. It's also not very fun.

I’m not suggesting that all shooters be WWII shooters, but MOHAA's M1 Garand is a lot more fun than Warflighter’s 850 rounds/min HK416. Spurting bullets in the direction of bad guys isn't as exhilarating as flipping a helmet with a single shot. And instead of natural feedback, Warfighter gives me a skull icon to let me know when I've scored a headshot, because I probably couldn't tell. It isn't nearly as satisfying.

Just like MOHAA, Warfighter features an early beach landing mission. Unlike MOHAA, it's boring.

Cover shooters aren't fundamentally bad. Red Orchestra 2, another WWII shooter, is more dedicated to realism than either MOHAA or Warfighter. It's a lot of creeping, crawling, and peeking, but at the end of all that, my perfect shot feels earned. Or I miss and it's a huge letdown, but I still feel something. I don't feel much in Warfighter. I just do what it tells me so I can advance to the next scene.

It seems that in an effort not to be called “unrealistic,” Warfighter fails to ask, “But is this any fun?”


Being realistic vs. being real
 
Warfighter's desire for authenticity goes further: it wants me to believe these are real wartime heroics. “This personal story was written by actual Tier 1 Operators while deployed overseas," reads the official description. "In it, players step into the boots of these warfighters and apply unique skill sets to track down a real global threat, in real international locations, sponsored by real enemies. It doesn't get any more authentic than Medal of Honor Warfighter, coming October 23, 2012.”

It's real, real, real, and authentic. It was written by actual Tier 1 Operators. I wasn't there, but I’m highly skeptical that Warfighter depicts real anything. Men planting explosives then dashing through collapsing shipping crates while picking off a shooting gallery of bad guys is not the truth. So what's Warfighter's dose of reality? In the beginning, at least, it's a story about a soldier’s strained relationship with his wife.

How Warfighter handles a gap in between missions.

War is a terrible emotional burden, but shooting a guy point blank in the back of the head is just a tutorial? It's dishonest, and when you make a game about a war we're currently invested in, well...maybe you shouldn't. If you do, it'd better be intellectually challenging, or it'll just come off as jingoistic tripe.

MOHAA has a strong advantage here. It can say "Allies good, Axis evil" and we're fine with it because it's the globally accepted version of the truth. In pop culture, Nazis are equivalent to zombies and murderous robots, so MOHAA can skip all the posturing and get to the mission briefing. But even controversial wars, like Vietnam, benefit from perspective and distance. Battlefield: Vietnam didn't try to prove anything about American heroism to players, it was just a war game set in Vietnam.

How MOHAA handles mission briefings.

I know it's not in the spirit of the series, but what the hell is wrong with fictional wars? Call of Duty and Battlefield get it. The Chinese! The Russians! I'm fine with xenophobic pretend land. People aren't dying in xenophobic pretend land. And who would a truly realistic Medal of Honor be for, anyway? It would probably look a lot more like Arma II, but without the fictional country, and it'd be much more grisly than Warfighter’s glossy action scenes. A Linkin Park song wouldn't quite capture the gravity.

So, what happened?
 
In an early Warfighter mission, I drive an RC bot through a crumbled building, shredding guys foolish enough to point their flashlights at me. It's a cool idea for a scene. It adds variety, swapping constant danger for lack of danger. But it's not fun. Was Ender's Game fun after Ender figured out the game?

I'm still not sure why I'm gunning these guys down...something about illegal munitions?

So why is it there? Is it there to make us say, "Ooh, how authentic"? Maybe I little, but I think it's mostly there because robots are cool. Campaigns have turned into Universal Studios theme park rides. They're only sustainable as entertainment for a few minutes, and they bombard the viewer with every spectacle they can--robots, explosions, whatever keeps them invested. The viewer is under the ride’s control, because no one can be allowed to wander away and miss an explosion.

When I reviewed the first Medal of Honor reboot in 2010, I liked it more than most. I don’t regret that—I was being honest when I said I had fun—but the spectacle doesn't impress present me as much as it did past me. Too much spectacle is the problem. Rather than give us objectives and put obstacles in our way, Warfighter gives us a series of obstacles, and the objective is to watch them blow up. It doesn't work, because we don't have to do the work. We're just along for the ride.

If Warfighter were more like MOHAA, it would be accused of having a dated design, but isn't that better than having a bad design? I'm happy to play one of them ten years after it released, and the other I probably won't finish, no matter how "authentic" it is.

Some cheeky blighters have obtained what Activision are calling a “development demo build” of Black Ops 2, and uploaded a vid to prove it. It’s an extremely short snippet of action, and overlayed with a superfluous dev interview and some dreadful music, but it does show off the capabilities of the engine.

Spotted on Kotaku, the video sees the player activate a no-clip mode, allowing the camera to zip off, around and above a rather pretty hillside township - which the player then proceeds to fill the the bodies of his foes. A crossbow makes a brief cameo and the video ends with the player running about making 'finger guns' at the enemy - a returning weapon from previous CoDs accessible via the 'giveall' cheat.

The original video has been removed, as you’d expect, but it came from the channel of Call of Duty modder iHc James. Kotaku still have a working version at the time of writing, if you are that needy of your BlOps fix.

When you shoot someone in Call of Duty, there’s a noise. It's positive feedback—a fwip-fwip-fwip to let you know that your bullet, knife, claymore, or phoned-in helicopter is hurting someone. While visiting Treyarch I asked the Black Ops 2 sound team about the creation of the simple-but-essential effect.

PCG: Why does it sound the way it does when I shoot someone in Call of Duty?

Brian Tuey, Audio Director: So... The sound has impact and it has meaning and it's useful and all that, but it's not a particularly pleasant sound, especially in isolation. There was a time recently where I was like, "You know? I'm gonna redo this with something else." So I kinda went a different direction, and it felt like this was going to be good. I checked it in, and within three hours, my email box was full of, like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SOUND?" I'm like, "But it's so much better!"

Chris Cowell, Audio Lead: The other thing that you might not actually know, it's different every game.

Really?

Cowell: It has to be. They're all very similar, and they serve the same purpose, but the actual content and the creation of it is redone every game, because our guns sound differently, you know? The music's different, the situation's different...

Tuey: Our whole DSP chain in the engine is completely different. The same stuff doesn't sound the same anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHs1sOdcuEE

Cowell: Little things like that can be a really difficult sound to make. The last game, it took me weeks to get that little thing right, because you have to fire it, get the tick and hear it and know what it means.

Tuey: But it has to cut through the guns, the explosions, and give you the same exact feeling you had when you heard it last game.

Cowell: Yeah. It's the same experience. That experience needs to be consistent across all of them, but not the sound.

Tuey: And that's what the problem was with the new one I dropped in, it sounded different. So the experience was different, so people who were playing the game didn't even know I'd changed it, right? It's not like we make a big production about, "Hey, I changed this sound!" Well, sometimes we do. But usually we just want to see what people's reactions are.

What did it sound like when you changed it?

Tuey: I made it sound more like a bullet hitting somebody, as opposed to a tick. But it's more important for us that the gameplay aspect of it is supported, versus "Hey, now it sounds more real."

Shawn Jimmerson, Sound Designer: You want to know that your bullet has hit someone, especially in MP. You're firing and you want that immediate feedback that I am actually scoring hits. There's a lot of expectation, you know, even in films, when somebody punches somebody else, it's not a realistic sound...

Cowell: Whpssh!

Jimmerson: But people have that expectation. Within our community, there's that same sort of thing. There are certain things that you just don't want to mess with too much, because you just upset people who are playing your game.



About a year ago in Team Fortress 2 I changed my hit sound to the Sonic "ring." It’s pretty Pavlovian, it's a good incentive for shooting people.

Cowell: Yeah, that's a good one. That's another good classic sound that has a lot of meaning behind it. When you hear those sounds, that tink-tink-tink-tink, and you're like, "Yeah!"

Tuey: It probably took a sound designer weeks to make that just right.

Cowell: To get it just right, that stuff's really hard.

Tuey: Just for nobody to ever go, "Whoa, that's a really awesome sound."

Cowell: But then you know you love it, you know, when you put it in there. It's the same thing, you know? It's giving you that... "I know what that means" feeling.

Jimmerson: I was just going to say, one of our sound designers had a great observation the other day, that there's no correlation between the time it takes to work on a sound and the significance of the sound in the game in a visual sense. Like, a helicopter can crash, and I'm like, "Okay, I know this is going to have metal, an explosion, a fireball, all these different elements," but what does it sound like when you interface with this thing and say "Yes”? Or you push that button? What does that sound like? The simplest sound can take you so much longer to work on. And again, usually if you get it to a place where it's right, no one will ever think about it, necessarily. And that's good. People should be like, "Oh, of course it sounds like that when I interact with this future thing that I've never seen before and doesn't even exist."

Our superfriends over at Edge have picked up on UK MP Keith Vaz's early-day motion calling for "closer scrutiny of aggressive first-person shooter video games." Vaz’s chief target this time isn’t the content of the games themselves, but European classification body PEGI, who Vaz believes should be doing more to “restrict ultra-violent content”.

In the motion Vaz cites the testimony of Anders Behring Breivik, the man currently on trial for the murders of 76 people in Norway last year. In his testimony, Breivik said he honed his “target acquisition” skills through playing the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The motion says it's "disturbed" by Breivik's statement.

The motion goes on to say that “in an era of ever-more sophisticated and realistic game-play more robust precautions must be taken before video games are published.” We’re not sure which games Vaz has seen, but it must be said that the Call of Duty series has remained pretty much the same since 2007.

Vaz is no stranger to stirring the hornet’s nest of video games. In 2004 he campaigned against Rockstar’s Manhunt following the murder of 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah, which was later proved to be unconnected to the game. In an early-day motion last year he criticised Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for its London-set level, and he'll undoubtedly criticise Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for its cruel and unusual horse mo-capping.

Early-day motions are the parliamentary equivalent of bulletin board posts, occasionally highlighting important issues among frivolous and self-congratulatory notices. However, occasionally they can gather momentum and snowball out of control. It also seems that Vaz isn't going after the games themselves, which more often than not proves to be a fruitless task. Instead he's criticising the structures put in place to prevent children accessing violent games.

Call of Duty Elite is still coming to PC, Eurogamer report. Activision Producer, Noah Heller has been talking to the website about the stat tracking service, which currently supports Modern Warfare 3 on consoles, but not PC: "We're still working on it. We can't date it yet. It's a challenging piece of development."

Noah pointed out that he holds some loyalty towards our platform of choice. ""Back in the day I was a PC gamer myself. I cut my teeth on shooters on good, old fashioned Team Fortress 1. So I'm excited to do right by the PC players soon."

Call of Duty Elite lets players track their Modern Warfare 3 stats, and access all DLC and specialist playlists. There are also in-depth tuition videos to help players improve their skills. Console gamers are required to pay a subscription for the more advanced aspects of the service, including tournaments and clan capabilities.

A tweet back in November implied that we will be getting Elite on PC, and that it would be free. Whether our version will feature-identical to the console versions is yet to be announced. Heller was reluctant to confirm a release date.

"Unfortunately I can't give you a date at this time - look, it bums me out to say it," he concluded.

http://youtu.be/zuzaxlddWbk

The new live action Modern Warfare 3 trailer shows a rare event. A veteran helping out a new player without telling him to GTFO. The prestiged pro makes it through the entire trailer without once saying anything even vaguely unpleasant about the other guy's mother, showing immense restraint when the noob RPGs a single man five metres away (a very familiar sight for Battlefield 3 players at the moment).

Call of Duty fever is reaching frenzied levels. CVG mention a van hijacking in France in which masked attackers used tear gas to stall a delivery vehicle, and reportedly made up with 6,000 copies of Modern Warfare 3. There are midnight launches happening around the world tonight, and launch events will be broadcast live on the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Youtube channel.

If you go along to your local launch and it turns out to be two men in ski masks selling copies out of a van, give Interpol a ring. Will you be picking up a copy of CoD this week?

The desperate game of controversy one-upmanship among Call of Duty sequels continues with this latest scene from Modern Warfare 3, in which a small girl is blown up on screen in a chemical attack on London.

There's nothing fun or exciting about the scene - but we'll link to it so you can have a quick chuckle at Infinity Ward's inability to write convincing dialogue or hold your attention without resorting to cheap shocks. We're told by people with lawyers that "players are given the opportunity to opt out of in-game content which they may find disturbing with no penalty."