What, the CoD with the lazy short single player campaign. The lazy and dull zombies mode. And multiplayer consisting of just recycling old maps.
Also the fact that it takes up an inordinate amount of Hard Drive space since it also requires an installation of Call of Duty Warzone.
I mean ffs, it still doesn't even work on Steam Deck.
Microsoft will have their work cut out for them to try and get the series back on track because this is a let down for players. Anyone paying 70USD for this bullshit has only themselves to blame.
Unfortunately there's a whole slew of people who are going buy it no matter what. See the same shit with sports games. Doesn't matter how much of a lazy, shitty, watered down mess it is, people are going to buy it.
With licensed sports games -- not something I play -- my understanding is that the game typically has a player database that tracks the real-world situation. So what you're paying for is basically the right to play fantasy games with the current year's teams.
That's got value to a number of people, I expect.
With multiplayer FPSes -- also not something I've played much of in quite some years -- my guess is that the release does something to create the demand, because a lot of player base will shift to the new release, which yanks them off the old release. So if you stay on the old release, you're only playing against people who stayed on the old release.
EDIT: Of course, the flip side of the multiplayer thing. is that if the players, as an aggegate, generally don't move to the new game -- as it sounds to me, from the little I read, to be what happened with Payday 3 -- then the mechanism works against the publisher.
This is what I've been saying lately - there is a massive opening for someone to do for CoD what Battlebit did for Battlefield. There are people who just want the old CoD multiplayer back without all the Warzone garbage and they would gladly pay for it.
I can ignore a lot of things if the game still feels good: microtransactions being jammed down my throat I can ignore as long as they are not pay to win. Game modes that don't interest me, I can ignore (they even give you the option to uninstall JUST warzone if you don't play it).
The saga of COD's super aggressive SBMM and active manipulation of the result of 1v1 encounters over the last 12 months I cannot abide. Dropped frames in the middle of a close quarters battle whilst their algorithm decides which player should come out on top to maintain engagement? Nope! If this is the direction that play is headed they are beyond redemption.
Myself and many others are out here hungering for an arcade shooter that rewards player skill and movement mastery. It's only a matter of time until someone gets that formula right and takes a huge chunk out of the COD franchise.
Xdefiant, The Finals, Unrecord, Marathon are all possibilities, but you can't play any of them right now.
It's a bloody sad year for gaming imo - I prefer to play online multiplayer but since I got bored of BF 2042 and swore off of COD altogether, I am spending my time playing some of the great single player games from the last couple of years instead.
Lmao you think Microsoft would want to get it “back on track”? The same Microsoft that makes the Windows operating system and has been bungling consoles for a decade now?