The Call of Duty games had been in a bit of decline, in terms of their commercial and critical performance, as well as fan reception, for a while now, until Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 reversed the trend last year. However, as good as Black Ops 3 was, it is still not considered to be anywhere near the peak of the franchise – no one will argue it is as good as the first two Modern Warfare or Black Ops games, for example – and the Infinity Ward games, at the very least, continue to languish in mediocrity, with 2013’s Ghosts being the Call of Duty series’ lowest point yet.
It looks like with this year’s game, which is being helmed by, yep, Infinity Ward, fans are looking at a return to form for the franchise- and to do this, it seems that fans believe the games need to move away from the Titanfall inspired implementation of wall running, and other similar abilities, and go back to the basics.
It’s not just the core gameplay loop that is apparently alienating long time fans of the series- fans also want the games to reverse some decisions that the developers have made with some of the newer installments. In addition to the movement based mechanics that Call of Duty has introduced, fans are also taking issue with lag compensation, DLC, and Supply Drops. To get Activision’s attention regarding the matter, they have even launched a brand new Twitter campaign- #MakeCoDGreatAgain (the hashtag #BringBackCoD is also being used).
Whether or not Activision and the developers actually take note of these demands remains to be seen- particularly since the series is now back on track with its record breaking sales, and since these features are all necessary for Call of Duty to maintain parity with other shooters on the market. Call of Duty 2016 itself is widely expected to be set in space- so if that was the game that fans were hoping would go back to the basics of classic Call of Duty, well, I guess they are all in for a bit of a disappointment there.
