Nobody bats an eyelid if you say you don’t like Dragon Quest, or FIFA, or Gran Turismo, or Civilization, or World of Warcraft, or The Sims, or any number of other games or series’ that sit on or near the top of the heaps of their respective genres. Even if you like the genre overall, but there’s still this one marquee franchise you don’t care for, your peers probably don’t give you too much flak about it. They put it down to individual taste, and go on with their days. Sometimes, though, there is the sacred cow – the enshrined game that must not be treated with anything less than reverence.
No, not even Halo can claim such a position. Hop on any video game message board in existence and say “What do you guys think about Halo?” and you’ll be met with three very distinct barrages of opinions – love, hate, and a middling indifference. This is as sure-fire a bet as the Internet can offer outside of Rule 34. In fact, very, very few games are those sacred cows. One of them is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
I’m not going to slam the game. Put simply, I think it’s a fine game; but I don’t like it much at all. The reasons why this is the case are utterly irrelevant. I’d be willing to bet that every single person reading this article has a game, especially a highly-rated one from the last couple of years, that they could say this about. Not a game to be hated, to be claimed was overrated, or any other implication that anyone else’s opinion is flat-out wrong; just something they didn’t like for whatever reason that other people do. And I’d also be willing to bet that it’s a game you could say this about in front of your nerdiest peers, and they wouldn’t care that you thought that way.
A couple of days ago I opined on Twitter that I didn’t care a jot about the forthcoming Modern Warfare 2, because I hadn’t liked CoD4, its predecessor, either as a single-player or multiplayer game. (That I’m also somewhat sick of the forthcoming game’s infernal hype train is another irrelevance.) This led to several people on Twitter – including folks I consider friends, not just followers and followees – seeming shocked, surprised, and even a little saddened that I could possibly say such a thing. How could I dislike this game? This sacred cow that is held in such high esteem? How was that even possible? I had to be wrong. Broken, even. The very opinion itself was greeted with waves of disbelief and incredulity.
This is not to belittle any of those commenters in any way. They were – are – all people whose opinions I value, as it happens. I’m not calling them out or looking to pick a fight. I’m more perplexed at what the tone of the responses represent.
CoD4's not even my favorite game to feature the fascinating abandoned city of Pripyat.
Let me reiterate: I don’t think CoD4 is a bad game. Far from it. It just doesn’t float my boat, and it’s not because I have any dislike for the first-person shooter genre. There are many aspects to the game which ultimately combine to form what is, to me, a dealbreaker. That’s my purely subjective opinion and that’s all it is; and we all know what the ephemeral “they” say about opinions. The thing is, though, with practically any other game, I wouldn’t have to qualify it like that. It would be accepted, and moved past. Not CoD4. I don’t know if the game could be deified more if it had a Nintendo logo on it.
I listen to a lot of gaming podcasts. My day job allows me a lot of listening time and that’s one way I fill it. Most of these podcasts are helmed by hosts who know their co-hosts well; who in many cases also work together at websites or publications covering the same subject. Many don’t; some even do their shows with literal oceans or continents between hosts, conversing through Skype or some other means. But one thing they almost all seem to have in common is respect for their co-hosts’ tastes. If one of them doesn’t like The Hot Game of the Moment, it’s not a big deal. Is it familiarity with each other that breeds this respect? Is it implicit on its own merits? Or is it simply that, well in excess of 99% of the time, the subject under discussion isn’t a sacred cow?
Why is it that it can be so well-accepted that someone, be they a little minnow like me or a big fish in the pond of the gaming press, may not give a damn about Final Fantasy XIII, or Forza Motorsport 3, or Halo 3 ODST, or Uncharted 2, or even Brütal Legend – the latter the perfect example of a game that should be a sacred cow – but the moment I say I don’t care about a hugely-hyped FPS because I didn’t care for its prequel (a game that to date has sold more copies than World of Warcraft has subscribers), the immediate reaction – and one I’d more than likely get from practically any corner of the internet with any interest in video games whatsoever – is spluttering denial and disbelief from the faithful while anyone who shared my opinion kept their heads down? (Therein lies the great disparity by comparison to the earlier example of Halo.) It’s not because CoD4 is objectively better than every other game I’ve namechecked so far. It’s barely even comparable to most of those by virtue of its genre; those old apples and oranges, and all that. It’s almost like a cult of personality, only – if you’ll excuse more fruit references – this isn’t some banana republic’s dictator; it’s a video game. Nothing more, nothing less.
Modern Warfare 2 is developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision, and is scheduled for release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on November 10th 2009. The author will not be purchasing it but wishes many hours of entertainment to the plethora of readers who will.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released in November 2007 and has sold over 13 million copies to date across all platforms. It remains one of the most-played online console games in the world.
Heh. Psychonauts seems to fit into the same category. It is some crime against nature that I don’t like it despite liking both funny and 3D platformers. It just didn’t click for me, and that seems to make me some broken husk of a man instead of just some dude with an opinion.
In the chance that you were listing off other games that you’re not interested in you should maybe find a friend with ODST and/or Uncharted 2. Even if they end up not being for you, they are good enough (to me) that I figure you should at least try them before figuring out they’re not your cop of tea. Uncharted, especially, may fail you in mechanics but absolutely floor you with its writing and humor.
If I was listing games I’m not interested in I wouldn’t have said Forza 3. No, they were just examples of big games hitting around now or not too far away, that not everyone’s going to love to the point of irrationality.
I don’t think you like playing multiplayer first-person shooters. COD4 is an excellent shooter and a great game for people that like that genre. Players that like FPSs but not COD4 tend to gravitate toward Halo (less realistic, slower). They’re 2 different types of shooters, but both well made extremely polished.
It kinda reminds me of cars. There are clearly cars that are higher quality and drive better than others. They have more features. But they’re also more expensive and maybe you want to buy American. But if you take the money and brand out of the equation, nobody can really say they wouldn’t prefer a German sedan over their American counterparts.
If you take out the setting, the story, etc… COD4 is just a well-made shooter. It runs at 60 frames per second. It’s hit detection is great. Network code is great. It has a good ‘feel’ to it. I hated Mass Effect. But you can’t say that it was a good shooter. I’m sure it was an awesome RPG, but the feel of the controls didn’t grab me in the first hour of playing, so I gave up. I’m looking forward to trying out ME2, after hearing that they’re fixing all of that.
If you like fast-paced online shooters, COD4 is the holy grail (holy cow?). But if you don’t like that genre, then of course it isn’t going to have the same appeal.
I think this is called “proving my point”.
Justin Campbell,
It wasn’t directly pointed at me, but I enjoy competitive FPS (although maybe your definition of competitive is different than mine), but my goto games are Halo 3 and Team Fortress 2. CoD4 just doesn’t do anything for me. It’s an odd complaint, but it feels too realistic for me to have fun playing it.
I’m glad you posted this, because I feel very similar, I like FPS games, but call of duty 4 just doesn’t click with me. I much prefer half life 2 for single player and killzone 2, halo 3 for multiplayer
You’re not alone Jazz, I never played COD4 and therefore don’t care at all about MW2.
Same, although my opinion is notably irrelevant in this particular instance…
Working in a video game store makes lack of interest in CoD really difficult right now. I’ve learned to fake it pretty well.
…….that’s what she said.
Ba-dum tish!
“CoD4’s not even my favorite game to feature the fascinating abandoned city of Pripyat.”
-Would that honor belong to Stalker? I played COD4 right after Stalker and though there was a bit of excitement when I first got to that level, it ended up just making me nostalgic for Stalker because I felt like it captured the area’s feel better.
Got it in one.
There is a thread on the digital cowboys forum about mw2 and we got to talking about cod4 where the reactions were from absolute love to middling indifference to active dislike.
the game is generally held in high regard but the reactions seemed no different to those i have seen to halo.
I’m going to put that down to Digital Cowboys listeners being smarter than the average bear – their show is, after all, one of the best at tackling highbrow topics to do with gaming without ever falling prey to pretension. Speaking personally, I can honestly say I’ve yet to experience that opinion variance regarding CoD4.
I would have to say that there is two types of people who ask you why you wouldn’t like game X (in this case CoD4). There are those who are just out to be in an internet fight, and justify to more themselves why they have spent (X) amount of dollars and time on the game. These conversations typically boil down to, “You suxxzorz and only don’t like it because you got pwned at it.” Those people should be purged from the earth. However there are those who are in fact interested in what didn’t appeal to you or what issues you had with the game. This could make for interesting conversation, and possibly open peoples eyes from some hype covered glasses.
I feel exactly the same way. I enjoyed what little of the game I played, but never really felt drawn in enough to continue. Every that I say this too who plays video games looks at me like my boogers crawled out my nose and just started talking. I think I’ve narrowed down why this game didn’t appeal to me: it’s too “realistic”. I love FPS shooters, but I prefer some escapism invovled. If there’s not at least some kind of futuristic weaponry or magic or something, I’m not nearly as interested.