Call of Duty 5 - back to WW2 confirmed

MOH: PA was bad enough, the pacific battles were just guerrilla warfare, not much history in there.
You just know they'll probably throw some sort of bullshit in there. Like polar bears, although polar bears totally kick ass.
 
They should make a Korean War game. Seriously, so much untapped potential there.
 
Bah, they should make a Rhodesian Bush War or South African Border War game. Lots of potential there. And a chance to pwn commies who are not Russian! Or even Chinese!
 
"It has to redefine the WWII genre and be the best shooter possible!

Until we release CoD 6 next year..."
 
Didn't look that bad, flamethrower looks sexy.
 
There was a few glimpses of the Russian campaign which is what I'm interested in, although the whole 'darker' edge they are going for seems far too forced in the trailer.
 
The only thing that hasn't been done to death with WW2 is playing as the Wehrmacht.
 
Well at least it looks pretty. And something about seeing loads of bombers flying in formation in the air always makes me salivate.

Unfortunately, I doubt this'll be more than generic ass. It's guaranteed to make massive sales though, simply down to the name.
 
Whoa, whoa, whoa... am I missing something here? Why are standards so high? Did I miss the parts where COD4 raised some sort of bar by simply changing the setting? Far as I recall - and I recall it quite a bit because I've played the single player a few times - it was the same run and gun gung-ho shoot 'em up with exactly the same HEY YOU TAKE OUT THIS TANK K and HEY YOU PLANT THIS DEMO CHARGE ON THAT... THING... missions as every other COD game had.

COD4 was good, I agree. It was a refreshing change and I do enjoy the fast paced action of the COD games and it was nice to do all of that with a modern setting with some new weapons to play around with, but what was special about it? Alright, the sniping missions were pretty damn special (well, they were, not so much now I've done them more than twice) and the playable cut-scene where you're slowly falling apart from radiation was a great piece of immersion, but other than that, yeah, it was a COD game to the bone i.e. it was no different from the others.

I'll probably pick this up because as I said, I enjoy the COD single player as a great bit of entertainment, and the multiplayer is always solid good fun. I very much enjoyed COD3's multiplayer, a lot more than I did COD1 and COD2. The new features that borrowed heavily from the BF2 class based system was very much welcome from me and I really enjoyed the pretty detailed maps and general online play.
 
Well you clearly did miss something, COD4 did raise the bar by changing the setting. It's not the gameplay of WW2 shooters that's made them stale, as FPS gameplay doesn't change all that much beyond "aim reticule over head", it was the setting. The same guns, the same environments, the same situation and we already know which side wins in the end. COD4 was in a fictitious conflict which greatly increased the tension, the story and the unpredictability of the entire game.
 
Tension? Two generic sides squabbled over a few nukes, eventually launched said nukes only for - surprise surprise! - them to be stopped mid-flight. The allies win again! Did I just sum up every Tom Clancy book there because I forget, it's that tiresome. Maybe you didn't, but I clocked on the plot right from the get go, the curveball was that at times it threw in one or two interesting missions to keep me on my toes (sniping, the AC gunship mission)

Yes, it changed the setting. I said that. The gameplay, though? No, the most important factor of the game was the same COD we've known since COD1. It was do this, do that, fight the war on your own there, fight countless waves of enemies here until you move to the next objective. I enjoy it as a mindless shooter but it wasn't exactly special. It was just nice to have a modern setting and modern high tech weapons to doss about with, but really, it wasn't at all far from different to the teaser we just saw for COD5. The difference being, obviously, that the choice to U-turn back to the past isn't that smart (it might be - who knows how the game will play out in the end?) whereas the teasers for COD4 were a sight for sore eyes simply because it was something new. I'm fully suportive of that, I'm glad it progressed. But thats the only progression it did - it changed it's aesthetic, and that isn't enough.

The change of setting was raising the bar for COD standards, but thats really not very high considering countless other games have already moved on into modern warfare and... well, beyond.
 
Well yes, the gameplay remained largely unchanged and I never disputed that. What I'm saying is that when people dread another WW2 shooter, they're not dreading it cus of the gameplay, it's cus of the setting. And I'm certain in a couple of years we'll have people doing the same about there being another modern war shooter. A large part of war games is the spectacle of seeing war, and they'd have to try real hard to make WW2 exciting again.

I would've much preferred a Vietnam setting done right. The dense jungle could be incredibly tense in a firefight. Plus imagine being a gunner on an Apocalypse Now style helicopter assault. It could bring in some real moral implications with civilian death too, something which I feel was a missed opportunity in COD4.
 
Yeah, If COD4's anything to go by... they'd be able to do a BRILLIANT Vietnam game.
 
Well yes, the gameplay remained largely unchanged and I never disputed that. What I'm saying is that when people dread another WW2 shooter, they're not dreading it cus of the gameplay, it's cus of the setting. And I'm certain in a couple of years we'll have people doing the same about there being another modern war shooter. A large part of war games is the spectacle of seeing war, and they'd have to try real hard to make WW2 exciting again.

I would've much preferred a Vietnam setting done right. The dense jungle could be incredibly tense in a firefight. Plus imagine being a gunner on an Apocalypse Now style helicopter assault. It could bring in some real moral implications with civilian death too, something which I feel was a missed opportunity in COD4.

I see what you mean, but I feel there is still a lot of opputunity in the WWII setting and I'm quite looking forward to see the Pacific campaign. And hey, the new Band of Brothers is going to be centered around the Pacific so that's certainly going to spark my interest somewhat.

The problem with a Vietnam setting, though, is how hard it would be make it as un-linear as a jungle actually is. My biggest fault with jungle-based games is how theres always some set path through the trees that you go down, and only a small margin of tree line to the left and right of you before you hit a invisible wall or somesuch. COD games have always been linear in path so I'm not sure how they'd fare getting the environment down. That said, elements could be done and could be done very well.
 
There are ways that you can make an area feel large and free-roaming without it really being such. Now it's not often I use Crysis as an example of anything good, but the island setting felt fairly free, despite it being a series of interlinked paths. The barriers were natural too, or just empty wilderness until you realize you'd rather be shooting stuff and head back in the right direction. Or instead of invisible walls they can have you instantly killed by a tiger. That won't ever get annoying.
 
I think my biggest concern would be how fun the gameplay would be in that COD way. A lot of the time you'd simply be firing random M16 rounds into the trees before having to fall back after someone has called some mortar rounds down. :p I'm off generalizing again but there would be room for some pretty good moments but on the other hand I think they'd have to have a really serious think about how they'd go about it. They did well capturing some elements of the battles in WWII but then they also ruined them with you being a one man army against a hundred German soldiers most of the time. I don't know.

Either way, I await to see more of COD5.
 
Eurogamer posted a preview.

Think the Vietcong, but in the 1940s. This indefatigable foe lies in wait, in pits and in trees, not moving a muscle until an unaware Yankee passes. If faced with insurmountable odds, rather than staying behind cover they'll suicide charge the enemy with bayonets - they might only take down one guy in the process, but that guy might well be you.

And

Paranoia will be your main driving force. Every corpse could be faking it, every tree could hide a sniper, each patch of long grass is a potential death-trap.

This actually sounds good.

/reading page 2

EDIT The other part of the campaign is as a Ruski fighting into Berlin. Sounds good as well.
 
Eurogamer said:
If faced with insurmountable odds, rather than staying behind cover they'll suicide charge the enemy with bayonets - they might only take down one guy in the process, but that guy might well be you.

medal of honor pacific assault had this; they were pretty ruthless; if you went down into a near death state they'd run over and repeatedly stab you with their bayonets or step on your neck and shoot you in the face with a pistol ..it was awesome :) ..the console version (Rising Sun) also had this but it was badly implemented ..it often felt like a duck hunt type game
 
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