The inspiration behind this post was because I was perusing through the BO3 workshop, and I thought about how I got into shooter games right at the tail end of the de facto COD era.
My most earliest memory of playing a first person shooter was playing Call of Duty: World at War on the Wii when I was like 5. I was scared to death to everything that started in getting to the main menu. The wii preview banner being explosions and old fighting, the propaganda clips as it slowly turned sinister, the eerieness of the main menu ambience being this haunting melody of an operatic singer telling you in latin to die with her. Over an image of rifles in the dirt, adorned with helmets.
Say what you will about the dated graphics or the way the future of the series turned it into a fratboy staple, I had no security back when I revisited it when I was 8, and I thought I could brave the game again, in a dark room with only me in it. Still made my skin crawl, and my nerves held me back that I only made it to Vendetta before I stopped. I didn't use the wii zapper until later, but it was quite the experience to play through the first level.
Looking at it now, I think that was the perfect game to start on, because there was never putting that veil back on after that. Nothing would shake my core harder than little resistance, it felt like eternity making it through the sniper nests.
You would think I would go further into the series, but no. I went to COD3, where I was playing, where I drove vehicles, coordinated with NPCs to shell MG nests, and facing the nightmarish daily life of a Pole trying to live in peace. The second most nightmarish was the motion controls, because again, the WII. Planting charges and throttling an enemy with their own gun never felt so real, because I would get frustrated to high heaven in trying to do certain things like spin the nunchuck. Can't I exit out and return fire instead of getting shot to death trying to pull a stupid pin? Fun tip btw, you can pick up an unlimited amount of grenades by waiting for an enemy to throw a grenade, then press the minus button twice to store the cooked grenade into your pocket.
After getting some of the other CODs on the X360 due to my older brother giving me and my younger brother an X360 for christmas. We didn't get xbox live gold for the longest time, because that costed money during an age where we couldn't earn money unless it was from gifts or from allowance if my parents remembered to tally it. So when we did buy a COD game second hand at our local game store, it had to be campaign and extra offline modes with some good replayability. That also meant no DLC maps, unless somebody forgot to redeem their code that was in the case, so Zombies mode had to have a good map if it did have it. When we finally got xbox live gold to play online, and the most we dumped is in BO2 and BF3. I was more preferable to MW3, but that's just me, and BF3 would sink more time in comparison. The beauty in joining lobbies with sometimes trashtalkers and sometimes some hackers made for an interesting experience. In one we were trolling other people to tears, and to others we were enjoying zombieland MP lobbies. We would get more sweaty in BF3, where we actually learned how to play roles and to work as a team, as well as the rule that EA are the greediest companies on the planet. Premium users with 100 star DLC weapons was some kind of experience, but nothing compares to Noshahr Canals TDM or Operation Metro Rush. The M-COM stations are booby trapped, and always have a medic and support right next to you, recons are fodder. I was having fun in an era where everyone critisized those games as being saturated as the market they were releasing on, kinda like the geyser of WWII/modern shovelware shooters that became as valued as a shooting gallery at a carnival.
My shooter tastes began to diversify, especially with the announcement of DOOM 2016 before it released. I had that Quake demo on my chromebook that I keep on, just in case I got bored in class and because it was the only thing to warrant having a chromebook in the first place, even after the demise of flash and the endless saturation of .io games. Love that it could be played on a keyboard only, because thumb-trackpad was not going to go well. After skimming the Doom II WAD from my older brothers CD collection, I even got into the vast world of doom modding. Not much to maps, because some of those gameplay mods floored me. It was around this time that my dolphin dive snap reflexes went to more methodical room strafing and wall touching looking for a cool megasphere to boost me to fighting shape. It also was easier to pause and eat dinner, as every mom is keen on forgetting that an online game cannot be paused and other gamers have no lives (me included).
I still had that online shooter itch, but it subsided me for more singleplayer focused and more relaxed entries. Why would I sweat my way to disappointment when I can just boot up Doom and have a merry old time just blowing some steam? Given that Doom II has some sort of ending, and doesn't try to make the gameplay loop infinite, it helped crack my FPS shooter addiction away from the newest entry and into more entertainable ventures, like survival games or extreme sport games. No longer would I have to suffer against the decade old pros in BFBC2, or have to learn and ride the meta in the COD Warzone era games, hounded by dailies and battle passes. Shooting zombies may seem monotonous, but it fills my time to a degree where I don't have to wring my brain into another overthinking episode about life.
The death blow to my interest in FPS games didn't happen to a full purchase in COD, no, it was Phantom Forces of all things. That dinky little Roblox mess that appeared to be the closest option to getting a free FPS, but the trappings of a free FPS taught me that developers could make something for something else other than for fun. Skin crates and keys, the hyperbolic rate of ranking up, the huge amount of sweats and cheats, the works. I tried to report cheaters to the discord server, got fed up by the hoops I needed to jump through to report one simple man. The community was NOT a thing I geled with at all, leaving after it was a bunch of people that had massive sunk cost fallacy. I wanted to see change in the game for the better, not posts begging for this and that to be added. Equipment was an idea that became vaporware, and the last think tethering me to it was the skins, which I gave up after deciding my mental wellbeing is infinitely more valuable than suffering disappointment and despair for a free key that I didn't want in the first place.
So boomer shooters was my comfy little haven that I enjoyed, which I supported as more came out and were being appreciated by the indie scene. I used to watch guys that reviewed those games, Civvie 11 being the prime suspect. Stuff like Dusk and Ion Fury being released, and in many cases is enjoyed on par and above to the likes of Quake and Blood. It seemed like every release was gold on a platnium platter. But alas, history has decided to repeat itself. The market of boomer shooters began to saturate, and only the ones that cater to the niche began to steal the spotlight more.
I couldn't keep up with the skill requirement that some games were built for. Do you know bunnyhopping or can use the right weapon to be able to kill an enemy that is only vulnerable to that weapon? Ammo scarcity becomes an additional challenge, and movement becomes essential as the same skills I forsake to enjoy the market I thought was safe. Dolphin diving was one cheese move, now how about a dozen other cheese moves to spice up your gameplay, and is mandatory? This crap is now too overstimulating for me, I just wanted to blow some steam off, if I wanted second work, I would pick up a second shift at my job.
The examples that proved that I was becoming less gamerfied was Doom Eternal and the Ultrakill Demo. Doom Eternal was something that I was excited to play, but as I went on I felt less and less excited to continue. At a point I just stopped playing Doom Eternal because there wasn't any steam left for me to try and play the game how the devs wanted me to play it. I wanted to shoot things with the super shotgun and maybe some other guns, not have to deal with juggle the chainsaw. The Ultrakill demo was a moral defeat though, I streamed myself trying to play the demo, and one of my friends said that I played like a games journalist. There really isn't any defense against this one other than he was right, and that as much as I can remember that blood is fuel, a decade and a half of keeping away from the enemy cannot be broken in a couple sessions of ultrakill. Completely fine, if this game isn't for me, than let the others play it, for it was meant for them. At thevery least I didn't spend actual money on a product that I didn't like.
No, the present day, where I started this blog idea from looking for workshop mods for me to enjoy in BO3 zombies. I got the formula pretty well, and I can understand how some people can enjoy zombies, but jeez can some of the steps get on my nerves. Thank YT tutorials on how to do the actual steps, because god forbid a man to want to just get a lot of perks and to get wild weapons to pack a punch. If you want to know what I think about BO3, is that while it has barely any connection to the prior black ops storylines, it in itself is an interesting story to approach, with the horrors of merging machine and man to create an artificial hell that came entirely out of a lack of humanity. Coincidentally, it can explain how the multiplayer sections of the game work, it being essentially a wetware simulation being run in some forgotten CIA facility, of reconstructed profiles of people who may or may not be alive. Very heady, to say the least.
TL;DR: My Point and Click adventures gone from telling good stories, to giving good (with little bit of bull) gameplay, to eventually wearing off as I get older and have better things to do than to pretend playing COD competitively actually affects the population as a whole.
