Call of Duty - Has no identity (enough with the futuristic nonsense)
I've not been a COD player for sometime (since MW2). Though honestly Black Ops 1 and 2 looked decent. Ghosts looked like hot garbage and Advance Warfare seemed solid, but that's where it also starting to show it doesn't really have an identity anymore. They'd essentially given us Call of Duty: Titanfall.
Not really surprising given the production line nature of COD now. Not that Treyarch doesn't try, but Blops 3 is essentially COD: Titanfall now with Destiny superpowers in multi and more nonsensical future nonsense in the campaign. It all seems rather contrived.
I would rather play Titanfall and Destiny - which have ideas of the own, than another me too experience. And it seems like every shooter currently in development is built on the same character powers and mobility template. I know when COD hit , there were the copy cat games - but then we had games like Borderlands, Titanfall, Destiny bringing something unique to the table.
I'd love to see a reboot of COD that strips it back down to where it started, that turns down the campaign from 11 back to a more measured experience, with meaningful encounters.
Open World - Watering down a solid core experience with too many distractions
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| What happens when you climb a tower in Assassins Creed |
The same could be said for the Open World game, which mostly now seem to follow the Ubisoft template of climbing a tower and unlocking a set of activities in that area. Assassins Creed has well and truly becomes stale for me, since every tower climbed populates the map with yet more distracting tasks that bog you down and have you putting the game back on the shelf mid game. Batman Arkham night somewhat suffered from the Open World, since the batmobile added very little to the game a number of the open world tasks whilst extending gameplay don't add anything to the experience. I enjoyed the detective missions and the ones that introduced a character from the universe, but the generic goon missions didn't do much for me. I wouldn't say Arkham night is a better game than Arkham Asylum, which hub style world focused more on the core experience.
That said, I enjoyed Watch Dogs, since the hacking activities and hopping around security camera's creating chaos from a distance shook up the formula enough to see me though to completion. Likewise Shadow of Mordor, which features much of the Open World TM standards, but adds in the brilliant Nemesis system, giving the player a chance to build rivalries as they play. But on a whole the open world formula needs a rethink.
Rather than populate a map with repetitive tasks in each area, create more customised meaningful content. In this case less is more. I'd rather 50% less content, if it meant what was there was more substantive. I remember going into the wilderness in AC3, and doing all these tasks that didn't matter. All in service to the economy aspect of Assassins Creed that was a nice distraction in AC II, but rather tacked on in AC 3. The only reason to do it was to get parts for your ship. They could have abandoned the whole homestead/wilderness aspect and the game would have been better for it.
One thing I enjoyed about the original Assassins Creed was the Assassinations. Even though you performed the same three task to get the intel leading up to the assassination, it felt like it created a build up and the chance to plan your approach and escape. In the later games they abandoned that, to make assasinations feel less distinct from the rest of the game. Can you imagine an Assassins Creed game in which the assassinations were as detailed as the Hitman games? If you could actually use stealth effectively in AC again, rather than the alter guard then hide in hay bail loop you get stuck in before you just give up and just engage in open combat.
I fear for The Division, which could be great, but I suspect may lean heavily on Ubisofts open world formula and I don't see adding persistent online to that being that interesting.
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