As a guy who generally likes to get a new shooter every year, this year was looking kind of bleak for the multiplayer shooter games. Last year I was spoiled rotten by DICE releasing Battlefield 3 which provided me with endless hours of awesome online play, and for last year, Battlefield 3 really was the best option for me. Even though I knew that Battlefield 3 was going to be my jam, so-to-speak, for the year, I still made that effort and picked up Activision and Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The first Modern Warfare game was insanely fun, as I remember playing it online for a total of two years before Modern Warfare 2 game out, but after all of the problems they were having with Modern Warfare 3, I was [rightly] skeptical that they’d be able to deliver a decent game.
After spending some time with Modern Warfare 3 I was pretty disgusted. The maps were uninspired, the game itself looked and felt old and just everything about it felt wrong. Sure, it got the usual rave reviews worldwide, it sold a ton of copies and people were excited about it, but over time all of that died down and the sobering reality for most was that Modern Warfare 3 was not that good of a game. So I was pretty brazen in my declaration that I was a “Battlefield guy” from then on. I had always jumped back and forth between the Battlefield games and the Call of Duty games, but this was the deciding factor for me; I was no longer going to support Activision’s multi-billion dollar Call of Duty machine if they were going to turn out rubbish.
This year I was prepared for my “yearly shooter” to be Medal of Honor: Warfighter, and a part of me is very thankful for that open beta that they ran, because something about that just felt off. If that was what they were presenting to the world, I’m not sure that I wanted it. Of course, there are more options, such as Halo 4, but I’ve never really been a “Halo guy” for online play, so that would be too much of a transition. So, I sheepishly picked up a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, thinking to myself, “this is insanity, why bother?”
The truth is, it is a nice change of pace and while I know that I won’t give up on Battlefield 3 any time soon, the fact that having a decent fast-paced shooter at my fingertips this year for when I need something else is really quite nice. Go figure.
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