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20 Years Later: A Call of Duty Retrospective
236 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Satsunami and Adam take on one of gaming's most beloved first person shooters. But what made this iconic WW2 shooter so beloved at the time? Has time been kind to it? And after 20 years, how does it rank amongst the others of the genre? All this and more in this iconic retrospective.
What did you think of this game? Does it still hold up? Feel free to reach out and let us know!
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Chatsunami.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Chatsunami. My name's Chatsunami and joining me in this very special episode is none other than the one and only Sandwich himself, Adam.
Adam's Return to the Podcast
00:00:31
Speaker
Adam, welcome back from the Western Front. How's it been? Oh my god, nothing's changed here. It's quite incredible. I've been away for nearly a calendar year. Feels longer than that.
00:00:39
Speaker
But, you know, I was enjoying a quiet life, just living out in the woods, milking audishes, just ready to hang a microphone up.
Nostalgia and Call of Duty Discussion
00:00:47
Speaker
But then, as much as I tried to fight it, it pulled me back in again. Satsunami, you picked the one topic that you knew I couldn't resist. Adam, you said you'd be home by Christmas. What the hell, man? There's a lot of audishes, man. Let me tell you. I said I was going to milk them all, damn it.
00:01:02
Speaker
Did I actually tell you that I was talking to my girlfriend and she was like, I want to listen to more episodes of your podcast. Say no more, my dear. Living in the Pokemon world, let's go! And the thing was, I was driving as well so she couldn't turn that off. Nothing like a captive audience, eh? Exactly, yeah.
Call of Duty's Prolific Nature
00:01:21
Speaker
Other than that horrifying thought, how have you been? I've not been too bad, thank you very much. This has been a lovely spell of nostalgia for me as I got to travel back to the halcyon days of my early life, remembering a particular fond game I used to love. And that game of course is none other than The One and Only Cod.
00:01:37
Speaker
or Call of Duty or that game that rivals FIFA in terms of iterations but yeah today we are going all the way back to 2003 because I can't believe I'm saying this at the time of this episode coming out it will be 20 years since this franchise reared its head into the gaming landscape and really solidified its name didn't it? Well little boy's all grown up now isn't he?
00:02:05
Speaker
you're completely right it's actually crazy that it's been 20 years. Not the fact that it's just been 20 years, the fact that there's literally been a game every single one of those 20 years non-stop since 2003. It's a run for the ages if you ask me. I mean there's nearly as many code games as there are James Bond films, if not more. I think that's a very telling thing.
00:02:26
Speaker
There can only be a couple more James Bond films. There can't be that many more than COD Game. And do you know what? If you probably count the spin-offs, they probably might actually start to rival it.
Jason Statham and Film Comparisons
00:02:35
Speaker
So what you're saying is, for the next COD game, you want Idris Elba to start on it. I want Idris Elba. Who were the other people who were touted to be James Bond years ago? Henry Cavill. Insert other famous people who are hot, right? Timothy Chalamet. Kylie Jenner. I don't know. Ray Winston. You know, all the classics. Well, that is a blast from the fact, my God.
00:02:53
Speaker
Twenty years ago, Ray Winston would have been a big thing, because I don't know if it was the King Arthur film. Remember the King Arthur film?
00:03:00
Speaker
I remember echoes and shadows of it in my mind. God, we need to watch the King Arthur film. That's next week. Book that episode in. That must be nearly 20 years old. I mean, speaking of which, Jason Statham, he was in this as well, was he not? Oh, God, he was as well. I was going to say a young Jason Statham. I bet if you went and looked at pictures of Jason Statham in 2003, he probably looks the exact same as now. He just has a very grizzled look to his face.
00:03:25
Speaker
Definitely does. I mean, he's coming out with a new film, funny
Call of Duty's Historical Significance
00:03:28
Speaker
enough. I think it probably will be getting advertised as of this episode, and I think it'll probably be out in the next couple of months, where he plays a beekeeper taking on a fishing company. And I don't mean like literally fishing for fish, I mean digital fishing, scammers and things. I don't know, it looks like a lot of fun. Is that the plot of The Expendables 4? Quite possibly, yeah. Jerry, I thought you were talking about it, is there anything I know of a case and stay from coming out?
00:03:53
Speaker
No, I literally saw the trailer today. And I was like, oh, that's Jason Statham. He was a beekeeper. Shooting office workers. I'm like, oh, OK. Fair enough. Of course he's got a gun. Who plays the bees? Is it Sylvester Stallone? No, it's Nick Cage. Come on, man.
00:04:09
Speaker
Anyway, sorry, speaking of bees, seas, colleges, do you see what I did there? I liked it, I liked it. But yeah, before we go on and talk about really the good, the bad, and the downright confusing of this game, and in particular how it's held up today, because this is something quite interesting you and I were talking about before we came on.
Evolution of Gaming and Multiplayer
00:04:31
Speaker
The fact that there weren't really many people talking about the significance of it, it feels as if it's just one of these games that's been taken for granted. You know, at the time it was like really prolific, it was revolutionary, but now people are just like, oh yeah, it was the first God. So what? I think people are legitimately, you can argue, barely or unfairly, people are sick of this series. It's not a fresh, new, exciting series by any stretch. I don't think there's a general desire to look back. You know, it's not like Sonic
00:05:00
Speaker
or Ariel or Zelda or something where we look back to these kind of early games and maybe the series has changed quite drastically in the time. I'm sure we'll discuss this about how different we think card numero uno was to everything that's come afterwards, but I just think people are just generally sick to be honest.
00:05:16
Speaker
I mean, for the younger people listening to this episode, think back to a time where there wasn't a battle pass, there wasn't really much online play. I mean, I think technically there is online play for the first game, but I don't know if that came retroactively. No, it came at the time. Did it come at the time? Yeah, it was very popular. No, because I was quite surprised when I was looking at it and they said it had multiplayer and I wasn't sure whether it was one of these land or local or it was actually widespread.
00:05:45
Speaker
It's also a very, I don't know if you watch much of the US office. Have you seen any of it? Have you? Oh, yeah. Have you seen the episode with cod in it? No. It's like season three or something. It's quite funny. One of the offices is like every afternoon, they'll shut up shop to close the blinds seriously into it. And this is one of the great lines, like, you don't take a sniper rifle to Carrington.
00:06:02
Speaker
But yeah, going back to what I was saying, think of a time where multiplayer was very limited. You didn't have Soviets with cat ears, Storming, Stalingrad.
Chatsunami's Diverse Topics Overview
00:06:12
Speaker
You didn't have, I don't know, Snoop Dogg or Nicki Minaj. I know they weren't popular at the time. I suppose, I don't know, what, the Spice Girls storming Omaha Beach. I think you've gone too far back.
00:06:24
Speaker
Really? Oh, I think who was popular in 2003? This must have been like sugar babes territory or something. Wait, were they sugar babes 2003? They must have been. Whatever version of the sugar babes was at the time, they must have been. What about backstreet boys? Maybe I'm being very specifically like UK here. I'm thinking like Busted or McFly at this time. Oh my god, can you imagine Busted Avril Lavigne?
00:06:48
Speaker
That's the one, that's the one, Avril Lavigne. There was none of that. I mean, I've kind of negated my point considering people don't know what I'm talking about, about battle passes and celebrity cameos, but I don't think they'll know what an Avril Lavigne is.
00:07:03
Speaker
You know what, see as we go away and look up a couple more references while we listen to some messages. Let's do it. So grab your parachutes and we will be right back after these messages. Welcome to Shatinami, a variety podcast that discusses topics from gaming and films to anime in general interest.
00:07:23
Speaker
Previously on Chatsunami, we've analysed what makes a good horror game, conducted a retrospective on Pierce Brosnan's runs James Bond, and listened to us take deep dives into both the Sonic and Halo franchises. Also, if you're an anime fan, then don't forget to check us out on our sub-series, Chatsunani, where we dive into the world of anime. So far, we've reviewed things like Death Note, Princess Mononoke, and the hit Bayblade series. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you can check us out on Spotify, iTunes, and all big podcast apps. As always, stay safe,
00:07:53
Speaker
Stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated. Join me, Slade, and my two co-hosts, Joey and Tim, over at the Video Game Club, where once every two weeks we review a video game, not too dissimilar to a book club. Podcast. You can find us at the Video Game Club on all good podcast providers, and some sketchy ones as well.
Zencaster Promotion
00:08:22
Speaker
This episode is sponsored by Zenkaster. If you're a podcaster that records remotely like me, then you'll know how challenging it can be to create the podcast you've always wanted. That's where Zenkaster comes in. Before I met Zenkaster, I was put a naive podcaster, recording on low quality, one-track audio waves.
00:08:57
Speaker
I want you to have the same easy experience I do for all my podcasting and content needs. It's time to share your story.
00:09:09
Speaker
I really didn't know that personally. Oh, sorry, my life. So, never gets old. Let's dive into this very iconic game and let's discuss the good, the bad and, well, the DLC as well. Or, sorry, should I say the expansion pass.
00:09:26
Speaker
Oh my god, I've not heard that term in so long. Before DLCs and horse armour, you know, cosmetic downloads before kids were borrowing their mum's credit cards or their dad's credit cards.
EA vs. Activision Rivalries
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, we had expansion packs, which I think
00:09:42
Speaker
were probably the same price as the games themselves if not a wee bit cheaper but they were like fully fledged games in their own right like you can play them separately and still get a very good experience but yeah today we're going to be talking about the good the bad and the downright united offensive
00:10:00
Speaker
about these games. So before we go on to Adam, would you like to give the lovely listeners at home a background about this game? Nothing would give me more pleasure. So if we're looking at the history of video games, rivalries have always been a thing. You're thinking FIFA Pro Evo, you're thinking Xbox PlayStation, Nintendo Sega, you can pick so many. However, there's
00:10:22
Speaker
One that I don't think always gets the most attention but is quite important and is especially important for our story today, that's the conflict between EA and Activision. They have both been big players in the video game industry for a long time now. EA since the 90s, Activision maybe even from the 80s I think, and they both grew as the industry grew bigger until in the early 2000s. They were both significant
00:10:44
Speaker
EA was probably the top dog out of the two. Obviously they had things like FIFA, they had The Sims, many other kind of popular franchises that were incredibly popular. And this is before everybody turned against hating EA. So they were very much at their heights. One series that they had, which was incredibly popular and is now, I think has literally faded into the background. I don't think anybody ever mentions it now, but that was the Medal of Honor series, which was incredibly popular.
00:11:10
Speaker
That just makes me sad. Don't make me sad. Hey, you've been gone for a year. I've got a whole book out of these jokes. I'm sure I've brought this up before in other episodes. I've just lamented how sad I am that The Medal of Honor series is gone. It's not fully gone in fairness. There was a game not that long ago, but it's nowhere near the heights that it once was, especially in the late 90s, early 2000s.
00:11:30
Speaker
But yeah, so Medal of Honor for those you don't know was a very popular series of games, first person shooter set in World War Two, and is actually a game which you could say is the one that popularized the whole World War Two FPS genre, if we're being honest, back with its first release on the
Infinity Ward's Formation and COD's Origins
00:11:44
Speaker
PlayStation one. But it was a very popular series of games. And what people might consider to be the height of the series was in 2002, when a game called Allied Assault was released on
00:11:53
Speaker
PC. Very popular, took a lot of inspiration from World War Two films of the time, particularly Saving Private Ryan. I think it's fair to say it's dated now, but I still quite enjoy it. I still think there's some fun to be had. I think you've played a bit, haven't you? Oh yeah, absolutely. I actually remember when you and I were talking about episode ideas and one of the ones that came up, of course, was because we were both Code fans and you are a Medal of Honor fan. I'm assuming you still are a Medal of Honor fan. Oh, I am. I still carry a torch for it.
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah, I remember you recommending Allied Assault. I went away and played it. I can't remember if you bought me a copy or not where I got it. I think you must have given me one. But yeah, I went away, I played it, and I was quite shocked, to be honest, at how good it was. The thing is, you have to play these games with a
00:12:41
Speaker
pinch us all. The fact that gaming and especially FPS games have come such a long way compared to what they used to be. If you play your modern shooters they're obviously not going to play the same as something that came out in
00:12:56
Speaker
3, but when you look at it through that perspective and contextually, it really holds up well, but there was a couple of gripes I had with it. Some bits I liked, some bits I didn't, and then when I moved on to cod, it was quite interesting to see the transition between them. Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment of it.
00:13:15
Speaker
If you played at the time, you probably still have a good nostalgia for it, but I think it's a game that is probably more difficult to get into now. But I think there's still some fun to be had. But as I said, the Medal of Honor series was the top dog in this genre at the time. And so when Activision were looking for a way to kind of narrow the gap between themselves and EA, they knew they couldn't really compete in areas like
00:13:34
Speaker
the FIFA games or anything, but looking at it, they thought an area like the FPS genre is an area that we probably can compete with EA and we may even be able to overtake them. And so that's what they tried to do in 2003. So what Activision did in time old-fashioned was launch a good old raid of EA's talent. And in this case, they took about just over 20 developers who had worked on Allied Assault, part of a company that was called 2015, Incorporated. We'd been responsible for putting together Allied Assault.
00:14:00
Speaker
who'd found it quite a grueling process and then been quite disillusioned when EA kind of took the Medal of Honor license away from them. Activision brought them, but these employees, into the fold and they formed a company called Infinity Ward, which as I'm sure you know, their name probably sounds familiar to a lot of people. Never heard of them.
00:14:17
Speaker
a name that is synonymous with the Call of Duty franchise to this day. But yeah, so they came together and their aim was to take down the Medal of Honor series. And so they began to work on a project that they like to call Medal of Honor Killer, as we were talking about off their time-honoured fashion of creating a game series with Killer as the suffix in the hope that you'll become top dog, which often doesn't work, but as history would prove, they were correct.
00:14:39
Speaker
in their belief that they were going to kill off Medal of Honor. And quite swiftly to be honest as well, sadly it was quite a rapid demise. But yeah, so they began to work on World War II FPS shooter. Interestingly, they were going down a kind of very similar route to Medal of Honor, but they decided to make some quite significant changes to it, which kind of gave their game a kind of fresh identity. And I think this is a good place to leave off because we can start talking a bit more about this as we get into discussing the game itself.
00:15:04
Speaker
You're completely right when you were just touching on the fact that there was a lot of games that dubbed themselves as the killer of X and Y and you think oh great okay it's all this bravado and oh I'm gonna be the best but genuinely this game we can all overemphasise how significant it was, not only in terms of World War II shooters because the gaming landscape, especially for
00:15:30
Speaker
FPS games looked far, far different back then than it does nowadays because it wasn't until 2006 that Call of Duty actually transformed from being known as this World War 2 shooter game to an FPS game. This whole identity was seeped
00:15:46
Speaker
ironically enough seeped in the mud of this World War II identity and then transformed into this global sensation with the modern warfare series with black ops even going back to World War II for a wee cheeky rendezvous behind the bike sheds and then came back out again and of course that one time they went to space and they never called them back again but we don't talk about that one do we Adam?
Call of Duty's Gameplay Innovations
00:16:09
Speaker
Don't lie, you secretly wish we could tell more about it. I actually do, I'm not gonna lie. It's probably Advanced Warfare that I'm thinking of. The one where he who should not be named appeared as a villain both in real life and the game. But, him aside, will we go into what makes this game so good looking back on it? Let's do it.
00:16:28
Speaker
So the first thing I want to point out is the fact that it captures, even back then, the fact that it captures the atmosphere of war really well and something that I find quite interesting that kind of ties into this is the fact that for the first game and its expansion that they still use this health pack system. So you know, anyone playing Call of Duty nowadays you'll be used to getting shot and then you hide behind a
00:16:54
Speaker
cover and then you come back out and it's regenerative health. Back then it seemed more common to have health packs in these kinds of shooter games. Doom had it, Medal of Honor had it, all of these types of games, they had this kind of gameplay loop.
00:17:10
Speaker
part. Is that right in saying? Oh, you're completely right. It was the default health system for these games. The original Halo had kind of introduced a hybrid system where you had your recharging shield. And then once that depleted, you then had your health bar, like underneath that, that laid the path for regenerating health as a dominant concept. But it did take a little bit longer. I think if I'm right, the Halo 2 had a completely regenerating health system. And that was 2004. So, you know, one year after Call of Duty release, but bar health or health
00:17:38
Speaker
whoever you want to say was the dominant system. And I have to say, by the way, it's a wee bit archaic now we're going back to that style of play because I know some games nowadays use it but it forces you to slow down, even in easy mode, it forces you to slow down and take in the atmosphere, the environments, everything that's going around. I think personally from that it does provide a very solid basis to
00:18:05
Speaker
developed from. I have to say right off the bat this is spoilers for what I think is probably bad about the game. I think there's areas that could have been improved on back then, but at the same time I feel as if it provides a really solid basis to evolve into what it eventually became, like especially the CoD 2. I could gush about that game for absolute ages, but unfortunately CoD 2 is not your day to day. It's your baby brothers or your older brothers, so back in line.
00:18:36
Speaker
You're in the 18 this year. Is it actually only 18? Yeah, 2005. Wow. It can drink though. Well, no it can't in America. And now you're in this game. But yeah, what are your thoughts on that? Do you think it does capture the atmosphere of war? I think it does. And I think
00:18:52
Speaker
particularly in comparison to the other titans of the WW2 genre at this time, it does that a lot better. And this partly goes to the kind of direction that Infinity War decided to pursue when making Call of Duty. Medal of Honor was a series that was kind of defined by that
00:19:08
Speaker
like one-man army basically in the way that Wolfenstein 3D and Doom basically laid down the one-man army coming through whatever enemy you happen to be fighting so obviously in this case Nazi army and that was the way you're on secret missions you're behind enemy lines you and just your massive arsenal to like take down the Nazi war machine and whatever dastardly plans they had and that was the plot of Medal of Honor games that was the same with the Wolfenstein games that was very much the set story I'll say storyline loosely not these games had like very involved stories often
00:19:35
Speaker
Some didn't, in fairness, but that was the premise, basically. And that was the original path that Call of Duty was going down as well. It was going down that one-man army, like Secret Spy type road. However, they decided to try and distinguish, Infinity Ward wanted to try and distinguish their game from what was on the market.
WWII Campaign Diversity
00:19:52
Speaker
And so they went far more into a squad-based shooter. And in that way, they kind of brought a greater sense of realism
00:19:58
Speaker
I think, and I say realism loosely, because again, this is a video game, it's a very cinematic video game. I'm not going to tell you this represents World War Two particularly well, but I think it does a better job than other games of the time. And that exactly plays into what you're saying, that kind of atmosphere of the war. It's because you feel more like a regular soldier, you know, you usually have squad mates with you, whether that be just like one or two, or you know, in a lot of the Soviet missions, you can sometimes be fighting with like
00:20:23
Speaker
quite a sizeable amount of fellow soldiers. It allows for almost a sense of larger battles, and you did get larger battles in other games, but again, it was like one versus 50 or whatever, you know, in that sense, rather than you feeling like you're actually part of a wider sort of engagement, which is obviously more true to what war is generally, to be honest. So kind of going down that route, I think really did help to set this game apart, and also is a big strength that I think still does remain. Obviously, I think later games have done it better, and later games have done the realism aspect of World War II,
00:20:52
Speaker
a lot better, but I do think it's something that's admirable about this game still. Yeah, because going back to something you were saying there about the one-man army trope, I have to admit I was really surprised when I played Medal of Honor because I thought when I was playing, oh I just hope and you have that very famous scene of the American troops storming the beaches of Normandy and such and it's like a very iconic moment which
00:21:17
Speaker
I have to admit, it's something I brought up to you at the time. That particular event isn't featured in this game, but all the collaboration that you do, that you feel is if you are a soldier within an army, they didn't include that. And I think it's something I think you brought up, that it's probably because they didn't want to, you know, release the game so close to the competitor and then say, oh yeah, we're copying this particular sequence, even though I don't think anybody
00:21:43
Speaker
probably would have minded someone retelling these events but something i was really surprised that was at the very end was as you said you're a one-man army essentially you're storming through french villages and things you go into this basin you fire off mustard gas and everything it's a really jarring one i have to say it's a very jarring ending but you're completely right for this one there's a lot more camaraderie and
00:22:10
Speaker
There's a lot of influences as well and I'll save this point for the kind of bad aspects but you can definitely tell they're taking from other popular media at the time like for example Anime at the Gates for the Soviet campaign, Band of Brothers for the Americans and of course Faulty Towers for the British campaign. For legal reasons that's a slight joke but I will get back.
00:22:34
Speaker
onto that but going back to the gameplay itself one of the things that I was severely impressed by was just the way that the game almost guides you without overly stating it at times and I have to admit that caused me to run into some troubles in some of the levels but you know it's not just a case of you know nowadays you've got invisible walls you've got insta deaths and things and this one they have
00:22:59
Speaker
relatively realistic ones like they place their enemies so that you know oh I have to go this way because there's a room full of Nazi soldiers so I gotta gun my way through here or they keep you within the bounds with mines with barbed wire with fences and such. I mean it's really well done in that regard and I have to say it was very helpful in the Soviet campaign
00:23:22
Speaker
These are corridor levels. This is not an open world, but any stretch of the imagination. Like most first-person shooters were of this time, most were linear. If it was larger areas, it was still like corridors you were going down. So really, this game tries to disguise that in a way. As you say, it tries to put more natural obstacles in a way, whether, as you say, it be barbed wire or collapsed buildings, minefields.
00:23:45
Speaker
It gives it a more realistic, slightly less gamey sense. I don't mind it that much.
00:24:03
Speaker
I mean they definitely tried to cater for a cinematic experience this time because it can be quite difficult and you and I of course have a lot of experience now as seasoned gamers where we've played games that you kind of think oh this is very narrative heavy or oh this is very gameplay heavy but it's not so much narratively well structured but they were certainly trying to strike for a balance here
00:24:33
Speaker
They definitely were. We can put narrative in quotation marks. This isn't a narrative heavy game, as a lot of the early Call of Duty's weren't. They were very much gameplay first. So yeah, I would definitely agree on that one. One thing I do think is a real strength of this game, though, and again, it's another thing that helped to set it apart at the time.
00:24:51
Speaker
I think was a very good addition that kind of set a little bit of a trend. I think especially for Call of Duty games still going forward was widening the perspective of the war. What I mean by that is that in the original Call of Duty, you have three campaigns to play through. You've got the American campaign, you've got a British campaign, you've got a Soviet campaign. Now that was something
Cinematic Approach of Call of Duty
00:25:10
Speaker
new.
00:25:10
Speaker
Unless there's a game that I've either I don't know about or I'm forgetting off the top of my head, but all previous World War II games, they may have featured other characters from, you know, different nations. Like, I know Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which was another big first-person shooter of this time of 2001. I had British characters there, but they were very much American-focused. You were always playing as an American. You'd usually be in kind of American battles. Like, obviously we talked about how I just saw landing on Omaha Beach and things like that.
00:25:36
Speaker
But what was good about this one, it was another, obviously, I think when they were developing this game, they were looking for a way to appeal to a wider sort of European audience, not just an American audience. So that's why they made this decision to branch out and have these stories. And I really liked that. I think it's really good. This was a world war. It affected so many countries like Europe, Asia, all around the world. Any chance that you get to get a wider perspective of the Second World War, I think is always good. That was one very positive addition. I think it's something that still deserves credit.
00:26:03
Speaker
especially what you said about that alternate perspective because and this is a very double-edged point here so apologies in advance as I said I'll expand when we talk about the bad aspects of this game but one of the highlights of this game in particular is definitely the Soviet campaign which I was actually really surprised at because the British one was okay I've got my gripes with it yeah the Soviet one was
00:26:32
Speaker
surprisingly good. Especially because, as you said, you weren't fighting as a single person, you were fighting as an entire union. But you were fighting as this united front to take down the Nazi war machine. And of course, you go through Stalingrad, you go through other memorable battles. We don't talk about the tanks yet, but
00:26:54
Speaker
Then, of course, you get to the ending, which, while I do think it would have been satisfying at the time, I think it's actually ruined by future iterations of code. So for anyone who doesn't know, the final level is essentially you storm the Reichstag as the Soviet Union. And, you know, there's that very famous scene where the Soviet soldier unfurls the Soviet Union
00:27:22
Speaker
flag on top of the Reichstag that essentially signifies the end of the war in that respect. But see when you compare this to World at War, even though that's like a lot more over the top, like did you think that as well going back to replay this? Oh, it doesn't compare. You're right. The end of this game has been ruined by the end of World at War. It just doesn't compare. It is a shame. It's not Call of Duty 1's fault. You know, it was a style at the time, but it has been ruined, unfortunately, by that.
00:27:51
Speaker
But still, I can appreciate the time. I remember enjoying the ending when I first played it back in the day, but you're right. It doesn't really stack up now. And before we move on to the bad aspects, there's one or two more things I want to highlight. One thing in terms of the gameplay in particular is the fact that you can actually aim down your sights, which I did not realise that was such a late feature in the FPS show.
00:28:16
Speaker
Maybe there was one or two other games doing it, but yeah I'm actually surprised Metal of Honor didn't do it first. Yeah, it's one of these things we take for granted now, it's funny isn't it? I'm pretty sure this was the game that introduced Iron Sights, and that obviously games before had had sniper scopes, and that was usually the only weapon you could do this with was a sniper rifle. But I'm almost certain that this was the game that introduced Iron Sights as a concept, which is something now that I don't think we could imagine.
00:28:41
Speaker
Imagine playing a first-person shooter without iron sights, although Doom and Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal didn't have iron sights. It works for a certain type of shooter, but for the type of shooter that Call of Duty was in 2003 and is still now, you couldn't have it without iron sights. Do you know one other thing that I'd be interested to get your opinion on?
00:28:57
Speaker
What did you think about, they call it the shell shock feature.
Memorable Characters and Realism
00:29:00
Speaker
It's that feature where basically your movement will slow and your vision kind of blurs and there's like the kind of ringing noise. Usually if like an explosion goes off close to you. That was another big thing this game like, I say pioneer, but it certainly introduced. Did you like that at all? I did think it added to the experience. I definitely got flashbacks to the later iterations I called because I know they kept it for
00:29:22
Speaker
I don't know if they kept it for all of them, but there's a good few. Like for Modern Warfare, the original one, they definitely kept it. And I think they do it when Captain Price says he's very iconic, we are leaving, and he pulls you out of the boat. But yeah, no, I really liked it. I did think that it added a lot to the game. I didn't appreciate it when they did it two times in a row because some bugger had a panzer strike and they kept firing at it. I'm like, could they not?
00:29:49
Speaker
It's like I'm already shell-shocked, for God's sake. It certainly is a double-edged sword in gameplay terms, but I agree with you, I like it as a sort of immersive feature. I think it does help and it kind of adds a sense of gravity. It's that sense that it makes you feel more like a kind of ordinary person, ordinary soldier, rather than the, you know, super soldier that you are in other games in the genre. Well, I'm just really glad you didn't see me playing it, because I may or may not have blitzed through, you know, Frank Dreben in Police Squad.
00:30:19
Speaker
That's not all you went for. Yeah, just kicked in the door. I'm Sergeant Tetsu, allied horses. Don't let me see you and friends again. And then I fall out the barn window and go, oh! As a spitfire just flies on the credits roll. Sorry, my fan fiction aside, the only other thing that I would mention before we go into the bad points is the characters were quite memorable. Maybe this is absolute heresy, but I don't really remember
00:30:47
Speaker
any characters from Medal of Honor. Maybe there was one or two but as you said for the most part it was really focused on this well very much one-man army as you said whereas in this they definitely tried to make more of an impression with the characters. You had your Captain Price technically related to the Captain Price of the Modern Warfare theme but this one came first. You had Sergeant Midi as well. He also had Jason Statham as
00:31:17
Speaker
Sergeant Waters, that's him, thank you. Yeah, he was an absolute beast in that. I just wanted to point that out, but I thought the characters were a lot more memorable than this one. I would definitely agree. I think it plays in nicely as well, because it was funny, I was thinking that because I was like, yeah, I remember the American characters, I remember the British characters, and I was like, who are the Soviet ones again? There are a couple, but actually, I think it plays in well because it is more this like mass army type thing. But it's very communist in a way. It's very much like you're part of the collective sort of communism and the Soviet Union.
00:31:46
Speaker
What is this? But I think like the soldiers you do meet, I think it works well because there's two that you meet in the first two levels. You remember the very first level where you're like trying to get up the riverbank. You meet the guy who tells you to like basically run between cars, like draw machine gun fire while he snipes. And then you meet another one in the next level who like, right, if we keep running forward here, we're going to die. If we run back, we're going to die. So let's try and find some way to get out of this.
00:32:08
Speaker
So you kind of meet more rugged, obviously more grizzled veterans, which I think plays well into the story, especially as you're playing as this like fresh face recruit. I think it's good. So I think it does catch as well. Again, it's not a narrative game. There's no big arc for Sergeant Waters or Captain Foley or any of these people, but I think they play their parts well for what's required. Slight spoilers. And this is your last spoiler warning before we go into the bad side and discuss a lot of these particular characters.
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, what happened to Captain Price? I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit underwhelmed. For anyone who doesn't know and are morbidly curious, there's a level where you have to sneak up over to this. I think it's like a cargo ship off the coast of Norway. It was one of the big German battleships of the war, the Tirpitz. And of course it's very sensationalised, you know, as far as I could see. I don't think such a thing ever occurred.
00:33:01
Speaker
door, you know, that obviously wasn't like a secret sabotage, as it were, of that variety. Not that variety. No, and I've got to say the sailors were far more formidable compared to the soldiers. I have to say I got bodied a lot more when I was on that ship as opposed to fighting off the Germans in the middle of France. But
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, there was a scene I remember, I was just running through and of course I was running and gunning and I ran down the stairs and I did the golden eye thing, you know, where you run down the stairs and you jump on the boat and then all of a sudden, I think it's Sergeant Midy that's waiting for you, although I could be wrong, it could be someone else, but whoever's waiting for you in the boat, they're like, oh where's Captain Price? Ah, he's dead. Oh well he'll be remembered, oh what a spiffing chap and blah blah blah and I was like, well he died? Really? You weren't going to tell me?
00:33:53
Speaker
This is the one area where this game really stands out from what was to come. You can't imagine a character death being done that way in anything post Call of Duty 3. The games from then on basically made this massive deal about and obviously character death became a huge thing in the named character death. I should say it became a huge thing in those games.
00:34:11
Speaker
Almost in a way I admire the understated blink and you'll miss and you don't even see his death. You can hang about there like in a gunfight that he's in. I don't think he'll die. I think it'll only happen once you move off till you have your plants and explosives. And it's only when you come back that you can find his body there. But yep, I had the exact same reaction when I first did it. I went, wait, what? What happened?
00:34:30
Speaker
and then only playing it again. I was like, oh there's his body. I was like, oh man, Captain Price gone too soon. So what you're saying is you don't want to play a version of Modern Warfare 3 where it just cuts to a black background with white text that says Soap died on his way to the infirmary. I'd much rather play the end of Infinite Warfare where every single person has to have a drawn out death scene, no matter how ridiculous. And a recorded monologue.
00:34:55
Speaker
I quite like that. I actually quite like the recorded monologue. I really don't like the whole sacrifice, but it's so overdone. The recorded monologue, it would be nice if we'd had a recorded wireless message from Captain Price. It's like, take that Jerry or something. I don't know. Don't trust the Germans. They're crossing the Rhineland. I just cuts out. Seeing that, speaking of the potential bad, while we go on to the
00:35:16
Speaker
worst of this game. Whatever good there is, there's also some bad. Got to deal with
Gameplay Critiques and Design
00:35:20
Speaker
it. So I just want to kick things off and just talk briefly about the controls. And I do think that this is probably the least egregious thing about this game, but the controls are good for the time. But I feel as if, as I said, looking back on it from a contemporary perspective, it's not as good. You can't sprint. You know, you have to depend on the health
00:35:44
Speaker
packs and things and, you know, probably pissed off several people listening to this going, how dare you? You don't have to sprint to enjoy a game looking at you Adam for Halo. I'd be interested, did you play this with a mouse and keyboard?
00:35:58
Speaker
I did indeed, yeah. It's an interesting point because what is it specifically about? Is it the lack of features in a way that you didn't like as much? So as you say, not being able to sprint and such, or is it the way the controls are actually laid out? I wouldn't say the controls are bad. Genuinely, I feel as if the controls are quite good for the time, but there was a lot of really awkward things that, and again, it might be different if I was playing on
00:36:22
Speaker
a control work but I felt it was quite awkward switching between your guns because you had to use either the scroll wheel or the 1, 2, 3 and the same for grenades as well. You had to switch out physically to your grenades whereas you know nowadays in college you press a different button and it just hurls a grenade and
00:36:40
Speaker
Again, it's not that the controls were bad. I just think compared to what it's evolved into, again, using that term of it laid a solid foundation like I think it did, but I feel as if it doesn't hold up as well. But again, it's by no means bad. The grenade thing, I think, is definitely a fair point. The grenade system feels clunky in this one. I guess you can argue it's slightly more realistic.
00:37:04
Speaker
Having to pull out a grenade physically and use it does feel clunkier than pressing G or whatever you might do in later ones and just throwing one. That is something that I think definitely was a good addition, was making that a quicker process for just helping the gameplay. It's an interesting point, and I see what you mean as well about switching weapons. You know, it maybe isn't always the fastest. I don't know, maybe it's just like, again, I tend to play more games on the console and stuff than I would on a PC, so I don't.
00:37:29
Speaker
often you know use the mouse and keyboard for playing a first-person shooter but for the ones that I have it kind of felt the same to me so I didn't really have major problems with it but it's interesting and that's not to say like the beyond reproach but it's just it's just interesting to hear different experiences with it and stuff and I definitely think you're completely right in the way of
00:37:46
Speaker
It is clunkier not having a sprint and the grenade system is clunkier. One thing I do like is the ability to, you know, change your rate of fire. Now it's something that's in a lot of more modern cards, but it's not something that you always see in the kind of World War Two ones. That's actually, I always thought that was quite a nice little feature. Another interesting thing about this was this was a game that obviously limited you to having just two primary weapons. Then obviously you had your sidearm, which is a standard that the card games have followed since then. But it is different from a lot of previous games, which would let you just pick up a whole arsenal.
00:38:15
Speaker
of guns. What do you think about that as a concept? Do you prefer the two gun limit, or do you like having a full arsenal with you, just carried around at all times? I felt as if it contributed to the end of the game. Obviously, at least as far as I know, from a historical perspective, as far as I know, there wasn't British or American soldiers running around with that MP-40 in one hand, and that M1 Garant in the other hand, and dual wielding and everything. I mean, maybe there were, maybe there were, and we just didn't see it in the history books.
00:38:45
Speaker
but yeah I thought it added to the realism and again when I say realism I don't mean like oh it's realistic that someone's carrying two assault rifles but I say them on guard and then you know I said assault rifle I know it's not the same but yeah I feel as if it's that idea of
00:39:04
Speaker
encouraging you to scavenge, but not feel as if you're, again, this idea that you're a one-man army. You know, you're not the Doom Slayer. You're not, is it Blazkowicz, the guy from Wolfenstein? You're not him. You're not this superpowered hunk of beef that's like gone and everyone down.
00:39:22
Speaker
You know, I mean, don't get me wrong, kind of are. You've probably got a better chance in this army than half of the NPCs that are following you, but yeah, I actually didn't mind it, I have to say. I didn't feel as if it detracted at all, although I have to admit, sometimes what I will say is I felt some of the weapons were a little bit underpowered, especially the MP40, and some of the guns like that. I felt as if unless you hit people in the right spots, then they kind of just got back up again as if
00:39:51
Speaker
Oh, why did you ship me? It's a funny thing with these games, but I think the MP4 is one that's always interesting. I feel in some games it's incredibly overpowered. Well, as you say in other ones, it's like basically not much better than like a peashooter. So that's always interesting. I have to correct you on one thing. It's nothing about what you just said about the two weapon system, but it's not Doom Slayer. It's the Doom Slayer. Oh, yes.
00:40:12
Speaker
minor point of correction there but I agree with you like there's some games that have a two weapon limit which I don't like and I don't think works in it Bioshock Infinite is the primary example for me on that one but I think a two weapon limit actually works well for these type of games for your call of duties you know and games that are going for a slightly more quote-unquote realistic experience I think it makes sense and I think it works better I don't think you need to be carrying around everything you know it's just
00:40:39
Speaker
sometimes it's handy when tank pops round the corner and you can just pull out your bazooka that you've carried really this whole time. But there's also a fun in being like, oh crap, where's the crate of Panzerfaust going to run around now and find it? So I think it works well in this game, I would agree with you. But going off at that point and talking about the gameplay, one of the things that although I credited it for using its environment really well, there's one particular thing, and I'm quite curious to hear what you have to say about this, but there were a couple of
00:41:08
Speaker
design choices that I really object, well not objected to but had a lot of reservations for. One of them being the overuse of liminal spaces and what I mean by that is there's a lot of levels where you're of course playing with the Soviet Union, you're playing as this united front trying to push back
00:41:28
Speaker
the war machine and everything and there's levels where it's like there's not really anything in these empty spaces and I know that's kind of a weird thing to complain about to be like well obviously there's nothing there. It's a ruined city, it's a city that's been bombed by the Nazis. What are you expecting? But usually in games they have a health pack, maybe a hidden weapon, maybe an easter egg, anything, something. But there's a lot of areas you go into and there's just nothing there.
00:41:57
Speaker
you're just kind of standing around and again I think the scope of it at the time would have been amazing. I feel as if he played this for the first time in 2003. You would have been blown away by the absolute scale of this game but I don't know. I feel as if it's quite a glaring
00:42:15
Speaker
problem at least in terms of looking at it nowadays because as you said this is very much a corridor shooter you know it leads you down the path and says go here do this objective do that objective but then yeah when you get levels like that it just feels a bit loaded
00:42:31
Speaker
I would say. I'd agree, and the Call of Duty series has, I think, produced some really standout environments, like Chernobyl from Call of Duty 4 is the one I always think of. There's nothing really like that in here in the original game. This isn't a game, unless I've missed it over these 20 years, this isn't a game for environmental storytelling by any means. It is glorified corridors, and you're right, there is a lot of quite boring empty space.
00:42:53
Speaker
that I don't think it's not a game that's designed you to spend a lot of time. And these environments, preferably, once they keep pushing you forward, you're progressing through because they're not that exciting spaces to fight in and everything. What it's trying to draw you in is the kind of action and the intensity of the gameplay and the firefights themselves, rather than the environments that you're in. But it is a fair criticism of this game.
00:43:13
Speaker
The ecology series would do a lot better and it would develop past these quite simplistic levels. Don't get me wrong, that's not just limited to the Soviets. If you go back to, I think it's the second level of the American campaign, you're fighting through the streets of France and you go through all the houses and things, some of them are ruined, some of them are alright and it
00:43:34
Speaker
On the one hand it is quite cool to fight through these settings because you don't really get that as much nowadays in terms of these very unique set pieces but then again you go to some corners and it's just like a hollow house and you're like what was nobody here, even before the bombings was nobody living, was this just like a propaganda village you know like where they just prop up
00:43:57
Speaker
of houses that nobody inside had a German's faces must have been read when they came through that town and they were like, there's nothing here. It is an excellent point. One thing I think is interesting, which I think actually in one sense is a positive, but I think another is a negative, is that some of these environments are actually
00:44:15
Speaker
It goes back to the actual sense of being realistic and being based off historical locations. So the first two British levels take place during the night before D-Day when American British paratroopers were dropped in to secure the flanks of the invasion. And you play as the British paratroopers landing at what was called Pegasus Bridge, which was this
00:44:32
Speaker
Canal Bridge, which actually happened on D-Day, and that environment is actually quite realistically modelled. I've been to the actual Pegasus Bridge and it's pretty close to how the bridge looks and the actual layout of the location, and that's one thing I think has done really well. I think it's the same with one of the middle Soviet levels, you go to a place known as Pavlov's House, which was a famous sort of
00:44:52
Speaker
battlefield location in Stalingrad, this kind of big apartment block that was ferociously fought over. I think that's supposed to be quite realistically modelled. However, it doesn't work in other places in the American campaign early on. You also play as an American paratrooper during D-Day. You land in the village of St. Mary-Glee's, which was an important location that American paratroopers had to try and capture on that night. And St Mary-Glee's is famous for having a very big, I say church, I don't think it's quite a cathedral, but it's a pretty big church. It's quite an imposing one.
00:45:18
Speaker
And compared to the church that's actually in the game, it's quite laughable to be honest. It's this tiny little thing. They pop into the level, nothing at all like the actual scale of the actual church itself in real life. And quite famously, an American paratrooper gets caught on the spires as he's coming down and he gets stuck up there for ages until they can get him down. And they try to recreate that. But again, you have an American paratrooper just hanging a couple of feet off the ground on this quite tiny spire. So it's something that I guess it depends on how interested you are in the actual history and stuff.
00:45:47
Speaker
but it's something that if you're just in it is quite laughable so it works well in some ways but not as well in other senses. That extends to other levels of course where as you said they're trying to recreate these historical set pieces and again I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who's played games for most of his life in 2023, obviously 20 years on from when this game came out so
00:46:12
Speaker
Maybe there was technical limitations for what they could and couldn't do, or maybe there was time constraints. I know time constraints for ecology to gain the margin, I don't imagine. They apparently do only have a year to make this. Activision were setting a trend quite early on. Start strong, keep it going. But...
00:46:27
Speaker
Yeah, there seems to be quite a few things that are fester from this. You might think, oh, what's the issue with all this unused space and everything? But when they have certain spaces as a set piece, then it starts to become a problem. And one issue, and apologies this may be going into sensitive territory here, is when you have to rescue, I think,
00:46:50
Speaker
it's British soldiers but I could be wrong. You have to rescue some soldiers in the prisoner of war camp and I feel as if it is completely undermined, purely because it's empty. Other than the German soldiers and the enemies that pop out to shoot you, it's just empty. And obviously I'm not saying all expected back then for them to have prisoners arriving in pain or tied up or whatever, you know, I'm not expecting them to have had that
00:47:18
Speaker
level of detail, but it just seems weird that they made a level so expansive and huge just to not really do anything with it. Does that make sense? It doesn't feel like a real location exactly because you're like, why is there this giant camp with one prisoner in it and like 200 German soldiers? Why are they all guarding this one person? Luckily you can kind of blaster that level quite quickly. You only have like a 10 minute time limit on that level anyway. I don't want you to hang about in there, but you're completely right. It's the worst example of that in this game. It is a real shame.
00:47:48
Speaker
And again, we can say time constraints, we can say resources, they're all fair points, but I do think they could have found a better way to do that. Maybe it's nitpicky from the two of us, but I would agree with you on that. So here's a point that I noted down when I was playing through this game, and I'm actually really curious to hear what you think of this, because it's something I mentioned earlier about this game copying other popular media at the time. For example, as I said,
00:48:17
Speaker
with the Soviet campaign they copied Enemy at the Gates with the American campaign Band of Brothers and a key and a half jokes and said about you know the British campaign being faulty towers so it's probably closer to a lower low
00:48:32
Speaker
to be honest, because it kind of leads into something else that I got really annoyed at. But, sorry, before I go on to that particular point, yeah, how did you feel about this? Because when I was reading up on it, a lot of historians were very peeved, and that is me being as nice as possible here, when they copied things from enemy at the gates especially, because there apparently is a scene where a lot of the Red Army troops try to flee and then they get shot in the back,
00:49:02
Speaker
but of course they tried to translate that into this game and historians of course argued saying they really saved that more for penal legions that if it's a prisoner who doesn't want to be there then that's probably why they were there to shoot them, to keep them in line.
00:49:18
Speaker
but in terms of the standard Red Army soldier, they weren't going to waste bullets and they weren't going to try and shoot their own men.
Cultural Biases and Campaign Evaluation
00:49:25
Speaker
So how do you feel about that with this game? For a game that is trying to not only be a Medal of Honor cover, but to try and assume a more realistic narrative. I mean it hampers the realism to a point.
00:49:37
Speaker
I get it though. It's not the first video game to have copied other media. It won't be the last. It is a prevalent trend and I get it. You do want to cash in. I mean, that's what Alad assault did. Alad assault completely cashed in on the same private Ryan Omaha beach landing scene. It's what happens in any kind of entertainment medium. You're going to copy what other reference points and what's popular because, you know, there's a reason it's popular and everything. So I get it. It is true that it obviously does harm the realism of points and everything.
00:50:04
Speaker
an expert historian on the Second World War, so people will be able to point out bigger inaccuracies maybe than I can see. But for me, I think a lot of what they're copying doesn't really harm it that much. I mean, Band of Brothers is based off history, it's based off a historical book, based off an actual squad, you know, an actual group of soldiers from World War Two, and they're obviously copying the copying scenes from that, and obviously they've made those scenes slightly more Hollywood-ish, more action-packed,
00:50:29
Speaker
but it's a game, it's a first person shooter game is what you expect. And Enemy at the Gates lent itself quite well to being copied because it obviously, but the Hollywood spin on the Battle of Stalingrad. So it makes sense to me, but like it's a fair point. Anytime these things happen, it tends to harm the realism, but it's not a huge issue for me if I'm perfectly honest. I like a lot of these set pieces. I think a lot of them are done quite well. So, you know, I don't really mind that they borrowed quote unquote liberally from other sources.
00:50:53
Speaker
Yeah, because I suppose that is the danger, isn't it? When you're trying to tell a relatively interesting story. But especially back then, if you're trying to tell an interesting story, but you also have to balance that with exciting gameplay. So you want to feel like you're part of the battle, when if you've got a commissar breathing down your neck saying, you better get out there or I'm going to shoot you in the face, you know. That's going to spurt you on to be like, OK, let me charge at them. But yeah, I wouldn't say it's
00:51:22
Speaker
probably in terms of a video game. I wouldn't say it's the most egregious fault of it but I can see why people take objection to it. I can see why people think oh it's probably not the best and it's a poor representation of the war but again if you're running around delivering health packs like tic tacs then yeah this isn't the most historically accurate source that you're going to be quoting on you.
00:51:48
Speaker
essay for history class. There's one particular point as well that I want to bring up and it's something that I was talking to you about. Do you remember this when I was telling you about my gripes with the British campaign? I do remember it. I thought you raised some excellent points. I thought it was a truly great conversation that we had on that. So for anybody who has played Call of Duty who's listening right now, I want you to play a little game for a second.
00:52:11
Speaker
think about the amount of times that you've seen the British Army or any kind of British armed forces in a college or two game and by that I don't mean the SAS and I don't mean any secret forces I don't mean any forces that have come together and like a small barbershop quartet to you know take out the Nazis from behind the front lines there is shockingly a real weird issue with
00:52:41
Speaker
Call of Duty where, and I've kind of dubbed it informally as the Bond Effect, basically the fact that the British are always categorised in these particular games as somewhat super spies. Like, you know, you meet Captain Price and then he goes on these missions with
00:53:00
Speaker
Sergeant Moody and then they they take out the Germans their own way in terms of like a small ragtag group and everything and oh they're always the underdogs and I think bar the second game because I played God 2 directly after this one and God 2 I absolutely love I love with a passion it's a great great game that I feel as if has probably held up better than this one
00:53:25
Speaker
But beyond that, if you even think of games like the Modern Warfare series, you know, you've got Price, Soap, Ghost as well. You know, they are part of Task Force 141. They are part of the British Army, but they're not part of like a bigger armed forces. Whereas for the Americans, you always get the best of both worlds. You always get the super spy hand-do attitude that they're going to take everyone down by themselves, but then they're also unified.
00:53:51
Speaker
And what I find interesting as well is that the Soviets have probably the opposite problem, where they're never categorised, ironically enough considering the Cold War happened, but they're never shown to be special forces or a small group. The Soviet Union are this somewhat big massive collective that did very well, let's just say, in repelling the German army at the time.
00:54:19
Speaker
but it's weird to see because, by all means, there was this small thing in history, and I don't know if you remember it, Adam. It was a small thing called the British Empire. Do you remember it? I think I've heard about it. I think I've seen a couple of platinum statues. Yeah, maybe. You might have heard it in passing. The point is, at the time of the war, there's a whole historical case, which we probably are about to dive into, so get your notepads out because this will probably help you in your history class.
00:54:48
Speaker
The British at the time of the war were probably underprepared at the very, very beginning because of the fallout of World War I. And, you know, there's a whole argument about appeasement and not stopping the Germans sooner. There's a whole debate about that. But the point is that for some reason there is this almost weird... I don't even know if you could say it's like an American
00:55:13
Speaker
bias that this game is made by American developers. It's very much heavily influenced by the way Americans view other countries, like they view the Soviets as, as I said, this big collective who rush at the front lines compared to these plucky go-getters when the British army was very formidable.
00:55:34
Speaker
in the war. Obviously not at the beginning of the war. We have a little thing called Dunkirk to back that up with. But did you ever notice that though Adam? Like see before I brought that up to you, did you ever notice that? It's something I noticed certainly in World War Two games but I didn't actually think about it more broadly until you'd actually brought it up. Thinking about the COD series here but you can apply it to other things. I thought more broadly about the COD series and I thought
00:55:56
Speaker
God, you're right, it always appears to be the SAS, or Special Forces, if British soldiers are ever brought in. CoD2 is the exception here, and I think the only exception to this one. It is all cultural perceptions, like that is what this is all based of. Whether we're talking about the Soviets, or whether we're talking about the British or the Americans or whatever, we're operating in these cultural perceptions that exist.
00:56:17
Speaker
And that we're there at the time and that exists, can exist now. In terms of that, I think the defining thing about Britain's war is often the small scale like spy stuff and special operations and things like that are the things that were often remembered for more than what our regular armed forces did. It's partly generated by other countries perceptions of us, but it's also partly self generated. And it was at the time, you know, we built up this whole image of the plucky little island.
00:56:43
Speaker
define the vast Nazi war machine which does not tell the whole story by any stretch like it is actually misleading in a lot of ways. It is what it is. It's a legacy that has endured and it is a shame if you look at College of Duty 1 and if you look at the three campaigns they almost act as like a kind of pyramid
00:56:58
Speaker
So if we look at like the Soviet one, the Soviet campaign, you generally tend to be part of larger units. You might feel like you're in bigger battles. There's more soldiers around. It's on a bigger scale. Then if we move to the Americans, you're often, you're usually operating, you're still in a squad, but it's probably slightly smaller. You know, the engagements are maybe more like squad versus squad type things, you know, but you'd always do have soldiers around you. And that comes from
00:57:22
Speaker
playing as paratroopers, which tended to be smaller units than your regular kind of army. But then if we go to the British, the British are right at the top and the British campaign unfortunately falls into that one-man army trope that Infinity War had tried to fight against, you know, and tried to go in a different direction. The British campaign kind of shows that they still did play into that. And you know, there are examples where you do fight. It's like the first two levels you're fighting, it's more akin to the American levels. You know, you're fighting in like a squad.
00:57:47
Speaker
slightly bigger engagements but after that you tend to generally only have one or maybe two fellow soldiers with you and it is all special operations type of stuff. It's a shame. I think we can say the British campaign is the weakest of the three. It's the shortest of the three. I think it's the weakest. I think it has the weakest levels. I don't think it has as many high points as the other two. It's a shame but you're completely right in that this set a trend for the series as a whole in how the British were going to be portrayed to an extent you know
00:58:16
Speaker
because I was joking with you that it reminds me of, and for anyone who's studied the First and Second Model War in school, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about here, but there was a particular image, especially for the First World War, where Germany had
00:58:31
Speaker
invaded France and they were going to invade France through Belgium. That was the Schlieflin plan, wasn't it? That is correct. Thank goodness, I got the right war. Okay, step one, correct. Yeah, there's this very famous political cartoon where it's this young boy stopping like this older grumpier man trying to get through a gate.
00:58:50
Speaker
and at the time the wee boy was obviously supposed to represent Belgium, this small plucky country, standing up to the aggression of like this old man, this old empire and everything trying to brute force his way through. And again, that is kind of the way that Britain have been portrayed in this. And don't get me wrong, there's also other media, you know, to back this up. College of Duty wasn't the first game over source of media.
00:59:16
Speaker
to make us into, you know, this small, plucky island and everything. I think the example that I gave you, Adam, was you know when you get these billionaires who pretend that they pulled up their bootstraps and everything and, you know, you find out that they say in an interview that they got a small modest loan of like a million pounds or something and you're like, well hold on a second!
00:59:38
Speaker
You've got a bit of a leg up here. But yeah, I wouldn't say that affects the game. It's definitely, as you said, it's definitely the weakest campaign, but I don't think it's probably something that would drag it down. But I do agree. I do think that whenever I had to play the British missions, I kept rolling my eyes thinking,
00:59:57
Speaker
god and i felt as if i preferred the soviet missions except for one the uh that of course was the tank mission which the tanks were made of air sats there's a wee cheeky history joke for you in there but they don't know the air sats from their tanks yeah oh that was a horrific mission and that's something that
01:00:16
Speaker
carried on to United offensive, slightly skipping ahead where just all the vehicles are just so squishy you get short handful of times and then that's it. In one way it's historically accurate to Soviet tank production. If you can look through the frustration you can maybe appreciate history.
01:00:32
Speaker
Would you say that was a low point for you, the two tank missions? Absolutely, 100%. Because here's the thing, it wasn't fun. I can excuse it if it was like tricky or difficult, but it just, it was not fun to play through. And it's one of these things where it's like you have German soldiers popping out of windows, popping out of rubble, they were shooting the panzer strikes at you, they were blowing your
01:00:57
Speaker
trades off. And you know, there was just, maybe it's because I rushed it, maybe it was just that, but it was just, it was very frustrating, it was very annoying, and I felt as if I was playing an easy mode because I'm a filthy casual. But the reason I do play an easy mode as well is because I do like to experience the story, and I do like to see how far I can push myself in terms of the gameplay. And even the easy mode, easy mode was still as unforgiving, I would say, as some of the harder modes, but
01:01:27
Speaker
even though they easy mowed, the soldiers you fought against, they were easy to mow down and everything barred if you had an MP40 but in the tanks, no. I would agree that it was just, it was such a low point but did you think that as well when you went back to revisit this game? I think vehicle sections have been done a lot better since.
01:01:44
Speaker
you know like Call of Duty games maybe it's just because I've played them quite a few times now that I kind of know I can roughly remember what's gonna happen so it makes it easier to us that is a prerequisite I think for the second tank mission I think you have to you have to play that a few times but you have to know what things are coming out of you have to know where Panzer foul soldiers are gonna spawn you have to know where tanks are gonna show up because almost a blind playthrough you're probably gonna die quite a few times a lot of things gonna pop out and you're just gonna get absolutely
01:02:12
Speaker
hammered before you have a chance to pick out where your targets are. So I think it's definitely is a prerequisite for that second level is some built-in knowledge. I think the first one is slightly better. You know, it's more open terrain. You've got more tanks with you so you can always just hide behind them, use them as shields. So I don't mind as
COD Nostalgia and Community
01:02:28
Speaker
much. I prefer the tank mission in United Offensive, the expansion.
01:02:31
Speaker
pack to the two that are in the base game and I think they were done a lot better I think Call of Duty 2 really elevated that style of tank level and then I would probably say as well like vehicle sections have probably been done better mostly I don't know I really did not enjoy the flying mission from Vanguard though I might hate that more than I hate these tank missions in this game although it's probably it is like a fight at the bottom there but I can totally understand the frustration of those levels because they are hard
01:02:56
Speaker
they are hard and they are unforgiving in a lot of ways and especially a second one you have to know where things are coming out of to really have a chance I mean to be fair it's done wonders for my Russian learning but other than that yeah
01:03:09
Speaker
This is the one where they have phrases in it when you get hit with stuff. Is there any tank banter in the first one? Maybe there isn't. No, there's just the guy that keeps yelling. We're hit. We're hit. We're hit. Yeah, all of that. It's like you're looking down at him going, listen, your shouting's not helping me, OK? I'm very stressed that this working environment.
01:03:29
Speaker
Can we just simmer down, like, put on the tea maker? And of course he's saying, this isn't a British tank. And you're like, oh no. This is the worst tank of the war. There'll be a boulevard getting somewhere. Oh, probably. I get inside there. I was about to call it the shoot. The cannon, even. The shoot. The slide. The currently worldly. The helter skelter. That's it. Only the finest history here. Horrible history stopped answering my calls about five years ago, so this is all I have.
01:03:58
Speaker
This is all I have, people. Before I go on to my final points that didn't really hold up in this game, is there anything else you want to point out here? It is dated, and it is a dated game in a lot of ways. I don't think it's as dated as Allied Assault or
01:04:14
Speaker
to Castle Wolfenstein, although I think those two games are good in their own rights for different reasons. This feels like a more modern game, you know, you can argue for good or for bad, it really again depends on your preference. I feel this is an easier game to go back to, even if you haven't played it before, because I think it retains a lot of the DNA that's in the kind of current college duties in your modern shooters you can find in here. I think this is a lot of genesis for that, so for that reason I think it is an easier one to play. But you know, it does have its shortcomings, there's no doubt.
01:04:42
Speaker
I have heavy nostalgia for this game. I didn't play it on release, but I played it not long after, one year after it was released. I played it on like a crappy laptop where if you were outside, in outside environments, the frame rate would chug like crazy. So you think the tank levels are bad, then try playing it when your frame rate is good at like five frames a second. It wasn't a fun experience, but I still love this game. I enjoyed it at the time. I still enjoy it now. It's probably called I play the least just because I say I tend to play on console. There is a console port of this game.
01:05:12
Speaker
Not very good. I'm going to be honest, I would recommend playing it on your PC. You know, it still has a following. It certainly did have a big modding community for a while. I think it still has a fairly active modding community. You know, this was a time where Activision would release the game code so people could make mods and stuff. So that kind of gave the game life as well and made people love it more. There's some questionable mods, I'm not going to lie. You tend to find them over two games, unfortunately, but there are some actually really good ones as well. I played actually a really good Dunkirk.
01:05:39
Speaker
campaign one based on United Offensive. So yeah, it's had a life post its release and I still think it's good and I still think it's an important game and I would say worth checking out. It might just not be a thing and maybe it might just feel too dated for you, but that's fair. No, I completely agree with you. There are definitely dated aspects of this game. As I said, with the gameplay, with the difficulty curve,
01:06:00
Speaker
with some of the choices of the game. There is one thing that I forgot to mention and it's a very weird issue I had, or not weird but just very bizarre. So I think it's the mission we are trying to rescue. Is it Captain Price in the Shadow House? Yes, that's one.
01:06:18
Speaker
Yeah, so I was running through trying to find the hero captain and his plucky sidekick and I took a wrong turn and I went into this room, like this bedroom, and I kid you not, there was a swastika on the bed itself. You know, it was like as if someone had wrapped their bedsheets in a Nazi flag and then put it on the bed and I just, I sat there and I kept thinking, was this a thing the Nazis did?
01:06:44
Speaker
Or, you know, have they got like a catalogue of that era themed bedspreads or things? I think the word I used to you, Adam, was gauche. It's very distasteful, even for them. I was like, did they really need to say that they're Nazis in the streets and in the sheets? Or what is going on here? Gauche is the word for it.
01:07:04
Speaker
but I could believe the Goebbels had this home decor that wouldn't surprise me. What I find actually funny is how it's something that I've, I don't know why, I just never, it's nothing I ever noticed or I just saw it and I didn't pay attention to it and I'm like, how have I never just stopped to consider that? I was criticized in this game for not having any environmental storytelling. I mean, that's some serious environmental storytelling if you ask me what's going on here? What's going on in the shadow? I can believe the secret communications room behind the fireplace. Last Crusade style.
01:07:54
Speaker
I don't know, it was getting all these bedspreads.
01:08:00
Speaker
that this was taken over by the Nazis, but I was like, I mean, considering they kept shooting me octopussy style, you know, coming down the staircase and everything, I was like, yeah, kind of get it. And obviously in the big grand foyer, but you had the Nazi flags. I was like, yeah, there is an issue here.
01:08:20
Speaker
It's a big issue with this house. I mean obviously the fact it's been conquered by them but yeah you have a really strange but see despite that jokes aside despite that despite maybe some of the same design issues one thing I want to quickly touch on there just how
01:08:36
Speaker
Sometimes during firefights, a lot of the effects kind of overlap, at least on the PC port, they overlap in one another. And on the one hand, you can think that's a realistic firefight. You're surrounded by bullets and so on and so forth. But on the other hand,
01:08:52
Speaker
I don't know, I feel as if it was a bit too much going on, but despite its flaws, despite everything we said there, and despite of course the accents of some characters such as the Stuffy Londoners First War accent, you know, with Captain Bryce saying like, oh Johnny Good Show, Tip Top Biffing Show, Americans eh? Oh you Yankso!
01:09:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely American. That's all I'll say. It's definitely American. And a slight nitpick here, but I hate the fact that they use the American measurement for judging floors. So what I mean by that is, when we're on the bottom floor of a building, we call it the ground floor, but Americans call it the first floor, and then they call it like the second floor, third
United Offensive Expansion Analysis
01:09:35
Speaker
floor, etc. But we obviously go ground, one, two, three,
01:09:38
Speaker
The amount of times I was confused when a Soviet soldier yelled, he's on the first floor. I'll look up, and he's actually not where they should be. I'll look up on the second floor, but he's on the first floor. Oh, it was a nightmare. You're like, at least I'm safe here on the ground floor.
01:09:55
Speaker
That was not a good time. But other than that, as you said, it is such an iconic game. It is a game that paved the way for what Call of Duty is now and it is just such an impactful experience. So if you haven't played this game
01:10:12
Speaker
Again, I wouldn't say it's the best code experience you're ever going to get, but definitely go check it out. You're not going to regret it either way to see how far code has come from, you know, its humble beginnings as it were, as the Medal of Honor cover to practically killing itself with, I don't know, cat ear DLC and warzone. You know what's wrong with it. Take a good long look in the mirror, but see before we finish up, there is one particular thing that we should
01:10:40
Speaker
probably touch on and that of course is the expansion. Just going through it briefly, what were your thoughts on this? What did you like? What did you dislike about United Offensive? I really like United Offensive. I think it's an excellent extra chunk of content
01:10:57
Speaker
There's not really anything massively different with this. If you like the base game, if you like COD 1, you're probably going to like United Offensive. You know, it's more of the same, except you can sprint for a nanosecond in a very pointless feature. I really like it. I really like this truck. I really like the American campaign. Probably my favorite out of the three, actually, in that one. I really like it. Again, it's very heavily Band of Brothers inspired, but I really enjoy it. It's the only Soviet campaign that doesn't take place in Stalingrad, so it instantly gets props from me for that.
01:11:26
Speaker
Again, I feel the British campaign is the weakest again, unfortunately, but I like it. It takes you to some different places. Got a first flying level in there, which is kind of fun, kind of cool. I genuinely like it. I had a lot of fun. If I'm playing the base game, I will always go on and play United offensive afterwards because I think it's a nice post script. It's more of what I like from the base game.
01:11:46
Speaker
just a few extra bells and whistles so I would give it a thumbs up. I totally agree with you there. I was actually surprised at how in-depth this actually was, especially for things like the environments. For example, is it Novi? The American
01:12:01
Speaker
Yeah. Like a very first level way. Run away in the Jeep and stuff. Yeah, yeah. The Boaz Jack. Oh yes, of course. And yeah, I thought the environments were a lot better. They were a lot more focused and kind of brought in that wasn't just asset dumping things everywhere. I liked the flying mission. I thought that was a nice touch. Granted, I wish they could have made things a wee bit clearer. I was running like a headless chicken trying to find the fire.
01:12:29
Speaker
extinguisher and I was getting yelled at by the British pilot where he was like, I say, we're on fire, chap! Get the fire extinguisher out of there like I'm trying! Tell me where it is! Did you feel the same with that one? He gets you good at your clock traces and you're like, three o'clock? You're like, which one's three o'clock again? My three or your three?
01:12:46
Speaker
What can I have a handy little dot compass in the bottom to help you with that one? Also, our first inclusion of a Scottish soldier as well, although it's very much a blinker, you'll miss it. Tail gunner Angus, gone too soon. RIP. He's not having a drink of a general robotic right now. It does have some of my favourite lines though at the beginning where they're sounding off like different people around the plane and it's like bull turret and it's like bloody uncomfortable. I believe he's sitting cross legged sir, hoping not to get them shot off. It's just like very significant British banter. It's eye rolling but it also makes me laugh.
01:13:15
Speaker
after a minute. It's like a nice wee bit of home. It is. But I do agree. I think one of the strengths of this game as well is the fact that you get to see other sides of the board that up until this point in gaming you probably wouldn't have been able to see.
01:13:31
Speaker
was really surprised that you got to join the Resistance group in the Netherlands. I was really surprised at that when I saw it and I was like what am I doing in the Netherlands? This is really cool. You know you went to Sicily as well with again British secret forces on a covert mission and you're like oh right okay it's back. It's more or less much of the same as the rest of the game
01:13:54
Speaker
And one of the other things I really loved to have to say was the fact that they didn't shy away as well from the brutality of the war. Like, I'm pretty sure in one of the Soviet missions, this was the one with the trenches, wasn't it? Yeah, it's the one. That one was amazing.
01:14:10
Speaker
Even that one there was another one later on where I straight up just saw people either get gunned down in front of me or just get flamethrowed in front of me and it was just so brutal and visceral. It just did such a great job in capturing that aspect of the war. 100% agree yeah that's the one where you turn around a corner and some poor Soviets are just getting set on fire by this like German flamethrower. You can maybe see the DNA of World War here.
01:14:35
Speaker
The studio got Grey Matters who made the expansion pack and I can't remember if they became part of Treyarch or something. I get lost with what happens with game studios, I'll be honest with which ones get absorbed into what ones and which ones form other ones, but I think you can definitely see a little bit of that in this game.
01:14:52
Speaker
Now I don't want to end on a negative here, but I'm gonna bring up a pretty damn big negative here. I think personally, and I would love to hear what you have to say about this Adam, but I genuinely think that although this expansion does a lot better in a lot of regards, like in terms of gameplay, in terms of the way it's presented, the runtime of this is just so bloated.
01:15:16
Speaker
at the very start of the game. I think it's the Battle of the Bulge, isn't it? Yes, and let me tell you, it was one big bulge, let me tell you, because it went on for absolutely ages. It just, it kept going on and on. Another example, when you're defending the Chateau, it took way too long personally for me and I got really ticked off because at the very end, I got to the end of the level and, you know, there was a big celebration of, oh yay,
01:15:46
Speaker
The reinforcements are here and everything. Yeah, I ran in the house thinking, oh great, the mission's over. To which, of course, a Nazi soldier was waiting for me and shot me in the face. So then I had to do that whole thing all over again from kind of the midpoint. But yeah, my good will at that point just completely ran dry. Unfortunately, as much as I love the American campaign, it ends on its worst level. I really love the three levels before. I kind of feel like the trope of defending a point as the last thing is
01:16:16
Speaker
quite overdone in games and in fairness maybe in 2000 i think this was 2004 united offensive came out so perhaps 2004 it's probably wrong to say it was an overused trope but it's something that i feel like i've seen so many places now like we could probably list chapter and verse the call of duty campaigns that end with you defending something that's a big point that's how the american campaign in world war ends call of duty three ends on that i suppose call of duty four to the extent is you are making a heroic last stand you know it's called
01:16:43
Speaker
quite an overused trope I feel like, so it's a little bit like, oh god, I have to stand here and defend this kit for a while. It can be fun, but it's not always the most fun gameplay I think. But I mean, I think the most egregious thing is they do it twice. They do it with the Americans at the beginning, and then the British campaign ends with, as I said, this
01:17:01
Speaker
terrible on the rails kind of shooter where you're in a p-table and you have to fight off against other p-tables but it's made of the same stuff as the soviet tanks from the base game so whenever you get shot your health just completely disappears i don't know where it went to but it's certainly not on mass screen but then you get to the soviet ending where you have to hold the line that
01:17:25
Speaker
think a train station. It's a good point that it's used twice I'd actually forgotten. Yeah that really annoyed me because I thought it was going to be cool when trying to use like the AA gun and everything to take out the stickers but yeah that got old very quickly when I kept dying and I'm like you know what I'm just gonna hide under this
01:17:43
Speaker
fuck. I'm gonna suck all the fun and drama out of this scene. Let's see how you like it. Sometimes you're gonna survive, you can't thrive. But I mean on that note as well, the difficulty was, personally for me, I think it was severely ramped up too high. Especially if you came from college or 2-1 and then you go into night to defensive. It is almost like night and day about how difficult it is. Even in easy mode, even in regular mode, it is
01:18:09
Speaker
so difficult. Although one thing after that I did appreciate was the fact they carried the throwing the grenades at your feet whenever you didn't move onto later games. I mean there was actually a scene I think in Call of Duty 2 maybe where I was hiding as one of the British soldiers and all of a sudden I basically got a halo ring of
01:18:31
Speaker
grenade indicators and I was like wow this is terrible I gotta run. It's quite a rough game and I have to say they really do love ending on the old soviet ending don't they. The soviet portrayal of mobile 2 has become more complicated in large part due to recent events but but also because it is a complicated thing in
01:18:52
Speaker
fairness, whether you want to view it as like the lesser of two evils on that front, you know, with some justification, but it did feel like these games built towards that. I think, I'm just thinking about most of the World War Two cards now that like have a Soviet campaign, most of them tend to end with the Soviet's Call of Duty 2 dozen. Well, I suppose Vanguard technically does end, but that's weird.
01:19:12
Speaker
that one. It's kind of hard to like think of that one. But yeah, they always did seem to kind of like to ramp up. And I guess it's because of the scale thing again, these tended to be like the big battles and the big engagement. United Offensive is full of that. There are sections in the original Call of Duty where you are on your own as a Soviet soldier, like especially in the sewer level and things like that. But you don't get any of that in United Offensive environment, but you're always like surrounded by other soldiers. It's always quite big battles.
01:19:37
Speaker
quite epic ones in a lot of ways as well. It's a fair point you raise about the difficulty and that was a trend of new games at this time. The people who were buying an expansion pack were obviously like fans of the original game so the assumption was these were more skilled players so you know you wanted to raise the challenge for them. You know we can trace that right back to like the Japanese version of Mario 2 and maybe even before in history of gaming so it was a trend. It is noticeable so there are some really hard sections in United Offensive
01:20:04
Speaker
I think the thing that annoys me a bit more is just, and again, it's with any hard game, even if you look at something like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, any of the Souls games, where if you keep dying, it just doesn't become fun, it just becomes repetitive, and you have to learn from that, granted.
01:20:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's not always the best, but I mean, I can understand it's like a product of its time. It's a different kind of fun. And again, different people find different things fun. There's no right or wrong on it. Some people like the idea of overcoming a challenge. There's fun in that. While for other people, the kind of repetition and the grind isn't fun. And again, it's personal taste. There's no right or wrong.
01:20:41
Speaker
It's just, it was a feature of gaming at this point you know and especially of expansion packs. The only other thing I would say is this is probably the second Call of Duty game or probably the first to do it with gratuitous chicken killing. And I've got this on my notes, I kid you not, where you're running from the Germans and Sicily in a jeep and that is the level isn't it where you just you crash into like this crate of chickens. Yeah, not just one like there's a lot
01:21:08
Speaker
It's actually the bit of the game I don't like. It's the bit I really don't like. There's something about it. Maybe I'm big softy at heart. Apparently I don't mind all the human death in the game, but I don't like seeing all these chickens get crushed. There's something about it I don't like. But then they also started the trend of, in fact I say the trend, I think this trend swiftly ended after Call of Duty 2, but it was to have the thing at the end where you'd have like a line being like, oh no animals, we're hot or no cats.
01:21:30
Speaker
were harmed in this film because it was always a proliferation of dead cows and sometimes horses around a lot of these levels. Because they only had a game in the college to series I can think that they did that was the favela level and model more fair to the original of course. You got an achievement for that didn't you? I think so I can tuck you fried chicken probably.
01:21:50
Speaker
There are elements to dislike about this one, both the expansion pack and the original base game, but at the end of the day, as I said, it is an influential game that I do think that Call of Duty fans should check out at least once in
Call of Duty's Legacy and Impact
01:22:06
Speaker
their life. I don't think you're gonna like it 100%, like if you're more used to the modern iterations and you go back into this and you have to go cool turkey with
01:22:14
Speaker
no auto-regeneration in your health and things like that, then you're not maybe going to enjoy it. But even just for academic purposes to see how far the franchises come, I would definitely recommend it. But before we wrap up, is there any final words you want to say for this?
01:22:33
Speaker
It's actually funny using that phrase, cold turkey. I actually think that's actually quite an apt phrase for this. This is a much more simple experience than like a lot of later cards. And I actually think part of the reason I like it, it does almost feel like if you are maybe like over gorged on all the features that modern Call of Duty's
01:22:48
Speaker
offer this can actually be quite a nice experience to just play and it's stripped right back to basically little fundamentals there's not much fat on this bone to be honest it is a very paired back experience which i think adds to it you're completely right as well like an academic purpose as well like it is interesting to see like how far the series has come in 20 years also to see the
01:23:07
Speaker
The DNA is there, we talked obviously about the cinematic moments in this game, and that's a feature of Call of Duty, you know, its cinematic nature. It's something that is not lost at all, it's just built upon in the following 20 years. Just in its way of retaining that kind of squad-based focus, you know, that has been something that's been in most of the games. Often, usually there is like a proliferation of nationalities as well.
01:23:29
Speaker
It's all there and obviously we mentioned the two gun limit, you know, iron sights, all these things are still there. The fundamentals are all still there and they were built in 2003. That's why I do like this game and I think it's interesting and I do think it's an important game. It was heavily praised at the time. I think it's maybe one of the ecologies that's won the most came of the year awards, you know, because it was an absolute sensation back in 2015.
01:23:49
Speaker
There's a reason this series became so popular and Call of Duty 4 has a large part to play in that, so just things like Black Ops, Modern Warfare 2, you know, but the original Call of Duty has a big part to play in this series becoming the juggernaut that it eventually did and the fact that it has raised Activision to the roof to the point that I think they must have surpassed EA. They did their goals, they killed off Medal of Honor in short order and Activision were raised to the heights of the video game landscape. It's incredibly important
01:24:15
Speaker
game and whether you think it's for good or for bad you can't deny that I think it's still worth checking out again maybe it won't jive with you and that's fine I can understand it but I do think it's still a good game I think it's a really good game you can have fun with it and it's usually quite cheap usually it's on sale a lot of the time so I don't think there's many reasons to not pick it up just don't get the console port it's what I'd recommend because it's not very good get the PC version
01:24:37
Speaker
And yeah, I think that is the perfect place to leave it off. Thank you, Adam, so much for joining me on... Is it right to say Cod's 20th birthday? Yeah, it's his 20th birthday. It's that weird way that we'd maybe want to say 20th anniversary, but I think technically that would be 2024, albeit 20th anniversary, because the way things work. But it's 20th birthday, definitely. So, you know, I think we can finish off by, you know, for he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, jolly good fellow.
01:25:04
Speaker
Let's go off to Stalingrad. Buy your DLC. Buy your DLC. Ah modern cod please change for the love of god please change. I don't want to see Stalin in cat ears. That's my red line. No pun intended for the love of god. I don't want to see that pack.
01:25:22
Speaker
Oh, and on that frightening note, thank you again Adam, honestly. It was a blast getting you back on. Thank you for getting me back on for this. A lot of fun for me to replay this game and a good excuse to boot it back up again. As always, if you want to listen to more episodes featuring ourselves, as well as our other fantastic co-hosts, you can check us out on our website, chatsanami.com, as well as all good podcast apps
01:25:46
Speaker
I also want to give a huge shout out to our Pandalorian patrons, RoboticBattleToaster and Sonya. Thank you so, so much for supporting the channel. And if you would like access to exclusive content, then please feel free to check out our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash Chatsanami, where you can get early access episodes, you can get exclusive episodes, you can get juicy behind the scenes, you can get live footage of Adam milking an audition. You know, it's absolutely great. It's fun.
01:26:15
Speaker
for legal reasons that last bit's the joke. I actually really want it. I mean, I mean, we'll be in talks. We'll be in talks. What is it the kids use, nowadays, only auditions? Oh, and on that horrifying note, do you want to wrap up the episode? I would say cruelty free, but the auditions might disagree. But on that note, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.