CODV – Call of Duty View

 

 

Well the time is here. The game that so many put their hope in to “kill” COD:MW2 or at least give them something else to play instead of COD:MW2 or just play because they are already sick of the sub-par COD:MW2. Today marks the start of the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 public BETA and if you pre-ordered your game through a number of different websites then you should have been eligible for a public BETA key to play the game. I was a little late on getting up-to-date on all of the BETA info so I actually pre-ordered through GameStop yesterday (yes, the day of the BETA!) but surprisingly I received my BETA key late last night from GameStop and during the wait I manged to find a good torrent link to download the whopping  1.42GB installer so everything was ready for my normal half day of work on Fridays.

 

I got home just after noon today; grabbed some lunch and by 2:00PM I had BC2 installed and running. Wow. Totally not what I was expecting and going into a Battlefield game trying to play it like a Call of Duty game A) does not work very well, B) is not very fun and C) gets you killed A LOT. I haven’t played a Battlefield game since Battlefield 1942 and that was quite a while ago so as you can imagine I didn’t do very well first time around. Coming out of a few hours of game play tonight I found the game to be pretty decent in terms of actual fluid game play and definitely excellent in terms of graphics (although with the BETA there seems to be some minor performance issues) but it was rough. There were some frustrating times had since I have been playing COD games for nearly 7 years straight and this is a totally different game. I will need some more time and testing but the game really does look promising. Is it enough to pull me away from COD? Well that is yet to be known but I am anxious to get some more game play time in over the next few days.

 

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Just wanted to post a quick note wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Have a safe and happy holiday break if you have one. Oh, and play plenty of COD!

 

 

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I have been watching the player stats pretty closely for all the games in the COD series since a week after the COD:MW2 release and one of the first things I do when I get to work (and periodically throughout the day) is check the COD:MW2 player counts on Steam’s stats page. For the first time in 5 weeks Counter Strike:Source was back on top with 51,656 players versus Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 with 50,523 players at 8:49AM EST.

 

 

Now does this mean anything significant about COD:MW2 player counts? No. Not at all. But it is an interesting tidbit of information since COD:MW2 has consistently been in the top spot every single day at this time for 5 straight weeks since I have been looking at the stats. I am sure within the hour that COD:MW2 will be back on top easily. Stay tuned for more info in the near future for my COD player tracking.

 

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Celebrating a COD:WAW 1 year anniversary and a BASHandSlash 3 year anniversary Jock Yitch and the crew has an excellent podcast with some great information in regards to Treyarch and the future of the other half of the COD development world. The host for this episode is the Treyarch Community Manager – Josh Olin (aka) JD_2020.

 

 

 

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New NVIDIA drivers (195.62 WHQL) were released yesterday and this is a notable release because of two reasons:

 

One, it corrects the “buffer overflow” issue for COD:UO that I posted about back in October that occurred with the then latest release of 191.07 WHQL drivers. (From the release notes)

 

 

GeForce GTX 260: Call of Duty 1–the application crashes with a buffer overrun
error. [606182]

 

 

And two, SLI and multi-GPU support is added for COD:MW2. (From the release highlights)

 

 

Adds SLI and multi-GPU support for many top new gaming titles including Borderlands, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, FIFA Soccer 10, and more.

 

 

If you are upgrading your drivers as always I recommend using Add/Remove Programs (or Programs and Features or Programs for Windows Vista and Windows 7) to do the actual uninstall of the current drivers, a reboot of the system, then a cleaning using Driver Sweeper, then another reboot of the system and then finally the installation of the current drivers. This ensures you get a clean installation of the new drivers and there aren’t any parts left behind to muck things up.

 

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Early Monday JD_2020 popped in the WAW Barracks and posted a quick thread about the 1.7 patch being wrapped up and released this week and today is the day!

 

To kind of put an end to some lingering speculation about Map Pack 4 I think this answers the question as this patch is appears to be just wrapping up some bugs hanging around comes in at only 15.8MB. I could be wrong but I would imagine that this will be the last update for WAW now that the groundbreaking Modern Warfare 2 is released and flourishing and hopefully Treyarch is working on their next COD installment. As long as it is still actually a PC game I will be quite interested!

 

You can get the patch here on CODV or you can head on over the callofduty.com PC Updates page in the link below and find a boatload of more places to get it.

 

• http://www.callofduty.com/supplies/pc-updates

 

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So over the last two days I have been doing a serious amount of reading reviews on gaming websites, reviews from clan members, reviews & comments on the IW Forums (when they aren’t broke with MYSQL connection errors) and just generally reading any kind of material I can to get honest opinions of how this game really is.

 

Here is the summary of Pros and Cons that I have come up with. Now keep in mind that I have not purchased the game (and don’t plan to) nor have I played it or been present while it was being played. This is merely what I have gathered from many different sources around the web.

 

The PROS

• Slight upgrade in graphics quality over COD4
• Slight upgrade in audio quality over COD4
• Some objects in the environment are manipulative (eg. some destructible walls, exploding cars & barrels, breaking windows)
• Excellent character and weapons design, great level detail (even in multiplayer) great environments to tie everything in
• Decent single player campaign game play portions that helps the bad storyline
• Excellent cut scenes to break up the campaign sessions
• Spec Ops co-op mode addition that is a lot of fun and offers 23 additional levels that are different from the single player campaign
• Future DLC material will probably build upon the Spec Ops co-op mode
• A multiplayer experience that lets you easily find a game with random people and start playing with just a few clicks
• A few new perks and changes in perks like Martyrdom and Last Stand that make multiplayer a little more bearable
• Prestige mode included for those that enjoy replaying multiplayer for unlockable content

 

The CONS

• There are limited audio options (eg. can’t adjust levels for music, voice, sound effects)
• Single player can be completed in as little as 5 hours on regular difficulty
• Steam will manage all updates and changes to the game
• Poor single player storyline that is not very clear and is mostly told through cut scenes or AI talking during bad times (eg. during intense fire fights, chase scenes, etc.)
• The single player campaign is very heavily scripted which makes game play very predictable in some situations and requires you to play the game a very specific way to accomplish your objectives offering practically no replay ability
• There is no leaning in the game to “peek” around corners or objects
• The co-op game play is limited to only two players
• Most multiplayer games modes are limited to 6 vs 6; some are 9 vs 9
• Multiplayer generally seems to be laggy at least during some portion of any game
• Multiplayer matchmaking does not always match geographic locations correctly
• Multiplayer match making games are short due to the standard IWnet set time/score limit
• Some multiplayer game modes are locked and can only be unlocked after “ranking up”
• There is a noticeable host ping advantage during multiplayer matches
• A players ping is no longer shown as number but same as the console in bars
• There is a noticeable pre-delay of issues when the current host quits playing and the Host Migration starts and you are sometimes kicked back to the lobby to find a new game
• Some of the multiplayer maps seem to be too large for the amount of players the game supports which leads to pointless roaming in game modes
• There are no dedicated servers and multiplayer games rely on IWnet & Steam
• Steam will manage all updates and changes to the game
• There is no PunkBuster; instead cheat protection is through VAC (Valve Anti Cheat)
• There is no way to kick or ban troublesome players when playing in ranked matches
• On the second day after release cheating is already very present
• There are NO multiple accounts or profiles for use with others in your house that would like to play the game – everything has to be played through a single Steam account
• There is no access to the console limiting configuration changes severely
• There is no built in support for SLI/Crossfire configurations
• There is no possibility of future mod tools or modifications for the game at this point
• There is no possibility of future custom maps at this point
• Future DLC will most likely have to be paid for
• Increased cost of the game at $60
• The PC version is a direct console port. Period.

 

To give IW some benefit of the doubt in regards to all the issues with IWnet; they will have the ability to tweak and reconfigure things as time goes on. They could also change and add features as well which could make it better. However, with the current look of things it would take quite a few tweaks and changes to make this game as successful as it was once touted to be.

 

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After reading more and more of what is actually missing from Modern Warfare 2 and just how”consolized” it sounds like it will be I just can’t believe that IW expects everyone to just run out and buy this game like nothing has changed. Everything has changed!

 

Numerous times in the BestBuy chat IW states things like “Just do me a favor and play the game first, we put a LOT of work into balance. We are big gamers here at IW and want a great experience just as much as you.” and “Multiplayer is incredible, you should not be worried!” but the problem is we ARE all worried. If IW has so much confidence in IWnet and thinks that this game will be great the way they have developed it then they should put their money where their mouth is and put out a demo of the game. If they have nothing to worry about then it shouldn’t be a problem (well other than the little test setup of the whole IWnet system) and it would satisfy many PC gamers need to know if this is right for them. Ohh but wait; if the game is a total failure and they know there are issues that PC gamers aren’t going to like then I guess they wouldn’t put out a demo. Instead they would just like us to give them $60 to “try” out their new gaming system that sounds like it has some serious issues as a PC game.

 

I guess the second part of this post is directed to you fellow COD gamers. If you claim to be involved with the MW2 boycott then don’t buy the game when it comes out. Once you hand over your $60 the battle is won. Activision/IW has your money and they don’t care what you do with the game after that point. If you are on the fence at least wait until it releases to get some real reviews and serious player comments from people that actually have played it. It’s understandable to want the game; it is a COD title, but at least wait to do some reading because you could still be swayed.

 

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Infinity Ward has released the official COD:MW2 Launch Trailer and although Eminem rapping in it really doesn’t go well with it at all I have to say it is a very enticing trailer.

 

 

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As it was posted around the net over the last few days; BestBuy held a live chat session last night with developers of Modern Warfare 2 and allowed the community to join in and ask questions of their own. Now we all know that the PC community is pretty fired up about the whole dedicated server/modding/consolization of MW2 for the PC since the BASHandSLASH.com podcast so of course this chat session was monitored. There was a limit of 300 participants allowed in the chat session and many questions directly related to the dedicated server issue and a few others PC issues were tossed out without so much of a response. The IW participants were Mackey McCandlish who is a level designer/scripter and has worked on numerous COD titles over the years and also Vince Zampella who is a Chief Creative Officer and has worked with IW and a number of other companies over the years.

 

Although some questions were tossed out there were many questions answered and the bad news is – there is more bad news for the PC community with mentions like the items below.

 

• The max amount of players is 9 vs 9

• The “lean” function has been removed from the game

• There will be no access to the console

• There will be no /record in the game

 

The full transcript of the chat can be found in the BestBuy forums but a few notable questions & answers are quoted below.

 

 

Josh111: PC Question… What will the max amount of players per map be for PC multiplayer on IW.net

Mackey-IW: The max number of players on all platforms are 1v1 through 9v9. This is the number of players we focused on when we were balancing map size, perks, classes, challenges, etc.

 

 

TheNinthAxis: Is there lean in PC multiplayer.

Vince-IW: No.

 

 

frzg: Is there a /record feature? Answer yes… please. We’re trying to give you a ‘chance’

Vince-IW: no

 

 

Laugh: Is there a console in the PC version of the game, so we can change our field of view from the xbox’s default 65 FOV to 80 also can we tweaks the weapon damage for each gun, removes perks, graphical debris, breathing sway, also thru console like we where able to before or is this all gone?

Vince-IW: We would like you to play the game the way we designed and balanced it.

 

 

Moriarte: Ignoring IW.net, is the PC version a direct port of the console version?

Mackey-IW: No, PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings.

 

 

TRU-Jennifer: Are you considering dedicated servers for the PC gamer in the near future?

Mackey-IW: Our main focus right now is on making sure the game will work well when it is released (on all platforms)

 

 

Freeman06: Hello, are you considering ever patching in mod tools for the pc to make custom maps and such?

Mackey-IW: Right now we’re focused on launching our game.

 

 

DudezTY: Since we can not kick people in ranked matches, how will we stop hackers who get past VAC?

Mackey-IW: Our goal is to ban hackers from the game

 

 

GeneralClean: So how can you justify 9 vs 9 at the most on PC when we had 32 vs 32 in COD4?

Mackey-IW: The CoD4 maps were not balanced for 32vs32. In MW2 the entire experience is carefully balanced for a smaller range of players.

 

 

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