The Call of duty series has grown into this massive, obscene blob of shit that has been growing in size and popularity over the years. It has set bad trends, ruined any sort of mainstream competitive shooting, and has shunned creativity from the industry. Say what you will about Halo and the generic Space marine craze of the last generation, at least that sort of shooting title at least tries to promote creativity. Even the most generic space marine game had to be created by actual people, and not copied by watching our military in action. But with the rising popularity of Modern Military games, we have been grounded into reality because of the setting. Its hard to have creative stories, characters and ideas when you are basing your game on reality and things that already exist. Along with the Brown/Grey color palette and the murder everyone who isn't white methodology this series has resorted to it has also set some bad trends in the market itself. Yearly sequels and over priced, pre planned DLC are now every where in the industry. And most the developers don't even do it right.
I thought DLC and Map packs were supposed to be content that was not finished by the time the game had gone gold. Not this pre planned garbage set aside for sale after purchasing a brand new game. Its ridiculous. And yearly sequels are just a way to make a quick buck by shitting out title after title without hardly any game play improvements. The only series that actually can produce quality games year after year (arguably) is Assassins Creed. But fortunately, it seems as though the COD series and the Modern Combat craze seems to be slowly going away. At least one could hope.
The first sign was GTA V. Outselling everything else (including COD), innovating game play, and trying new things. Regardless of whether you love it or hate it, you cant deny that A LOT of work went into creating and refining this gaming series. Its a beautiful world with a very large story and set of characters, that actually deserves the success it has generated.
One other sign of this train slowing down, is the new console generation. A lot of gaming series don't last going from one generation to another. And with any new generation of gaming, comes new games. And two big shooters on the horizon are Titanfall and Destiny, made by companies who have been trend setters in the past. Titanfall being an interesting combination of military shooting (its not always a bad thing), parkour elements, and giant fucking robots. It may not be revolutionary but It certainly seems fun. And Destiny's idea of blending of an online persistent world and a single player campaign could be a new way to look at how a campaign is done. Along with a Battlefield 5, rumored to be a departure from the Modern Military genre and Halo 5 (if done correctly) could help bring back Arena style shooting back into vogue. Its an exciting time for gamers, especially for FPS fans. These enormous titles, and titles yet unannounced, could create a diverse and creative palette instead of one giant blob of blandness that rules the industry. Well one can hope. . .
