After playing a dozen Switch games, it was kind of weird going back to the Series X and jumping into the Biggest of Big Budget games, but it turned out to be a pretty good change of pace.

I have a hard time keeping track of the stories in the assorted Calls of Duty, despite having played nearly all of them over the years.  I tend to play them out of order, with long gaps between, so the Big Reveals and character callbacks are largely lost on me.  One of these days, I should probably do what I did with the Halo series a few years back and just play through all of them in order, with supplemental lore material thrown in as I can.

Presuming there IS supplemental lore material.  I haven’t looked.  It’s very possible there’s like a forty novel series that is central to understanding why you are inserting bullet A into bad guy B in a variety of exotic locales, and if that’s the case then I may have to pass on the supplemental lore material.

Back to the game, though.

It’d be kind of silly to talk much about the actual gameplay of any given Call of Duty title, since they sell millions of copies, but since less than 13% of people have apparently finished the campaign mode I can at least talk about what I enjoyed there without feeling too silly about it.

Simply put, it’s a thrill ride.  Or, rather, an amusement park full of thrill rides, with a ton of variety.  While there are certainly levels that just consist of “run forward, shoot mans”, there are times you’re piloting an aircraft and providing cover for a ground team, or suddenly in a stealth-based level where you are gathering materials to craft crude tools, or trying to catch up to a fleeing SUV while jumping from commandeered vehicle to commandeered vehicle and dodging land mines.  The variety of stuff you DO on the wild ride from opening credits to ending credits and mid-credits teaser for the next game is just all over the place, and I was down for roughly 98% of it.

That remaining 2% represents some unkind thoughts about the sudden BOSS FIGHT HERE that is the culmination of level 16 of the campaign, but fortunately level 16 is the next-to-last level and the game ended with a gloriously manly sequence that washed the bad taste out of my mouth.

What really sets the series apart for me, however, is getting to see just what the game’s art and level team gets to do with functionally unlimited money, because the amount of detail that gets crammed into the various exotic shooting galleries you run through is just nuts.

Also I love scooters and this game has a ton of them.

This one in particular is VERY similar to the Burgman I ride on a regular basis.

A bunch of smaller 50-150cc scooters, and another Burgman or similar, silhouetted against a moody Amsterdam sky.  I was supposed to be hunting down terrorists or something at this point.  This was the level where you spent a lot of time swimming around and murdering people standing on docks.  it was a good time for anyone not standing on a dock.

More obsessively-detailed set dressing:

I’m not sure what’s going on with this computer.  There’s no CPU cooler, but there’s a big boxy thing with a fan on it just behind the drive bays that looks like it might be a second power supply, or something?

Magazines and marshmallows.  Also whoever sits at this desk can’t decide whether pencils should go points in or eraser in, and I feel that alone is justification for the fact that I had probably shot him just minutes before taking this screenshot.  Some people are past redemption.

Someone spent a lot of money on an art degree and then spent at least a day of their life designing this cardboard box with uneven packing tape on it, and I feel that deserves recognition.  Also I love the little fake flowerpot next to the duffel bags full of weapons and bullets and explosives and stuff.

Less keen on the weird six week calendar.

This level was like the Chernobyl level in Modern Warfare just dialed up.  Also windmills.  I didn’t notice any of the windmills missing blades.  Do they really just store spare blades next to wind farms?  I guess it makes sense to keep one or two around so you don’t need to ferry another one over if one breaks.

A pretty mountain in Mexico.  One of my favorite bits about the story of this game is that most of it is a cooperative thing between a dude from Scotland and a bunch of dudes from Mexican Special Forces and the dude from Scotland doesn’t speak any Spanish at the start of the game but is obviously hard at work learning Spanish throughout and seems pretty dang fluent by the end.  Like, when he’s in a black helicopter on his way to shoot a ton of dudes he is using that downtime to crack the books.

It kind of makes ME want to learn Spanish.  I thought video games were supposed to make me violent, not make me want to go back to school.

Lastly, a shot of Navy Pier in Chicago.  At least, I understand that’s where they keep their ferris wheel.  I think a lot of these screenshots were somewhat reduced in clarity when they were converted from HDR to SDR, which is a pity.  This was a really pretty night view and frankly I would 100% live on the 46th floor of a downtown Chicago skyscraper to get this view.

And a triumphant ending credit scroll.  It’s almost certainly an exaggeration to say that Call of Duty credits go on longer than the campaign itself but MAN do these games employ a ton of people to make.

After the ending credits, I played a single multiplayer match and managed to kill four opposing players while dying 28 times myself.  I understand that Call of Duty has matchmaking that is very aggressive about finding other players at your own skill level, and if that’s the case then I pity the poor algorithm that has to try to hook me up with ANYONE, should I give the multiplayer another chance to humiliate me.

Checking Wikipedia’s list of mainline Call of Duty games, I apparently skipped “Call of Duty: Vanguard”, which was last year’s entry.  I bought it during a PSN sale some time ago, so that’s going on the short list of to-play games.