When Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was announced, the title said it all in terms of the new direction the franchise had taken. The series made a gamble by stepping out of the familiar, yet overdone, territory of the World War 2 shooter and into the modern world; but it paid off in dividends. Call of Duty 4 has sold over 10 million units and was the best selling game of 2007.
Now with Call of Duty: World at War approaching its November release, and the announcement of a multiplayer beta in October, the question remains as to the levels of risk involved with revisiting the departed World War 2 genre. One of the main reasons that Call of Duty 4 sold 3 million copies between January and June of this year is the games replay value. This replay value is clearly due to the online multiplayer following the game entertains.
Call of Duty 4 has many attractive multiplayer features that set it apart from your average online shooter. Although CoD 4 uses the standard deathmatch and team based objective play modes, the difference is in the inclusion of features such as UAV reconnaissance scans, air strikes and attack helicopters. Combine these features with an experience based ranking system as well as; unlockable weapons, player perks, challenges and gameplay modes, and you have a contemporary FPS that holds its own against the other big name online shooters. But in the seeds of Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer perks lie Call of Duty: World at War’s potential destruction.
With a massive online community that is supported with patches and map packs, CoD 4 has built, and continues to grow, a sizeable community that is more than comfortable with the game’s multiplayer. Fast-forward to the upcoming franchise rewind of Call of Duty: World at War, and it stands to be seen how CoD 4’s multiplayer features will be backwards-translated into the historical series ‘sequel’.
Traditionally, FPS gamers are unwilling to join an exodus away from the familiarity of their habitual shooters, even if the move is more-or-less sideways. A famous example of this is in the Counter Strike realm when the world was thrown into turmoil over the release of Counter Strike Source. Sure Counter Strike Source had better graphics and an updated game engine, but Counter Strike purists refused to leave Counter Strike 1.6. To this day, Counter Strike 1.6 still has a sizeable online community that refuse to make the move to the updated version of the game. And in this example, a potential reluctance to change from an addictive and refined game to a ‘sequel’ becomes evident.
