So....not gonna lie. I know BO7 was mid, but i bought it anyway, figuring I'd be playing it a lot. I havent, in fact, been playing it a lot. I played a lot of BF6, but barely any BO7. And any time I try BO7 i jump on for a few games...and then dont touch the game for another month or two. It's just so mid. And today, i think it clicked with me why it's just so blah for me.
The fact is, it's the maps. The game has THE SAME FRICKING MAPS as virtually every other COD game I've played. I mean, it's more nuketown, more grind, more express, more meltdown. It's the same maps that you can play in the free mobile game, that were new back 15-20 years ago, and that have been remade several times since 2019.
COD is hopelessly dependent on remakes. It's hopelessly dependent on remaking old maps, again, and again. And then they dominate the play list when you do play. You dont get to play many of the maps that actually were new with this game, no. I mean, sure, they do come up if you play enough, but i swear there are maps in that game I've only played like 1-2 times and then never again. The classics? They just come up again and again and again. And it makes it feel boring and monotonous.
Here's the thing. These games are expensive. Your yearly COD is $70. It's $50 during the christmas sale. It's $35 when they're starting to sell next year's game. And when you spent all year playing BO6 and playing the same maps over and over again, and then half of the BO7 experience is just...the same maps as BO6...it's like...why even buy BO7? It used to be you pay for new content. That was the purpose in buying a new game. If youre playing the same maps in the new game as you do in the old game, it defeats the point in buying the new game. I can literally play these same maps for free on my tablet if I want. I can start up any older COD from the past 7 years and play them. Why do I need to buy BO7 just to play them?
I'm not saying remakes are bad. They're not. I enjoyed remastering old games and their levels with MW2019. And BO Cold War. And I especially enjoyed MWIII 2023 basically being a MW2 remake. It's fine ONCE IN A WHILE. Like, oh, these were fun maps 10-15 years ago? let's bring them back, for ONE game.
But when it's like...let's do this every year, after a while it's like, why am I throwing my money at this franchise? If I can play the exact same content on an older COD, or on the mobile game which is free and has ALL of the classic maps...why bother spending $50 on this?
I wouldnt mind it as much if the old maps didnt come up as often, but they're a solid 50% of what i play. And to be fair, BO7's actual content isnt really that...good. Like their unique maps arent bad, but most of them arent great or memorable. I enjoy a couple of them I guess. But yeah, after playing so much BF6, this game just feels generic and mid AF. And not in a good, satisfying way which is why i normally buy COD. it does so in a particularly unsatisfying way. Which is why i play a couple matches, get bored, and then I never touch the game again for a whole month or more. The game just feels bad to play. Even by COD standards. I think it's a black ops thing. Treyarch games have always felt like jank to me. IW/sledgehammer games tend to feel better, at least in the modern era. Like the engine feels more modern, the gun play is more satisfying. Again, it's hard to explain but treyarch CODs feel more....floaty? Like the guns dont have impact. And oh my god the fricking movement fricking sucks. It feels like elliott carver's parody of kung fu from tomorrow never dies. Just so much BS sliding around all over the place. i get it, it might appeal to some zoomer twitch streamer, but to normies it just fricking sucks.
Honestly, the problem to some degree is the yearly model. You pump out a new COD every year, you're gonna retire the actually good ones prematurely, churn out garbage, rerelease the same content year after year with minor variations in game mechanics and getting, and eventually quality declines, it gets old, and you get tired of playing. And that's where I am and why I feel like the entire internet revolted so bad against the game. Because eventually, after years of mediocre games of declining quality and repetitive content, even the fan base eventually reaches a breaking point. Especially when BF comes along and actually innovates and upstages it.
I honestly think BF is a better business model long term. You get actual innovation, actual graphical and game play improvements, and while yeah, they make mistakes as well, and for a while COD was able to take advantage of that and offer a better product (See MW2019 vs BF5, for example), but then BF finally returned to form while COD just ended up going full Ghosts-Infinite Warfare era again. Idk how these guys lost the plot so bad they decided "okay, you know those terrible CODs of the mid 2010s that we dont talk about any more? Let's do that but worse!" But here we are.
Anyway, I think the market sent clear signals on this one. For all the talk of BF6 dying, COD aint really in great shape either these days. Because you release a mid product, and no one wants to play. In recent years, i think the only thing keeping me playing COD is so little actual competition to it actually exists. Most of the industry is obsessed with extraction shooters and battle royales and esports and the good old casual FPS has kinda died where COD just cornered that market, especially with BF dropping off and taking longer between their own releases. But yeah right now competition exists and it's eating them alive. Back to BF6 I guess. Way more fun anyway.
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