Call of Dutyis one of the most consistently popular franchises in the industry. Other than sports games, not many AAA franchises see a new release every year, except forCall of Duty.Activision had recently shifted most of its studios to theCall of Dutyseries, possibly to help the leading developer for that year.
Last year’sCall of Duty: Vanguardhad a relatively dull reception and many users had complained about the lack of content in the Zombies mode. Activision had announced a whole list of changes for Season 2 ofCall of Duty: Vanguardand hopefully fans’ needs will be satisfied in this update. The perception of a game’s quality can drastically shift over the years and a new post shows howCall of Dutyis the perfect example of this.
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User Latte19962 shares an image that listsCall of Dutygames from the past few years. The latest release from every year is in the right column, with the previous two releases to its left. The description below makes fun of how players’ perception of that year’sCall of Dutychanges over time, showing that every game goes through the same cycle. On launch, users dislike many aspects of the latestCall of Dutygame, but the next year they start to appreciate it for what it offered. Two years later, users consider it to be the pinnacle of the series, and this cycle seemingly repeats every year.
Curiously, the description in the last section of every year says “R.I.P. Halo”, and this meme was probably used to refer to the same cycle in theHalofranchise at some point. Regardless, a lot of the discussion in comments section iscentered around 2019’sModern Warfare, and many users feel like it only received hate from a vocal minority. Opinions are also radically different onBlack Ops Cold Warwhile other users argue thatInfinite Warfarenever reached the “pinnacle of the series” stage. A commentor named Caipirots appropriately described this as a hate, acceptance, and love cycle.
Most modern games see major improvements post-launch, and these updates are perhaps the reason for this shift. Such a cycle is pretty common and can also be present in players’ feelings towards the annual release ofsports games likeFIFAandMadden. In an ideal world, developers would take what worked in one game and keep building upon it in next year’s installment, but that is rarely the case. The varied opinions they receive from fans also probably doesn’t help.
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