Call of Duty is an interesting franchise. The deeper you go into the fandom, the more you come to realize that there really are a ton of different types of players. You have people who live for Call of Duty: Warzone. There’s my friend Dre. He created a game called Arcade Paradise that we loved here on BSO and gave us an interview into his mindset as a developer. Dre exclusively plays Infinity Ward titles. My friend Paul, he’s primarily a TreyArch and Zombies player. Sure, they may dabble in other aspects of the game like DMZ or Multiplayer, but they know which games butter their bread and tend to stick to them.
Zombies players are unique among the Call of Duty crowd. These can be genuinely fantastic players who simply never bother with Warzone or DMZ or any of the Spec Ops missions the games have recently added. They enjoy a different brand of Call of Duty and catering to that crowd is an incredible challenge. It’s not because they’re super picky and hate everything, but because doing so means creating almost entirely different games within your game. These games have a different look, and feel, and play completely differently.
Before the creation of Modern Warfare Zombies, most Zombies offerings had a very different aesthetic and location look. You knew when you were playing Zombies versus when you were playing the campaign. Levels like The Moon or Zombies in Spaceland or Mob of the Dead or Shadows of Evil were not your typical Call of Duty fare. These levels offered a distinct look and the surroundings helped to fill the inevitable answers of how all of this came to pass. You had location storytelling as much as you had narrative storytelling.
Modern Warfare Zombies is one of the most addicting games I have ever played. I had to literally force myself to write this column because I am still farming schematics and really want to get back to that. But as much as I am excited and fully addicted to this game, there’s also the fact that it no longer really looks, plays, or even feels like a Zombies game. Milo, a YouTuber who goes by the name MrROFLWaffles said it best when he said this game is just a reskin of DMZ with different enemies.
The same map they use for Warzone will be the map used in Zombies. That’s great for them, as it whittles down the amount of work they had to do, but it really sucks for players who were hoping to see some truly amazing next-gen storytelling via Zombies and instead got Mimics and Mega Abominations running around military bases and shopping centers. What used to make the game visually stand out and draw fans in has given way to lazy maps with almost no story being told through any of the locations they send us throughout the campaign.
If you were hoping to see remakes of old levels or reboots that make them way better, you are going to be sorely disappointed. You get that for Modern Warfare III, but you’ll have no such luck when it comes to the Zombies levels. You do get to run around and do the same 4-5 contracts over and over again while you hope they drop the loot or schematics you need. That’s really the gist of what you get.
I’m not saying the game is awful or boring. I’m literally addicted to it and more casual playstyle. I just genuinely hope that Sledgehammer Games sees that people genuinely do love their new project, we just want to see what made Call of Duty: Zombies great returning to the game along with all of the other Multiplayer stuff that they’re giving to people who honestly weren’t even really asking for it. This game has a chance to be amazing, they just need to take it.
