When someone in my circle of friends says "Black Ops," we all immediately know he's talking about the game's online multiplayer. No one is ever confused for a moment when we begin discussing levels and weapons that don't appear in the single-player campaign. To us, those missions are little more than something to do when we need a break from working toward that next prestige. Call of Duty campaigns have become interactive movies that, while visually impressive, fail to engage me anywhere near the same level the multiplayer does.
Duty Calls: Calm Before the Storm, a recent free download, does a great job of illustrating some of the reasons why I've become disenchanted with CoD's campaigns. Unfortunately, developer People Can Fly created the game, a short parody of a standard CoD level, to promote its upcoming shooter Bulletstorm. By doing so, Duty Calls fails at making a fair contrast and instead focuses purely on stirring controversy for easy publicity.
Duty Calls is quick and obvious with its criticisms. A voice shouts "Boring!" with every pull of your assault rifle's trigger and announces you've earned a ridiculous new rank (Master Sergeant Shooter Sergeant Person!) with each kill. Bad guys leap out from behind trees, proclaim that they are enemies, and draw attention to the fact that you can't kill them during cutscenes. When they shoot you, the screen fills with blood and a voice exclaims "So real!" The game issues commands and features item descriptions that illustrate just how boring and pointless they are.
Each little jab should resonate with anyone who has played a CoD campaign. The jokes about being so extreme and realistic may seem exaggerated, but they're only concentrating into four minutes what Treyarch and Infinity Ward spread thin over a few hours. And anyone who takes the time to play the Bulletstorm demo can already see where the jokes about being boring come from. The game's slogan "Putting the fun back in the gun" accurately describes its exciting arsenal of weapons. Compared to grenade-rigged bolos and magnums that turn enemies into fireworks, the assortment of real guns found in Black Ops and its predecessors are a bore.
Despite making some interesting points about CoD's campaigns, People Can Fly took the easy way out by choosing not to parody the series' obvious selling point: multiplayer. Poking fun at CoD's lack of level-diversity, its predictable spawn points, weak incentives for continuously grinding through ranks, unwillingness to make substantial changes to the same old formula, and other flaws might have actually sold players on a significant depature like Bulletstorm. Instead, Duty Calls draws in CoD fans for a quick laugh before they return to their favorite, somewhat flawed multiplayer without giving Bulletstorm a second thought.
