Strawberry Warfare

Hello everyone. Look at your clock. Now back to me. Look at your clock. Now back to me. It is Saturday, and I’m writing an article about that game you love. Now that we have the proper day of the week established, let’s hop right in. Going to start with a look at the whole ‘modern realistic shooter’ thing before heading into Modern Warfare 3’s systems. Also important to note, I have not yet started single player. This is solely my thoughts on how the multiplayer is going. My friend said it’s been alright, but I wouldn’t expect BioWare writing or Bethesda word building going into it.

Okay, first on my list is the tirade against the whole ‘realistic modern shooter’ thing, and how much people seem to think that matters. We seriously need to drop it. Last time I checked, real warfare wasn’t done in god-like invincible bomb-disposal suits called ‘Juggernaut Armor’. Heck, even the idea that the more people you kill, the more the army lavishes high-tech, extremely dangerous weapons of destruction on you is even weird. It doesn’t even look all that realistic. Everything feels like it has this pervasive over-layer of dull to it. Yeah, that’s good for building atmosphere, but it’s not like we;re playing Dead Space 2 multiplayer. People aren’t going to pay attention to the atmosphere when it’s going to get them killed. Here is a fun experiment, walk outside for a bit in the day and look around. See how much color there is? The world is a bright place! It has contrast, it has tones, it’s not all just one color. Add a little variety to make buildings (and players) pop from the scenery. Give the levels some actual depth.

"Realistic" Warfare.

Not even getting in to the stupid design decisions. We really need to come up with a better way of informing the payer that they have been hurt than just making it look like someone threw a jar of strawberry jam at their head. This is especially horrible in Hardcore, where your health won’t ever regen. So if someone shoots you, you spend the rest of the game, or until you get shot again, with the entire edge of your screen covered in red jam and your hearing shot all to hell. It’s impossible to gauge any sound once your stuck like that. Who thought this was a good idea? We know we got hit, there is no reason to make our character permanently hobbled until we get hit again. Modern Warfare 2 let the jam go away after a few seconds.