The Black Curtain Club
Weird mysteries, creepy stories, chaotic 2 a.m. conversations, and all the things your afraid to ask your friend - that’s what you’ll find at The Black Curtain Club.
The Black Curtain Club
Call of Duty History
Remember the days when your thumbs ached from marathon gaming sessions, Mountain Dew cans littered your desk, and the only thing that mattered was reaching that next prestige? In this nostalgia-packed episode, Kyle takes Angi on an unforgettable journey through the evolution of Call of Duty, the franchise that redefined first-person shooters and transformed the gaming landscape forever.
Whether you've been prestiging since day one or have never picked up a controller, this episode offers fascinating insights into how a single game series shaped an entire medium and the friendships forged in digital combat. Ready to relive the glory days or discover what made Call of Duty a cultural phenomenon? Grab your favorite gaming snack and dive in with us!
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And then you had the guy who showed up with the flamethrower and everything. The missions got a lot easier once you had the flamethrower. But because you just I remember just running and just like, fuck it Just, is it a tree? I don't give a shit, fucking, all the good guys are behind me, cool, I just. I just held the trigger down until the end of the mission. I just burned everything, like Smokey pissed the fuck off at me because I burned down at least at least 11% of that world's. You know. Trees were taken out because of me. I said fuck them, we don't need them anyway. We got plenty more. It's just an island. I burned absolutely everything because I was sick and tired of that shit.
Speaker 2:Before we begin today's episode, we would like to share a quick disclaimer. The views, opinions and statements expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast are their own personal views and are provided in their own capacity. All content is editorial, opinion-based and intended for entertainment purposes only. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1:Sup noobs, welcome back to another episode of the Black Curtain Club podcast. I'm your host who hated ghosts, kyle, and with me tonight we got the FNG Angie. Angie, give me a sit rep.
Speaker 2:How you doing. I'm doing wonderful, absolutely peachy.
Speaker 1:She just accepted what the word sit rep was. Tonight we're going to have a little bit of a history lesson. If you're into that kind of stuff, it's going to be a little different. We're going to do a history lesson. If you're into that kind of stuff, it's going to be a little different. We're going to do a history lesson, gamer style, that's right. We're going to be talking about call of duty until we reach mass prestige or we rage.
Speaker 2:Quit so one of us will decide that I think. I think rage quit might come first yeah, exactly that.
Speaker 1:So do me a favor, grab your doritos, shotgun a mountain dew, check your loadouts and get ready for spicy drops in the butt. Let's go.
Speaker 2:I don't know what any of that means, but okay, let's go.
Speaker 1:Grab Mountain, dew Woohoo Go team.
Speaker 2:Grab.
Speaker 1:Doritos the chip Doritos.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, I understood that.
Speaker 1:Shotgun a Mountain Dew, so you know how you shotgun. You do that with a mountain dew. Check your loadouts, make sure all your weapons and your attachments and your grenades all that fun stuff is all set okay and then load up, get ready for some spicy drops in the butt.
Speaker 1:I thought, that's what you said, yeah, spicy drops in the butt, that is. I'll slightly explain that later. That's that's when we get to. When I get to talking about Warzone, there was a map that was on a little island and it was like it was kind of like an Alcatraz. It was like a prison. I want to say it was a prison whatever. There's a big building right in the middle there and right before you jump out of the plane, a stray friend comes kind of like bombs a little bit to like clear out enemies, and there's this giant hole right in the middle of the big building. So we just called it the butt and so in in battle royales, wherever like the high, the highest concentrate of loot or there's some area that everyone goes to and it's just the, it's just the fucking okay corral in there. And on that map it was the prison. It was in the butt because that was like the quickest way to like get it went right into it. So it was like 40 or 50 people trying to drop into that one area.
Speaker 1:So it was just it was just mayhem, so he's called spicy drops in the in the butt.
Speaker 1:Let's let's jump on into the way back machine and let's head back to the year 2003. I was but a wee lad and the one of the big gaming companies had this genius idea let's make a war simulation video game. And little did they know what they were doing. The very first call of duty drops in october 2003. It was very different from what it, from what we know it to be now. Anyone who knows it. It's a headache and it's pretty much just multiplayer. No one gets shit about the campaign, but back then there was at least console wise. There was no in-depth online gaming like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. That was not a thing. So you had to rely on a campaign, a single-player mode and split-screen couch co-op missions to keep your entertainment.
Speaker 1:So the first three of them had very, very long campaigns over all of World War II on the different fronts that were happening. So I mean we're talking like 20-something, almost 30 mission-long campaigns.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So if there's one thing that sticks out in my mind with the very, very first, your sergeant is giving some type of a pep talk to everyone. I think he goes welcome to Stalingrad. Today you're going and that's how it starts. And you see the smoke in front of you. You just hear the boat and you hear planes going by and you hear gunfire. And he's explaining what it's like and giving you a quick rundown of what the battle of stalingrad has been.
Speaker 1:And then it kind, the music kind of starts up very, very low and it kind of hits this big crescendo as you go through, like the smoke and the fog, and it is just hell on earth. You just you see the city, the bombed out city, on fire. You have the germans just dive bombing and strafing the boats as you're trying to cross. They're bombing the beaches. There's just bodies flying everywhere. It is just hell on earth and the music is playing us misses. You like two or three of your comrades jump overboard and the sergeant pulls out a gun and shoots them and says if you retreat, you will be shot. He's like, if you retreat, you will be shot. It's nuts. And then you just finally make it to the beach and do your goddamn best to survive the Battle of Stalingrad.
Speaker 1:That was actually my very first introduction to actually I was 10 years old. Not a whole lot of in-depth World War II education at that point in your life. Right From that moment on, though, that one specifically sticks in my brain. I can go on and on and on about that specific battle. It's the most important part of World War II in my humble opinion.
Speaker 1:Well, you never forget your first no, and no matter how much trauma it causes. And uh, you're gonna notice something in some of these games spoiler alert, pretty much every single one of them where you play as a russian during the campaign in world war ii, it's at the fucking battle of stalingrad. During the campaign in World War II, it's at the fucking.
Speaker 1:Battle of Stalingrad. Oh my God, I swear to fucking God, I swear to God Anyhow. So yeah, for the first, like I don't know, five or six missions. That's it, you're a Russian during the Battle of Stalingrad. And then after that you jump over to play a couple of missions as the British forces during Operation Tonga.
Speaker 1:Tonga, tonga, tonga, I believe that's what it was called. It's pre-D-Day, so Operation Tonga was the airborne the day or two before they were going to drop in behind enemy lines and take out a bunch of the defenses, cause a little anarchy, mayhem, switch the signs around. It goes east, they're going to label west and west, they're going to label north, just to screw up any type of like a reactive time from the Germans before they can counterattack, while the rest of the boys land on the beach, and that's pretty much like the main focus of like the half a dozen British missions. Main focus of like the half a dozen British missions. So what they do throughout the games is that they touch on history, but it's all fictional characters and kind of fictional how history plays out. What is that? Creative freedoms for them to kind of screw with whatever they want to tell.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:Then you jump over to the US with the 506th Airborne and starting out. Same thing, starting with the Americans dropping the day before D-Day, and it's pretty much just an absolute shit show. You're crashing into the other British planes and everything is just going tits up incredibly fast and it's just not good. Then you jump back over to the Russians, you finish out their Stalingrad and then you end the game out with the Siege of Berlin with them, the Brits. You just keep on D-Day and you don't really do much else as the Brits in that one. And then the US you end in the Battle of the Bulge. The last mission is like the sky is clearing, like the sky is clearing, the weather's clearing. So then the air force is able to kind of come and give the air support and patent and his tanks come rolling in roll credits. You beat the game like however many freaking days later, and so, uh yeah, jump ahead.
Speaker 1:Two years brings us to now call of duty 2. Um, kind of this you know no need to fix with brooke, right? So we're gonna do the same. We're going to make like 30 to 40 missions and we're going to have you play as the Soviets, the US and the British again, and we're going to do it this time. You're going to play as a different soldiers in each of them. You know different parts of it, so different divisions, all with the same type of a goal, except for the Russians, because russians, because you play as, uh, you know same thing. It's part of the, the red army, but you start in the defense of moscow and the battle of moscow, and then you actually at the end of it, you kind of hear chit chats and there's chatter and, like you know, they're referencing that the battle of stalingrad is happening, and so the match of proferosko, that happens kind of the, the reinforcements that the russians did.
Speaker 1:So history bit. So the soviets were getting the absolute shit kicked out of them, like the germans all but completely spent them, and it was like you cannot lose stalingrad whatsoever, like stalin was like this is it? This is literally the end, this is the end game. There's nothing past this. If we lose this, pack it in, we've lost. So just the, just the brutality that happened during that battle and just how fiercely the Russians fought and they held on and held on and held on. Because he was amassing another army with another one of his generals and they literally took the massive long way around, literally all the way around the German offensive, and they swooped up behind them and took them by surprise, literally completely outflying them, started shooting them in the back and then pushed them in and also kind of so.
Speaker 1:So in the second game that's kind of what you do the first half is you're defending moscow, and then you join up with the forces to then be the saving force, if you will, to reinforce stalingrad, and it's just I don't remember massive details of these games just kind of that's kind of the fundamentals of it. Uh, the uk, uh, uk, you are, you're in north africa and you're getting the shit kicked out of you by ronald until the last, like three, literally every mission, you're in a tank and you're blowing shit up and you're driving here, you're doing this, but like, by the end of the mission you get ambushed and the tanks overpower you and you keep, have to keep, falling back and falling back, and falling back, and falling back. Same thing all the way to the suez canal, and then everything just kind of turns when the americans arrive, and then now you got to push back. So, uh, that's it it's just, it's you.
Speaker 1:you literally get your ass kicked until the last mission. The last mission is the only one one that ends on a happy note for the British, which is kind of nice, because fuck the Brits in these games. Then you jump to the US and more D-Day, but not the actual beaches of Omaha and Utah beaches. You don't actually do the. It starts when you're off the beach and then you're a part of the rangers that took out um, point the hawk the hook. I don't know, I don't speak french so, but it was a, uh, it was a massive cliff that was overlooking pond the hook there.
Speaker 1:um, it was a massive cliff that was overlooking utah beach thank you, uh, pretty much all the artillery and the mortars, all the fun shit was on it, because it was you massive cliff that was overlooking Utah Beach. Thank you, pretty much. All the artillery and the mortars and all the fun shit was on it, because it was you know, listen, they don't know it yet, but Star Wars is going to love this they put up all their shit on the high ground and they were just fucking obliterating the beaches. So the Rangers, once they got ashore, they swooped around, took them in the rear, blew everything up, took them from behind the old surprise attack, and then from that you just jump to as far as the US made, on the German lines, to the River Rhine, pushing the Germans back across out of the Rhineland into the main of Germany. As you have them, you know, chasing their tails, whatever the hell it is. You know you're kicking the Germans' ass back to Germany.
Speaker 1:Same thing, just all campaign, all campaign. Number three, and again I think you actually were the same army unit from the second one, just different characters. You're pushing farther into France, on the way to Paris. You're taking the cities of Saint-Lô and you end in the city of Chambois, the UK. You play as British Special Forces, where you drop way behind the enemy lines with the Marquis of Resistance.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of cloak and dagger. So there is no main battle in the liberation of france here. Everything that happens there, kind of the same thing. There's no massive battle. You're just kind of everyone knows that a lot of cloak and dagger, secret stuff was happening. Then I'm pretty sure you actually played as one of the units that uh, sir christopher lee was a part of during, uh, world war ii. Yeah, because that's that's, that's what. I'm pretty sure that's what he did. I know he he worked for the, the oss and the sas and that's what he would do. He was a lot of the like special forces shit, like taking out big guys and like securing a lot of shit, like during world war ii. So that's pretty much what you do with them, uh, and then you actually also do a couple of missions as the Canadian forces and the Poles.
Speaker 2:So now the big jump here's my personal I saw something building up, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:My personal humble. Like I said right there, that was the dawn of time, that was all the foundation. So right now, call of Duty is now so like there's the console wars. Which is better? Playstation and Xbox. You know Call of Duty had its rival, medal of Honor, at the time. Right now these two are neck and neck. You know they're both war simulators. You know Call of Duty is doing its thing. Know called Doodoozoo, and its thing, medal of Honor, is essentially the same thing, just from a different company. It's a World War II simulator. You're playing some of the big battles and you move on through. So they had one called Medal of Honor, had one called Frontlines, which was essentially Saving Private Ryan, the video game. You start on the beaches and you play exactly through that. You go step by step through the movie essentially and for whatever, because Medal of Honor was actually focusing a bit more on, like, the authenticity. So you played as people who won the Congressional Medal of Honor. So they were a bit more true to history, if you will.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So Medal of Honor was pretty much outselling Call of Duty at the time. They were neck and neck. But if they kind of kept going the way they were going, medal of Honor would have snuffed out Call of Duty in almost an instant. So they switched it up, they left World War II and then they hit the golden era my personal opinion, the golden era of Call of Duty. In 2007, they released Modern Warfare.
Speaker 1:Not only did this game change Call of Duty, the franchise I'm going to be so bold to say that it changed gaming. It changed the entire industry on its head. It wasn't the first one to give us online multiplayer. I'm pretty sure that was. Counter-strike was the first first-person shooter online shooter. Then you had Halo. Halo came around. Modern Warfare flipped everything on its head because it gave us multiple different maps. All the other games only had four or five. There was 12 maps in this game. It was a shit ton of maps with all the different high grounds, low grounds, the different terrains, kind of different tactics, how you're going to approach the game.
Speaker 1:One, two, customization Not only can you choose which weapon you're going to use, you can change the attachment. You can give yourself different, you know, you can give yourself different. You know, you can give yourself a sight, you can give yourself an underbarrel. You're changing your equipment you can use. You have your flashbangs, you have your lethals, you can switch so much you can, more or less. I guess the kind of F the point to think about is you create war the way you want to, within parameters, yeah.
Speaker 2:It still wasn't perfect, but it was brand new. This was around the time that I got introduced to it. So yeah we're, we're getting into more familiar territory exactly multiplayer online stuff is.
Speaker 1:It's still not the main focus, it's not the main breadwinner of the game. There's still a lot of games out there, but this is also the first one where they didn't have to go off of history. They could just hire writers and write their own story, okay. So now, okay, you've explained history, which is fine. Everyone knows history and how well you're capturing it. But now how well can you keep my attention with your own story, create your own world? How well can you keep me with that one? And once again, my personal opinion I think they knocked it out of the fucking park with these.
Speaker 1:The Modern Warfares are. They're very nostalgic to me, but they're also my. Those are my favorites. That's my favorite one. That Call of Duty did was the Modern Warfares and we were introduced to characters like Captain Price. Soap is the character you play as you have the rest of your little task force there. You have Gaz. Later on in the game, you as a joint operation, or a JSOC team as they would call them, sergeant Griggs from the United States Marine Corps. He joins up with the British SAS to kind of do like a joint task force. So different special forces from around the world coming together for a cause. Your main baddie is fucking he just it's just such a great like bad guy name. You know, like Hans Gruber, that's a fantastic bad guy name yeah.
Speaker 1:Imrim, Imrim Zakhaev.
Speaker 2:I was going to say I remember name Zakiyev, beautiful yeah.
Speaker 1:There's that one and his little puppet that you thought was the main bad guy until like halfway through the game Khaled Al-Assad. So he was kind of they just pretty much took a lot of tropes from like the Gulf War and the war in Iraq was in full swing at this point, where Bush is still the president at this time. So they pretty much took every trope from like Saddam Hussein, osama bin Laden and a bunch of the other guys. They just kind of forced them all into this one guy and he was like the perfect bad guy at the time. And then Imran Zakhaev. He's every trope of like the Russian bad guy. So think of Cold War era baddies Every trope he was. That he's introduced to us in arguably one of the most famous and beloved missions in Call of Duty history. It's called All Gillied Up. You play as a younger version of Captain Price. He was just a lieutenant then at the time. It's you and it's your commanding officer and you're in Pripyat, ukraine, right on the outskirts of Chernobyl.
Speaker 2:I was going to say, yeah, there was a connection there to Chernobyl.
Speaker 1:Yep, right on the outskirts of Chernobyl. It's you and him in your ghillie suits and you have to sneak into Chernobyl like the way, long way around, and just you know, evading helicopters, patrols, the dogs, like it is. If you play the mission right, if you play it the right way, you only shoot seven times in it. You know because you know it's a sniping mission and it needs to be stealth and sniping. If you time your shots right, if you do everything correct, you only shoot seven times oh, wow that's how intense the mission is.
Speaker 1:Like the one scene that sticks out in my brain you're going across this big field. He tells you get down now, and you're literally laying there. And you're crawling through this field and then your, your commanding office, tells you don't move, and a patrol literally comes walking by tanks. If you have to move slowly, a tank drives over you as people are literally walking over you and around you Like I'm talking centimeters inches away from you. It's like your heart is thumping during this mission. It's insane. Oh, I love it so much. And you have to actually sneak through the city too and get to your elevated position. And then the next one you're literally like you're spooning a bear at 50 Cal in Chernobyl.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:It is peak humanity, it is just mwah. It's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, just that campaign. It tells a story.
Speaker 1:The story listen, it's, it's nostalgic for different reasons, very nostalgic for me. Okay, yeah and um, it's uh. It's just been like I said the story of how it just changes because, like, the first half of the game is like, okay, all aside, the main bad guy, we got to chase him. We got to chase, we got to get after him. He's got, he's already. Uh, one mission where you thought you had him, it's his big invasion in iraq. You're going to get him, we're going to capture him.
Speaker 1:Hey, the seal team said they found a nuke here. Everyone get out, get out, mass evacuation. So you see all the planes and the choppers and everything going and then, like the, the back of the chinook is open. You're just staring at. You see the main palace way off in the distance. Next, you know, boom, the mushroom cloud happens, the nuke goes off and it just wipes out everything. Just the cinematics of the, of the game, of the mission, the way they're telling the story, and then they just pull that switcheroo on you. He's not really the bad guy, he's actually like the puppet, he's just the fall guy, when really this guy's been pulling the fucking strings. Now we gotta hunt this old. We gotta hunt this old fucking geezer down. Who's?
Speaker 2:got one arm.
Speaker 1:By the way, you got one arm and like hell bent on, like world destruction. And it's just his. His son is in like the tracksuit with like the cigarette and he runs like a son of a bitch. There's so many tropes, there's so many tropes, it's, it's all. It is borderline insulting. Borderline insulting. Um, it was just, it was just so much fun, like I said it, just so they were able to tell one hell of a story. Keep you guessing till the end. There's just the massive showdown on the bridge. Spoiler to everybody. So the last, last mission. You're like, oh no, all the bad guys chasing. There's helicopters and there's jeeps and there's tanks and there's chasing you. You just got a big gun and a rocket launcher you're shooting out of of the back of the Jeep as the captain's like driving and dodging and swerving and whatever the fuck, because you stopped the nukes from blowing up and everything else. Right. Really one of those James Bond car chase kind of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and then the one chopper gets in front of you and he starts to blow up the bridge. So you kind of crash, now you got to crawl, whatever the hell. It all shot to shit. So you're like all dazed and confused. So, sergeant Griggs, he's like dragging you to safety, and then it's all kind of blurry and kind of hazy. So he stops, he pulls out his LMG and he's shooting, shooting, bang, bang, bang. He takes three shots. He falls all dramatically and slow and he's dead. And then you start looking over. You see, captain Price, captain Price is taking like two to like the chest or like the shoulder or something like that. He's like bleeding out. Then you kind of come to. You see Zakhaev walking towards you, all slow, with his one dumb fucking arm and his jacket pinned up like a jackass, two other heavily armored. So you just see like it's all over, right, yeah, the dude gathers in front of you.
Speaker 1:He's like standing up. He probably said like fuck you to the guy and he just zakiya, just bang, just waste him. So you're like the last one, your team is all dying around you and then, like in slow motion, some reinforcements come out of nowhere. Of course, they fucking blow up the chopper and everyone's looking away. So then price slides you the gun, you grab the gun and you take out the two guys he's with you, shoot him, the boom, you killed everybody. And then he just fucking croaks. And it's like that last second john mclean moment, the absolute Hail Mary action film. They told one hell of a fucking story. It was fantastic. And then, like I said, that's just the campaign. Now you got the multiplayer and like I said the customizations, the missions.
Speaker 1:There was just so much to do in this game. So much to do. Not only did it take this franchise, like I said before I started talking about, only did it take this franchise, like I said before, and start talking about it. It took this franchise and it launched into the stratosphere. It took the industry video games and just completely reworked it from the inside out and it became the superpower. That is when it became a dominant video game. From there, everyone was playing it, everyone was hooked, everyone was talking about it and they haven't stopped since 2007 with modern warfare. Now there's been some stinkers in there. Trust me, I can't wait to get to those. Since then, call of duty has had I would say has just had a solid grip on video games since, uh, another one of my very deep. So if I have another one of my very deep favorites of all the world war ii themed ones, this one, this one's my favorite here. Like I said, right now we're in the golden era of call of duty.
Speaker 1:They had one, two, three, four, five, six. They had six straight all bangers. No skips games straight six straight years they just released hit after hit after hit. They didn't try to one up themselves that. I saw it as I saw it kind of as lateral stepping, which was totally fine, because if you try too hard you fucking fail. Like if you try to beat something, you, you overdo something and you kind of fuck it up.
Speaker 2:Um they just kind of lateral stepped with everything they did.
Speaker 1:They just improved on the one before it, which was amazing world at war. So the probably the most graphic and the most brutal installment in the franchise.
Speaker 1:This one introduced um, dismemberment, massive amounts of gore nice horror and this was the one that gave us the nazi zombies mode. So they went extra hard into the uh horror realm with this. Yeah, they did not skimp away with okay, we're gonna make it more violent, more graphic, more we're gonna swear now, so on and so forth. And then they just tripled down on that with world at war, first mission, your um, your marine recon division, on making that out in the pacific. So the us campaigned this, when you focus on the pacific, when they said we had enough in germany the past three games, we need to tell the pacific side. So in the us missions you take makinato, but we needed a big um like a hub kind of setup between midway and you know the rest of like. From there you can take you, you can take the Philippines and everything else. And then Peleliu. So Peleliu Island was the first airstrip. So now we can get our air support regularly. We have more than just our carriers, we have a closer, actual landing strip.
Speaker 1:That was another absolute fucking nightmare of a landing, depending who you talk to. Depending who you talk to, it was the first introduction of amphibious landings. That was arguably just as bad, if not worse than D-Day, was Peleliu, and then it just got worse and worse. As we got closer to mainland Japan, it got worse and worse and worse and fucking worse. So, like we're talking Pele japan, it got worse and worse and worse and fucking worse. So, like we're talking palau, we're talking iwo jima, we're talking okinawa, like bloodbaths, absolute bloodbaths, carnage, um, so that's really what they captured for the americans. Was that? Was that grisliness. How many times during that campaign, as you're playing on those maps and then, like you just hear like a whistle blow and then all the soldiers like jump up and they're swinging at you with katanas or they have grenades, their booby trap, they have grenades strapped to their chest and everything that they're just popping out of foxholes and out of the trees. Like absolute terror in the game, just the most jump scares in the video game.
Speaker 1:Um, and then you had the guy who showed up with the flamethrower and everything. The missions got a lot easier once you had the flamethrower, but because you just, I remember just running it, just like fuck it just, is it a tree? I don't give a shit, fucking, all the good guys are behind me, cool, I just, I just held the trigger down until the end of the mission. I just burned everything, like smoky the bear was pissed the fuck off at me because I burned down at least at least 11 of that world's. You know, trees were taken out because of me. I said fuck them, we don't need them anyway, we got plenty more. It's just an island. I burned absolutely everything because I was sick and tired of that shit, like they. There was a lot of. There was a lot of uprising. Try to get the game banned in the US.
Speaker 1:Because in Okinawa they showed Okinawa was the last major battle in the Pacific. It's just the last major battle of World War II period. Because during the campaign of Okinawa was when we dropped the bombs, but the sheer desperation that they were at at that point, the Japanese, and that we realized that it's just, it's never going to end, it's literally never going to end. So it's just those last two missions that you play, as in the US campaign. It is exactly that. And at that point too, because supplies were screwed up, because the kamikazes were messing with the fleet so much, they were so damaged, you have almost no ammo in the game. Like that's, that's they. They really kind of focus on, like really what it was, like they captured, like I said they captured the horrors of that for the troops.
Speaker 1:You had very low um heels, you were bogged down. There was nothing you can do about anything. The mud your character was moving so slow through it. Um, basically just such limited on resources and ammo. They in early stages of the game they actually did have, uh, npc enemies animated as like younger, like kids, because they did that a lot wow oh, that was.
Speaker 1:They got in a lot of trouble for that once they did, but but you did see the um, you did see a lot of civilians in those missions, a lot of civilians gone. Uh, they've really. Yeah, like I said, this game was very dark. It's even when you know it's a video game. It's a mature video game. For a reason I always want a lot of people with that game because it's very oof, it's rough, yeah, and then but you know I mean in their defense though you.
Speaker 2:The whole point of the game is to bring you into realism with war.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:I can see why they would build that in.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. Like I said, that was just from the US campaign the Soviets we started at Stalingrad. That mission starts off. You are in a mass grave, you are literally hiding under dead bodies and you wait for the germans to walk by and then you climb out of that that's how the russian missions start.
Speaker 1:And then you move to silo heights. You move all the way to the reichstags in berlin, um and same thing. It's just the. At that point, after stalingrad, the Germans pretty much were in full retreat. You were just beating them as they were like stumbling down. You get to the last couple of missions in Berlin and they're surrendering and your COs are still like fuck them. You know what I mean. You're hitting them with Molotov cocktails, you're blowing them in half with double barrel shotguns. It is urban trench warfare at like. It's absolute worst If you can. So same thing. They just it was just that realism, that shock, that brutality.
Speaker 1:They captured in that one very, very well, in a, in a messed up way. They captured it very well. And then, as a nice little treat, after you completed the campaign, the game cuts the black and you see one of the maps. It's kind of weird. You see something kind of walking towards you and then running and then yelling, and then you, what the fuck is that? And the screen goes black and it says like written in blood nazi zombies round base warfare. And yeah, the new game mode that they added naz zombies. So it's like your typical okay, defend this area. They're going to just wave after wave survival mode. See how long you can live, man. The amount of time I spent playing in that, that's got its own story that I'm not going to touch on because it's just way in depth it's way too much, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But it was worth mentioning that that was the one that gave us Nazi zombies, Jesus man.
Speaker 2:Just was the one that gave us nazi zombies. Jesus man, just, I mean a gift of humanity, right, yeah, you know if you want to call it that you get to kill zombies and nazis. It's.
Speaker 1:It's a twofer, it's a win, it's a win, win, win, everybody wins in that one right except there is no end to that. It is on an. There is no end to nazi zombies. You just survive until you can. I think the record is like 200 level, 200, something or other, but it would just. It keeps going to infinity. There is no way to beat it oh wow, yeah you want to have a real gift to humanity.
Speaker 1:Modern warfare 2 the best hands down, no questions asked. I'll fight anyone. Fight anyone that this is the best call of duty they ever made yeah as as groundbreaking and as um new and fresh that modern warfare 1 was.
Speaker 1:This one just did that same thing and it doubled down. So much more customization, twice as many guns, twice as many attachments you can put multiple attachments on a gun. So this is just all the multiplayer alone new game modes, insane new maps, just absolutely just mind-boggling amount of content. They added now challenges to get new skins and camos for your guns too. So now we have challenges and the different perks challenges to make the perks even better, the infamous um lightweight pro, commando pro and oh shit, what was the other marathon pro. So you have those three. You move faster, you have unlimited sprint.
Speaker 1:In Commando Pro, you didn't take fall damage and your melee was like doubled. You were literally lunging at players like you were the fucking predator in the jungle of Venezuela. You could like cross map dudes with your knife. You lunged at them like crazy with your knife and the knife thing at this point was an insta-kill. So that was like one of my favorite things. And then this is where the infamous noob tube was born. Noob tube is a reference if you're a noob or a jackass.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't know what the hell you're doing. In a video game you have the under barrel attachment. It's a grenade launcher or a tube. It's pretty much how you told. If you sucked at the game because you couldn't actually like shoot anything and your aiming was bad, you just the actual. It was like shooting a small tactical nuke. That's how strong the fucking grenades were in this game.
Speaker 1:Like you could just launch it into a bunker. You just annihilated everything. You mix. You mix that with uh. You mix that with the Akimbo model 87s. Uh, one man army. You mix that with the Akimbo Model 87's One man Army. One man Army was an attachment to where you could switch your loadout mid-match right, so this game also gave us exploitation. So what you would do is you would have two gave us exportation yes, that's exactly what it did, like I said there was.
Speaker 1:This is exactly what it did, because this is what you got. You would create two classes and you would have your primary weapon would be an assault rifle with a grenade launcher attachment. You would put on the perk that gave you extra grenades and they did more damage and then, as your secondary was that perk, one man army to where you can switch your class mid-match. You just copied that and you made that. You made that. So you just copied that loadout to like your loadout two. So you play as loadout one. Shoot all your grenades, use all your grenades, get all your kills, your grenade, use your one man army, switch to loadout two. Boom, you have all your grenades back. You have all your explosives back. You have all your equipment back. You use all that ammo. One man army. Switch back to loadout one. All your. It's just, it was infinite grenades and you could. You just kept spamming it and rotating and rotating, and rotating and rotating. So that's just, no one had skill. Everything was blowing up.
Speaker 2:Everything was blowing up let's see, that's what I like blowing shit up the ability to infinite blowing stuff up.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, yeah, no, and they never patched that. They patched everything else, like any gun. That was way too much or or whatever anything else could be exploding. The game they fixed. Except that, except the one man army, yeah well that was nice of them.
Speaker 2:No, it wasn't those dicks.
Speaker 1:Are you kidding? That should be the first thing you fucking switched. No, the first thing they fixed definitely was the akimbo model 87s. No, the akimbo model 87s was, remember, the really cool shotgun that schwarzenegger used.
Speaker 1:The second terminator, the lever action one yeah you could run around with two of those, you could dual wield those suckers. And when I tell you those, oh my god, so they didn't even hit like the nuke. The nuke was the grenades. Those things hit like the manhole cover that the atom bomb sent into space, but think of like 47 of them at the same time. So people were running around and you could cross map with a shotgun. I'm having very bad flashbacks right now, so I'm gonna move on okay all right what you got next oh, the honorable mention in the campaign of that one.
Speaker 1:That's the campaign that gave us no Russian. Anyone who knows Call of Duty knows what I'm talking about. I'm not going in depth about it. So shout outs to no Russian. We are all psychopaths for doing what we did. Now we're moving into Black Ops. Black Ops we are a little bit of history, but still having our fun. It's kind of a little bit like earlier to where they just kind of take spark notes of history throughout the Cold War but then they write their own story. That kind of happens there, but they kind of touch on big Cold War moments, if you will. So you have Bay bay of pigs.
Speaker 1:The very first mission is, uh, failed attempt at the assassination of fidel castro. You get captured, um so op 40. Uh, vietnam. Uh, mountain yamantah, shit like that, sleeper cells, brainwashing that's what happens to your character at the end of the first episode. Spoiler alert by alert by the end of the campaign there's a whole lot of what the hell's going on. So one character is kind of showing up, a Russian, actually the Russian from World at War, your sergeant from there. He's kind of showing up oh my God, he's still alive. He's here. He's really not there. But then other people are like who the fuck? What the fuck are you talking about? That makes no sense. Your, your character, is talking to him and they're like he's not here. What are you talking about? Come to find out you were captured by the soviets in that first mission. You were brainwashed to be one of like this. The kgb, like sleeper, kills.
Speaker 1:You know, sleeper assassins, um tasked assassinating jfk oh god, yeah, that's what it was, and so when you were in the prison, you were in the same prison that that r Russian sergeant from World at War was at. He undid the brainwashing but also did some brainwashing of his own. So the main bad guys the Soviets they brainwash you to kill JFK Well, your little Soviet buddy buddy there. He undid that. But then he brainwashed you to kill those. The three like lead scientists. The three main bad guys. It's funny. You're by the end of it, you're completely insane and you're just like screaming and just like I'm vetra res.
Speaker 2:I'm Victor Reznov.
Speaker 1:No, you're not. You're Alex Mason. What are you talking about? I'm Victor Reznov. It's fucking nuts. All the while the cut scenes, ed Harris plays a character of the CIA. You're being interrogated. Oh yeah, this is also when they started adding like celebrities into the games.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah so.
Speaker 2:Black Ops Fuck yeah.
Speaker 1:Ed Harris is like the main CIA guy Hudson. He's like interrogating you and like super pissed off at you and also the kind of fun stuff. Ice Cube plays one of the guys in your team.
Speaker 2:The main character, the main voice actor for the person you play as Alex Mason is Sam Wor, uh, sam worthington.
Speaker 1:Is that his name from avatar? Okay, yeah, so yeah, this is when they started with big names in some of these, uh, in some of these games also. Um, they didn't write the song specifically for the game, but they got the okays from avenge sevenfold to use their song welcome to the family and the promos for the game. So this is now we're starting to get celebrities involved.
Speaker 1:That's how big this franchise is becoming um, and then their, uh, their online was kind of rinse and repeat of the other ones there. That one also included, uh, a zombies mode, uh, actually the one for that, if I remember correctly, the first zombies. At that point you're not killing Nazis anymore, it's just called zombies. At this point, I think that first mission, the first zombie one that you have, you play as the, the, the playable, the four playable characters. You can be our JFK, castro, nixon and McNamara. It's fucking hilarious, like the voice actually, like you're in the white house and you're like these undead flesh guide maggot faces. I will end them all like it's so funny. The jfk. The jfk is so over the top. The nixon is absolutely ridiculous. He was just like the only thing works on the undead fucking hippies.
Speaker 2:It's so fucking funny it is fucking, hippies fucking hilarious, like the amount of stuff they make. He makes watergate jokes oh my god, it's so fun.
Speaker 1:oh, oh, what's his name they have, uh, they have jfk cracking marilyn monroe jokes like oh they spared, they spared no expense with, like the comedy and the satire of that mission. It was fucking ridiculous. Modern Warfare 3. Jump back to Modern Warfare. It's the end of a trilogy. They close it all out. This one Eminem did write the song for, so the song they used in the promos was it was a won't back down.
Speaker 2:The one he did with pink.
Speaker 1:Okay, turn the wall back down One of the greatest gym songs ever. Anyway, um more celebrities in this one, the other two, the other two characters of the U S special forces is Timothy Oliphant.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, and Idris.
Speaker 1:Elba OohS Special Forces is Timothy Oliphant. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:And Idris Elba.
Speaker 1:Ooh okay. Oh yeah, it was a very fun game to play, but World War III has broken out and the Russians are absolutely obliterating you and they kind of take the fight to them Halfway through the game. It's really weird because you're actually I think someone actually makes the joke huh, never saw this happening. They've built on top of world war three happening. It is broken out because of not because the actual world leaders, but because of terror sleeper, like terror cells or ultra nationalists as they're known um okay, they're just just the pot stirrers there.
Speaker 1:So the no russian mission we talked about, that was the massive catalyst. So your, the, the russian terrorists, commit an absolute atrocity. And because you were a a uh, an american soldier undercover that they found out about, they kill you and they leave you there. So then the the only person they see that's responsible for it is an American. So they think the Americans are behind it. So then the Russians start World War III. They declare war on the US because they thought the Americans committed this atrocity on their soil.
Speaker 1:So for the rest of Modern Warfare 2 and throughout all of Modern Warfare 3, that's what it is it's just the russians, the americans in full scale, all out world war 3. They went insane with it. So much fun, so fucking sad. That campaign is so fucking sad by the end of it. Well, this is the next one I'm going to talk about is the last one, and then my attitude is going to change drastically because, like I said, this is the last one. This is the last one of the golden era, black Ops 2.
Speaker 1:People will get in the pissing contest which one was better Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops 2? But we all can just agree that, just like the Lord of the Rings movies, the second one is the best. So the Two Towers is the best. Modern Warfare 2 is the best. Black Ops 2 is the best. Those are the pinnacles of those runs of the franchises. Black ops 2 does get a little difficult to follow the campaign because you jump back and forth between alex mason in the cold war and his son, david mason, in the way off in often. This game came out in 2012 okay um.
Speaker 1:This game took place in the way future of 2025 oh wow, way future, yeah the way.
Speaker 1:Future of 2025. So it's. It is kind of funny, though, because that game took place in 2025. Like all the crazy like tech they had and it was just like no, it's just no, it's funny. Like the full active camo suits and like the um, yeah, it's just ridiculous. Those like, uh, whatever mission impossible movie it was, where he has those gloves and he like climbs up the side of the building yeah, like your team has, your team has those. Yeah, just regular soldiers have those fucking gloves and you're climbing up the sides of buildings to like regular infantry, not a special forces unit, regular infantry just has those fucking gloves and active camo. Yeah, get fucking bent. Dude, um, um, a whole bunch of the same thing.
Speaker 1:So, like the backside of the Cold War and the really nasty, gnarly shit Um, mk Ultra is brought up, that's fun. Oh, operation Paperclip Operation Paper ultra is brought up, that's fun. Oh, operation paperclip, operation paperclip is brought up. Yeah, a lot, all the shady shit. All the shady shit is brought up in that one. So that's why those missions are a lot of fun. The world war three has ended in the second cold war has happened in this game and uh it gets a little.
Speaker 1:Like I said, it gets a little. Just play it if you're really interested in the story. But the basis of it, the cold war that's going on, is between the of Al-Qaeda and the Mujahideen Jesus, yeah, so there's a lot going on, trust me. It makes a lot more sense when you play the game. It makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 1:They just got everyone involved uh, yeah, like everyone wants a piece of the pie this was like the one and only campaign where they actually had the um, the, the uh, the choices that you could do. So, like in almost each mission, it was okay, what do you choose? Do you go to do this, do you go to do that? And the choices you made in those missions drastically changed what happened in later missions. I'm the zombies in that one was a lot more fun. You got an insane amount of celebrities in zombies for that one. So you you had Ray Liotta, you had Nice.
Speaker 1:I keep forgetting the actor's name, but I want to say it was Mr Orange from Reservoir Dogs. Him Quentin Tarantino and Ron Perlman was an also. So yeah, Another one of the maps, Tim Roth. There it is, Tim Roth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry, it took me a minute.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much I knew you were going to. It was like she's just going to Google it or whatever the hell it is. Yeah, there was a lot. There was so much to that one Event. Sevenfold actually did write a song for that game, their song Carry On. They wrote for that game, they used in that game, they promoted in that game and the actual ending ending so the end credit scene was two characters in the game, woods and Menendez. They're kind of there and they have a kind of a chit chat and next thing, you know, m Shadows and Cinder Gates from Avenged Sevenfold they come over, they say some shit to you from avenge sevenfold. They come over, they say some shit to you. They said, hey, get the fuck out here, we gotta play. And then you end up playing with avenge sevenfold. So it's like it's like a little. It's like a little concert with like a bunch of different animated. So it's a bunch of the different characters from the game. They're like at the concert and they're dancing and playing around.
Speaker 1:It's fucking great, it's it was so fun, it was so fucking cool, so fucking cool.
Speaker 2:No, but that's I, it's, I think you know, those little, those little things, those little pockets of I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's like a little nerdgasm, that's that makes it, makes it worthwhile yeah yeah now we're gonna fly through the rest of through most of these, because then we kind of they kind of shit the bed on a lot of these next games coming, which is a real fucking shame.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, this is, this was. Yeah, this was kind of, yeah, this was bad. Ghosts Call of Duty ghosts it's not the worst, but it's definitely the first bad one. They were getting the shit kicked out of them. This was where they got absolutely the shit kicked out of them by battlefield. This is where what is called quote-unquote levolution was introduced into games. Ghosts had one mission, had one multiplayer map where if you did certain things on it, if you um, you were in like a high-rise sky, uh, skyscraper, uh, if you did certain things, explosives went off and so, like the top half of the building like fell on its side and got wedged between another one and every like. So now the mission was ghost from being right side up. Now everything is like on its side and you're running through like a building that's like on its side, like kind of like inception okay, yep, like because everything's like all screwed up.
Speaker 1:So now you're right, you know. So now the walls are the floor and the ceiling and the floor and the ceiling are now the walls is everything is all fucked and falling. And then the the, it just kind of keeps falling and shaking and shit keeps moving around. So I swear battlefield, every mission could be completely changed and blown up and destroyed either way. Uh, they had a really cool. I'm not even gonna talk the. The campaign is so fucking bad in that one that was the first fuck awful campaign they did. It was every trope of just like just bad 80s action film.
Speaker 1:You could fucking think of a spec ops team a, a, a, um, make believe, spec ops team of like years. They were just called the ghosts and they wore the masks with the skulls. They were so badass, like the this one guy. You know you're. You know you're the character you play as your father is telling you the story and the the voice the guy who voices him was like the hardcore sergeant from avatar so he's like, so like he's like your dad and telling you and then like some fucking attack starts happening on the us and you're running and some post apocalyptic, dystopian shit happens.
Speaker 1:Come to find out your dad was one of the guys and like that special ops unit and the main bad guy is like the dude who he was also a part of that unit but he was like the really reckless one and whatnot and so like on a mission where they were all going to die. It was either okay, we either let this guy go or we all die, kind of a thing. So now he's just bent on revenge of wiping these guys out. So it's just, it's a really bad revenge story and he looks like a wannabe Jesse Ventura from Predator. That's just how bad Character design the story. It just kind of ends oh no.
Speaker 2:For no reason it sounds so bad.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, the ending showdown is you and your brother. You're now a part of this special force unit, the ghosts. You're on this train with all the nukes that's gonna like blow up the world, that the main bad guy, rork, is on and you're fighting over it. In in the fucking in like the the main, what control room of this fucking trick? It's not even like a regular train, it's like some stupid fucking high-tech train. And, uh, you're there, so he's got your, your brother, like a headlock and your brother's like, oh, just do it.
Speaker 1:So you take like a fucking 44 magnum and like you shoot a hole through your, you shoot through your brother's shoulder and you shoot the main bad guy. He takes it square to the chest. He has a through and through, through center mass, his sternum from a 44 magnum. For those of you who don't know, you're not fucking living from that like to the point where now you see you're oh yeah, by the way, your train has now gone literally off the tracks and is now sinking to the bottom of like the ocean right, so your underwater wall is happening, so you can see that the bullet went through him and is now, you know, like gone through the window and like the water starting to drip in and all this other shit before the front windshield just gives out you know about to drown. Miraculously the bad guy survives and now kicks the shit out of you.
Speaker 1:It's fucking horrible oh no, it's every bad trope, every bad trope is just there but, we didn't have zombies in this game, like the little game mode wasn't zombies, it was called extinction and it was an alien invasion. So that one was a lot of fun. It was new. It wasn't as good as nazi zombies, but it was different and I liked their take on something else, because that fucking campaign was just so bad. And this was also the first one where you could choose either your character was a male or a female.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:My wife slightly despises this game because she realized something the challenges were different for the men and the women.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that sucks.
Speaker 1:There's two weapons that my wife loves using whenever we play Call of Duty. Lauren either uses a sniper, so she's laying down somewhere, she's on overwatch, she has the biggest gun with the most bullets and she just fucking runs like a psychopath and just shoots the rambo, just, full rambo, she just would. Just she runs into the smoke, lays down and just spins like a beyblade from hell. Right, yeah, right, total aggro, she's a tank. Well, the challenge to get the ghillie suit for the guys was get like for, for if you had a male character was like get like 100 headshots with a sniper rifle. Right, kind of a pain, but very doable. For the women, you had to get 100 headshots with a specific sniper, with a specific attachment, which made your gun weaker and the recoil fucking through the roof so like it was oh, it was the challenges for the women.
Speaker 1:To unlock the kit, to unlock the skins were so much more difficult. I mean twice, if not three times as hard anyone ever call them on their sexist bullshit um, enough people, because they never did that again in any other games.
Speaker 1:Good, you could be a woman, you could choose to be a man or a woman, but there was no more challenges like that to do it. And there was and on the multiplayer too, there would be this little like floating briefcase. If you picked it up, a little challenge would and would be in the corner on some of the maps and it was like a little map exclusive challenge to do. It was oh, get two melee kills. Um, each map it's something different. They introduced this with like a horror themed map. You could see that there's a lot of tropes and easter eggs to like. Friday the 13th nightmare on elm street, child's play, so on and so forth. If you completed the challenge, you turned into michael myers. Oh, you're kicked. You turned into michael myers. The song started playing. You ran around with an axe. You took, like, your health was like twice as much. You ran super fast and you, like you were chopping people up with a fucking axe it was awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was. That was the first stinker. The next one the story was good, but everything else kind of sucked. Advanced warfare did a solid story. This was the first one that they actually did motion capture. So the story itself this is the first one it was it was visually, it was stunning. This was the first game that this was the first um call of duty that released on the xbox one and the um the ps4. So the graphics were great. This was at the height of the show house of cards. So kevin spacey was the bad guy.
Speaker 1:Um oh nice yeah, it was yeah a little bit, yeah, a little bummer on that one. Um, the absolutely amazing uh voice actor, uh, troy baker, plays the main protagonist that you play as. Uh, this is the one that gave us exosuits. This was the first like futuristic game they had. So you had the exosuits now, so, like the big mechanical shit on, like your arms and your legs when you can jump higher, double jump, wall running. The game was much faster. The multiplayer was very, very, very fast-paced. At this point, yeah, it just kind of went to shit. Their multiplayer sucked in that one and the campaign was a little bit better. They took some of the writers, I think, from House of Cards, so the campaign story was solid. Everything was just that game was just clunky. It moved way too fast. After that, let's take another giant shit black ops 3, yeah, 26.
Speaker 1:The game takes place in 2065. I am just god, if you really care, same thing, google the synopsis of this one. I'm not even going to try to explain the story. It's so confusing to this fucking day and it makes no sense to me at all. There's weird mind control, cybernetic stuff and brain control and body augmentations and like a chip that's installed. They just I can't even begin to describe how fuck awful it is. It is still. I still don't get it. I've played it a dozen times just to try to understand it and I still don't. Yeah you, ready for this, ready for this one?
Speaker 2:I'm ready.
Speaker 1:That's the second worst Call of Duty.
Speaker 2:Oh God, there's a worse one.
Speaker 1:This next one. This next one, in my opinion, is the most horrendous, terrible, fuck, awful Call of Duty in existence Infinite Warfare. The game takes place in 2187. And one mission takes place on Earth. The rest of it takes place in space. It's space call of duty, different planets. You're on mars and you're in intergalactic like space carriers, aircraft carriers, and there's space battles like star wars. I'm telling you the game was so bad. I don't really. I just kind of remember some of the high points. About high points I mean very low points. The the campaign is. The story is easy to follow. It's that there's. You know, we've expanded to the different planets, um, and we have colonies on some of these planets.
Speaker 2:it's just oh nice, yeah, and the multiplayer, the multiplayer.
Speaker 1:it just same. It's specialists. They went from like 12 specialists from Black Ops 3 down to six Oof, and it's not even the fact that they went I can feel your blood boiling right now.
Speaker 1:No, here's where my blood is boiling, because they just stole Noble Team from Halo Reach. Like character design. The quote unquote what the abilities of that specialist was was like their corresponding Spartan from that game. Like to the pink scheme of your armor, the blue one was the blue one. The green one was the green one. The sniper was the sniper Like the heavy weapons guy. Was the sniper like the heavy weapons guy? The heavy weapons guy with the bad cockney accent was the heavy weapons guy with a bad cockney accent like oh, they didn't even try to fucking hide it.
Speaker 1:They didn't even try. Fuck that game. It can burn in hell actually, oh god. After the year 2187 we go back to the 1940s, in world war ii, in call of duty, world war ii um, same thing as they did before. They just kind of cover some of the battles in the uh on the western front operation cobra, the battle of the bulge and the river rhine and they just put their own story to it. Nothing really to write home about. It's just kind of that one is just it's very forgettable.
Speaker 1:Black ops 4 came out after that one that gave us their very first try at a battle royale, so they called it blackout. Now, it wasn't perfect. Uh, you had pub g going on. I think by this point I'm pretty sure fortnight was out. So the battle royale is is the new craze. We need something. They tested the waters with it. It wasn't perfect, but also wasn't bad. I would rank them PUBG, then Blackout, then Fortnite. I still fucking hate Fortnite. Yeah, there was actually. No, there was no campaign. There was no campaign to that game, it was only multiplayer and it was just rinse, repeat. Black Ops 3. Like, I'm sorry, the same maps, the same specialists. Sorry, the same maps, the same specialists, the same guns. It was the same everything they. They put all their money into their battle royale and they, like, forgot to make the rest of the game. So the year after brings us the modern warfare one reboot and war zone.
Speaker 1:Uh, the reboot is similar ish to modern warfare one as to the point where it's just the game takes place in the modern day. Captain Price is getting a team together and you gotta take on some bad guy so they don't take over the world. They're not really reinventing the wheel with that one. They just kind of retold the story from the first one and they added a couple of new graphics and weapons and they got a bit more real with it. The important thing was war zone. I think war zone is still dominating, just call of duty. I think they they outdid themselves, or I think more people are playing war zone than the actual call of duty itself, mainly because it's free, but because it's a. It's a very simple kind of grindy uh battle royale. So now credit where credit is due, as much as I hate it the best, at least if you're looking, statistically speaking, the best battle royale is still fortnite. It's the most popular, it's everyone still plays it. It's still one of the most popular games in the world right now. It's like that.
Speaker 1:Gta are insanely popular yeah, yeah, yeah but call of duties is a little bit better because it's not cartoony like um, like fortnite, if you can say this. It's quote-unquote. More serious, if you will. Um, not like pubg. Pubg was always my favorite, but I mean to our listeners come on, if you don't know what warzone is, what the fuck's wrong with you like I'm not even going to explain all that much you're able to kind of test out more shit in war zone than in multiplayer and multiplayer in war zone.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:And it's. It's that game is still running hard to this day. They just kind of relaunched it because between 2019, when that game came out, and now, they had two, three different maps. I think they have three different maps for warzone, but none of them were as popular as the first one, so they just brought it back and said, hey, we remastered it, when really it was like you guys don't like anything else we do, so we'll just give you what you like, right? It's just like their players like tripled thanks to warzone and cold war, the one that came the call did after that one, the one that came out in 2020. Um, it's because of those two games why I made it through fucking lockdown. It's because of modern warfare, war zone and cold war. Cold war came out at the end of 2020, but still, um, yeah, modern warfare came out in 20 october of 2019. So lockdown hit in march. Covid, like the hard lockdown happened in March. So thanks to those games, I made it through lockdown, that and lethal amounts of alcohol on an almost daily basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that was everyone the alcohol did Shout outs to Doug Love you, dmacc.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cold War was just a. A was just a try. It was just a rehash of black ops, in my opinion. Uh, they just told a very in-depth brainwashing story. The multiplayer was a lot of fun, though I'll give them that they added a couple new game modes to that. But even that it wasn't really different. Vanguard was their last attempt at world war ii and with how bad this one did, they just gave up. They just because same thing. You played as different characters. They almost tried to make an avengers game with it because it's like they're different characters of, like different specialists from different areas of the world.
Speaker 1:These next two are essentially this. I'm just going to go ahead and say they're the same game because of just how quickly they came out. They came out within a year of one another and it was the continuations of Modern Warfare, so it was Modern Warfare's two and three of the reboots. Their campaign got very confusing. They took a page from Black O, black ops 2, but it didn't work as good. So like you're chasing a weapon smuggler who has nukes and somehow he's in mexico and in bed like with the cartels, so now you're chasing down the mexican drug cartels and this terrorist who's from some made up country, it's not even a real country that he's from, it's from Urzikstan. The game ends where it's like oh, we found so-and-so's buyer.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, blah, blah, blah. Who is it? Oh no, and Captain Price gets all pissy and whatnot on the show and they just name drop Makarov. Makarov was the main bad guy from the original Modern Warfare 2 and 3. So they just name dropped him to name drop him. And then in the one that came out within the year Modern Warfare 3, it's just like he gets busted out of prison and then he's just causing chaos around the world. But you don't see him until like the last. It's just, he's just so useless. And same thing, just the campaigns. Those two just fell so flat.
Speaker 1:They tried so hard to reinvent the wheel of the original modern warfare's two and three and they just missed the target completely, they just threw, there was too many chefs, you know yeah, it was rough which then brings us to black ops 6, which is the late 80s and early 90s Cold War and espionage. So they touch on some bits here and there. I think it's actually kind of fun. There's a mission, you're at the gala for President Clinton and like there's the Clintons and shit like that. It's funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I finished that one because I'm I'm in the middle of playing this one yeah, so I'm going to too much details.
Speaker 1:It won't go to do much details, but same thing they. They, like they've done before. They mention things in history, but they just kind of do what they want and they just write a story. That just kind of like it plays.
Speaker 1:Well, it's, it's fun to play. But if you like I you know me, I love a good story it just the story just kind of falls flat. It's very guessable. It's very guess. Like it slaps you in the face like I guessed it by, like the second mission, like how it was gonna end, like how it was gonna end. Um, the online's a lot of fun, I'll give them that. Um, they switch with the prestiging a little bit. They're doing a lot of events, like they just had like the jane silent bob one that they had and all the other different fun little things around the holidays and shit the fun skins and whatnot. Uh, there is one I don't know if it's gonna be. I think it's gonna be dropping in black ops 7. Um, I have the inside scoop, the 411, of what the uh the halloween special is gonna be each year. They kind of do like a big halloween event and it's really cool. Um, I have a bit of a 411.
Speaker 1:I have a bit of a 411 on what this year is gonna be and what's involved, and I'm super excited about it. I can't wait. It may be the. It may be the second time I use my real people money to buy stuff in the game to make my character look different, but it's worth every penny, if you ask me. Which then brings us to black ops 7 comes out this october. They just announced it. What? Like last week, like not even, I think, over the weekend. Um, from what we're seeing in the, what I've seen in the trailer so far, it looks like who the hell is the dude who played rocky sun in rocky balboa whatever that guy he is, that he's gonna portray david mason, the main character of uh of that game okay uh, looks like we're getting our zombies back.
Speaker 1:Looks, looks like they're remastering Stuff from Black Ops 2. And bringing it back. And this game is going to be a direct continuation Of Black Ops 2. They've already announced it.
Speaker 1:That's pretty much all the information that we know. It's a direct continuation of Black Ops 2. And what the canon ending of that game is. So that makes me very excited because, like I said, that was the last perfect Call of Duty that they made was Black Ops 2. So the fact that this one is going to pick up right where that one left off makes me very excited. But hopefully they don't just overhype it and then just shit the bed again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I mean, do you think that they'll? Because they seem to have really gone downhill.
Speaker 1:Do you think that they're going to pull this one out? I mean, if you had to be, a betting man, is it going to be a I'd?
Speaker 2:raise, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:So, like I'd raise, I'm, I'm, I have enough confidence. I have about the same confidence as I did in the modern warfare reboot. And the modern warfare reboot was amazing. It, that was the best call of duty we've had in a long time. Um, it wasn't perfect. It definitely had its problems. It had its issues, its exploits. So I won't say it was perfect, but it was the best one we've had since black ops 2. Um, so if they can make this one just as good as that, that's a that's. I'm willing to take that risk yeah, but I'm still not going all in.
Speaker 1:I'm still not going all in because this is also the first one that will be fully developed by microsoft.
Speaker 1:So black ops when the big merger happened, when microsoft acquired activision okay this is the first one that microsoft has pretty much had total control over, so we'll see. We'll see how this goes. I'm very open-minded, so, like I said, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll be a little frisky. If I was a betting man, I'd put a little extra in, but, um, I'm not going all in, I'm not. I'm not trusting them that much yet. They haven't earned that much trust from me yet. I also feel like these games are way past their glory days and no one actually buys these games because they like the games. I think everybody buys these games because they know their friends are going to and, for the love of christ, stop going farther into the fucking future. Like, just stop, just just fucking stop it.
Speaker 1:Just fucking stop it. It Just stay in this century. You fucking idiots. Just don't Stay in this century. Oh God, I get nauseous every time I'm just thinking about it. And now, if there's one last little bit that I want to say is, like if there's one like I rag about these games and I and I joke and I have my fun, this one sucks, that one sucks, or whatever, but but still I will say this to each his own, I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who infinite warfare it's their favorite game in the whole world, like it's their red dead too yeah, yeah, I don't mean anything like that to those people.
Speaker 1:It's everyone's got their own opinions and it's fine and it's fun, but it's it's. It is those little. If there's one thing that's good about these games even the ones that I don't like like you still play it because your friends play it, whatever it's still that the important thing with these games is that um is those moments with your friends and you're laughing and you're joking and you're whatever. Like I said, you know, like thank god for modern warfare and war zone. I I'm telling you it's like not to sound like that guy right now, but that it was very monumental for my um, like for my mental health, and like it really did help me through um, through the lockdown. I was home alone and I couldn't do anything like it was, it was rough, it was it was just me and steel.
Speaker 1:It was me and steel. All day, every day. I couldn't do anything like it was. It was rough, it was, it was just me and steel. It was me and steel. All day, every day. We couldn't do jack shit. Nothing but, luckily, me and um, me and one of my closest friends date and we just I got him. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say it man, I'm fucking calling you out on this homie. Uh, I got him back into gaming during the lockdown I said I'd say that I break his chops about that.
Speaker 1:I didn't really get him back. I was like, hey, man, let's play some video games. And we just did so, like he still played games, just not to the level that I did. I'm telling you. It was like every day, from like 9 am until like 1 or 2 am, we just played call of duty just all day long.
Speaker 2:But these games, man yeah, I mean it and that's I mean. That's just one of the great things about gaming is how it I mean, no matter what game you play, uh, if you're playing with you know friends, and it's just, it's just such a fun bonding experience and there's so many games where you can just pile in with your friends and just have moments.
Speaker 1:You even got to experience playing Call of Duty with me once. Yes once it was on my birthday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:That was fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we ended up as usual just shooting the shit more than playing. But yeah, it was good.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because you had a shit-ass connection. So I was like, yeah, half the time we were getting our asses kicked. We're just shooting the shit in the lobbies.
Speaker 2:But still, yeah, anyhow, yeah but you know, I mean, you know, it's just, it's there. There's so many platforms. How many times have we, you know, in even recent moments, like we've had fucking giggle fest, just playing fucking Minecraft?
Speaker 1:You know it's. Don't get me started on Minecraft. Don't get me started on Minecraft. The chickens, them chickens the chickens.
Speaker 2:But that's you know. But that's the great thing about gaming, you know it. It just, it's just all about having fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like it's just all about having fun. Yeah, it's like. It's just like the force and it's like duct tape. It's got a light side, it's got a dark side. It binds the galaxy together. Man, Video games, duct tape, the force.
Speaker 2:Yes, the three, the three most powerful things in the universe.
Speaker 1:Well, as one very ornery, angry British captain once said, history is written by the victor. And well, though these episodes may not be written by the victor, they're definitely written by a neurodivergent psychopath with enough caffeine coursing through his systems to drop a juggernaut. So if you like what you heard today, or any of this shit that we got, give us a listen every now and then. We may say something that'll surprise you, but probably not.
Speaker 2:And please give us ratings on Spotify and Apple or any platform that gives us ratings. It will help us get into the algorithm and other people will find us. Uh, you can find us on all social media and stick around. We've got a lot of things coming up in the future. All right, we're going to wrap this shit up and say bye go for it. All right, Bye. Everybody Say bye Kyle.
Speaker 1:Stay frosty.
Speaker 2:Ooh, that was good.
