By Alec Meer on July 3rd, 2012 at 8:00 pm.
Amazingly, ‘Call of Duty Online’ didn’t actually exist before now. They’re surely the most inevitable word-sequence in the world, after all. Even so, “free to play micro transaction first person action game” CODO isn’t for us. It’s one of those bally China-only games that exist to cater towards a community that is even more steeped in internetiness than Western gamers are, and more to the point is also steeped in rampant piracy. A multiplayer shooter that only exists online is, then, a logical step towards capturing the sprinting money-goliath that is China’s immense population. I guess it’s not impossible it’ll walk this way eventually, though for now I believe CoD: Elite is the spearhead of Activision’s Western fortune-hunting interests.
CODO appears to be a collection of latter-day COD’s most famed maps set into a new structure, as created by Activision Shanghai in tandem with Raven, and orchestrated by the partially-Epic-owning goliath that is Tencent.
Here’s a trailer:
Here are the useful things I can tell you about the game:
…
Really, this is purely a point of curiosity, on how Activision is striving to make CoD an even bigger and more deathless brand than it already is. Given market trends and that our austerity-crazed overlords don’t appear to be in any danger of improving the global economy, I suspect a free-to-play CoD in North America and Europe is only a matter of time – but until then, hope you like spending £40 every November.
Announcement of COD is here, in case you didn’t believe me.
03/07/2012 at 20:02 HexagonalBolts says:
closely followed by: WAR of FACE online
04/07/2012 at 11:57 Xerian says:
WARFACE WARFACE WARFACE!: ONFACE
^WORF ACE.
07/07/2012 at 18:09 Geen says:
Warface. Warface never changes.
03/07/2012 at 20:03 Flukie says:
Complete with dubstep guns. Wub wub away!
04/07/2012 at 02:50 loshon says:
Obligatory “that’s not dubstep” comment.
That’s not dubstep.
05/07/2012 at 00:41 Phasma Felis says:
I like how anything with a synth and some bass is “dubstep” now. I’ll alert Daft Punk.
03/07/2012 at 20:13 Wololo says:
Funny how most of it is MW and MW2. lawl.
I mean, it’s not like I didn’t play MW3 an’ all but still!
03/07/2012 at 20:26 Misnomer says:
Let the mindless meme spewing begin. This place is practically 4Chan when it comes to military FPS.
Perhaps RPS users should get used to this though since it may be the pay model of choice based on the Euro court ruling.
03/07/2012 at 21:01 Raziel_Alex says:
Let me be the first to say it, loud and clear. Call of Duty sucks. Thank you.
03/07/2012 at 21:07 Skabooga says:
WARSTICKINTHEMUD
03/07/2012 at 21:21 The Random One says:
BORINGFACE
03/07/2012 at 22:07 HexagonalBolts says:
I don’t think it’s mindless meme spewing so much as satirising the ridiculous marketing and naming conventions that arise from the consumer-capitalism driven tendencies of the mega publishers who churn out this endless stream of hyper-violent and desperately trend-following cash cows.
03/07/2012 at 22:56 Misnomer says:
And how is that not a meme when it is done as above? You want me to believe that the WARSTUFF and DUTY OF BATTLE COMPANY type jokes are individually inspired responses and not a social behavior passed down via the internet that becomes a default response to anything just so each member can feel part of a joke with a pre-approved response requiring little to no thought?
Unlikely.
There are places on RPS where intelligent comments and discussion can be found. Responses to military fps are not those places as it is rarely undertaken by the RPS writers or the community (though there is some potentially good stuff below quite a ways).
03/07/2012 at 23:00 elmo.dudd says:
In my lurking, I have found RPS readers and editors use miltiary FPS articles as a place to illustrate how dumb they think the games are, by trying to outdumb them.
Unfortunately this results in gross generalizations and bad reviews which overlook when these franchises do make actual changes and improvements.
Don’t worry, the mere hint that you might not hate everyone you know who doesn’t personally hate Call of Duty will cause an immediate revocation of your PC gamer card.
Oh and Alec, it is Activision trying to penetrate the Chinese market where consoles are illegal, as CoD sells better on the console. Not everything is Activision trying to rape your father as a child with Doc Brown cackling in the background.
04/07/2012 at 01:59 bjohndook says:
I enjoyed COD + 2, 4, MW2, and Black Ops. Though I’m traditionally a PC gamer I did play most of them on xbox 360 – my PC gamer card is a GTX 670 and if you want it, you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
I don’t really understand why so many people seem to take COD seriously, but I don’t think they deserve particular ire.
04/07/2012 at 02:00 SkittleDiddler says:
“Unfortunately this results in gross generalizations and bad reviews which overlook when these franchises do make actual changes and improvements.”
Please go back a couple of pages and read the Spec Ops: The Line review.
04/07/2012 at 11:27 MichaelPalin says:
Imagine that part of your job would be to receive and review an endless stream of uninspired variations of the same purely commercial concept presented with even more uninspired trailers every time. Eventually, there are no new words to express how dull everything is and you find yourself being as uninspired and repetitive as what you are criticizing, but there is no way out. We are just supportive of the RPS editors.
But it’s true, maybe it would be easier to reduce these articles to the bare minimum “new military FPS, is new in feature X and Y, here trailer” and move on.
FACING FACE! (towards article)
03/07/2012 at 23:37 Cooper says:
The answer to your issue is necessarily tautological. The reason you do not get intelligent discussion in a comments thread about military FPS games from large publishers is because it is a comments thread about military FPS game from a large publisher.
WARCOD
WARFISH
04/07/2012 at 00:13 HexagonalBolts says:
I think the writers have offered very thorough deconstructions of mainstream commercialised gaming several times over. I just think that the ridiculous naming conventions of arcade first person shooters represent so much. In particular: the unstoppable power of a corporate marketing machine that can reconstruct utterly meaningless phrases like ‘Warface’ into a brand, and the ways in which that corporate power can masquerade achievements and pay to win models as fun in place of genuine creativity, innovation or risk.
04/07/2012 at 00:16 Skabooga says:
I didn’t ask for this.
04/07/2012 at 12:18 zontax says:
I NEVER asked for this.
FTFY (seriously you really tickled my OCD)
04/07/2012 at 00:38 cjlr says:
What a shame.
03/07/2012 at 20:27 VoEC says:
“We fight… not so that the world will remember us… But so there will be a world… to remember…………”
WUB WUB BWWOOOOOP!!!
If I wouldn’t know it any better, I would say that this was a parody trailer.
03/07/2012 at 20:57 db1331 says:
Oh my goodness. I thought that was a joke, but it’s an actual quote. The sad thing is, they probably paid someone quite a bit of money to put that trailer together.
04/07/2012 at 08:42 libdab says:
“We fight … not so that the world will remember us… But so that the world will forget that they had to remember … and, in forgetting, will truly remember …” wub wub WUB
Having said that, I’d play it (I lurv CoD).
03/07/2012 at 20:28 Rinox says:
Mind : Blown
03/07/2012 at 20:32 dsch says:
Why does money fly out of dead people? Does this also work in real life?
03/07/2012 at 20:36 Rinox says:
Depends on the person, I suppose.
03/07/2012 at 20:38 misterT0AST says:
There is only one way to find out, isn’t there?
03/07/2012 at 22:46 RakeShark says:
Closest thing I’ve found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsgCyeUBBlU&feature=player_detailpage#t=46s
04/07/2012 at 00:03 elmo.dudd says:
Because it is a “money shot”, where you got a headshot, or killed them when they were one kill shy of a killstreak reward – it is one of the more overtly arcadey-silly elements of the franchise.
04/07/2012 at 00:30 caddyB says:
I thought money shot meant something different.
16/07/2012 at 23:13 Kiyiko says:
It’s “payback”
Killing the guy who last got you
03/07/2012 at 20:44 obie191970 says:
Isn’t this a little redundant? Do people actually buy CoD games for the single player? I think the only campaign I’ve played in its entirety of the first one back in ’03.
03/07/2012 at 20:57 lijenstina says:
The first Call Duty campaign I’ve played was MoHAA. :)
03/07/2012 at 21:07 obie191970 says:
Good point. Remember how ground-breaking that opening Omaha beach level was at the time? Pretty awesome game.
04/07/2012 at 09:00 Mechorpheus says:
Funilly enough, that mission wasn’t the opening mission of the game, at least not the launched PC version (They saved that for the otherwise complete drek PS2 port Frontline). You had to do some awful faffing about first, rescuing some guy voiced by Jason Statham (or at least a REALLY good impersonator), then faff about some more in a submarine base.
Never could quite forgive that game for that horrendous sniper-infested german village mission though. Probably about as close as I’ll come to real Post-Traumatic stress dissorder.
03/07/2012 at 21:33 SkittleDiddler says:
I bought MW2 primarily for the multiplayer experience (stupid me), and I ended up enjoying the single player campaign a hell of a lot more than I had any right to because the online part was the most disappointing thing since moist socks.
I’m not saying the campaign was actually good, I’m just saying the MP made it fun by comparison.
03/07/2012 at 22:28 Jimbo says:
Hard to say if people buy it FOR the single player, but the vast majority play the campaign and more than half finish the campaign, so I think it’s fair to say it still adds value for a lot of people. I imagine sales would nosedive if they tried to sell a MP-only CoD for $60.
03/07/2012 at 22:33 Vagrant says:
I bought Modern Warfare 1 for the campaign, and thought it was one of the most brilliant single player experiences of the ”current generation.’ I’d rank it right up there with Bioshock. I wouldn’t touch the rest of the series with a 40 ft pole, though. They took all the wrong lessons on what made MW1 great.
03/07/2012 at 23:48 Shooop says:
I bought CoD4 the day of release after playing the demo. The single player in that game was excellent except for some “Camp out here and wait for enemies to stop respawning infinitely” parts.
Then I played MW2′s single player thanks to my friends at RELOADED and wanted a refund for my time.
03/07/2012 at 20:59 Gap Gen says:
Are Call of Duty graphics getting worse?
03/07/2012 at 21:49 vapsyvox says:
I’m thinking that Activision doesn’t want the F2P game to have the same graphics as the ridiculously expensive installments because that would attract too many players from the paying category.
The graphics of Call of duty haven’t notably improved since CoD 4 so I find it surprising that they managed to make this game uglier than the previous games.
03/07/2012 at 21:20 The Random One says:
It’d be funny if your team always showed up as the People’s Republic Glorious Army and the enemy as the disgusting American capitalist pigs, like America’s Army but in reverse.
03/07/2012 at 21:27 SominiTheCommenter says:
Animal Farm: The Rebellion: Online
03/07/2012 at 21:34 SkittleDiddler says:
ANIMALFACE: Modern Orwell Warfare Online.
04/07/2012 at 03:44 Hardlylikely says:
BOOTFACE: Forever.
04/07/2012 at 08:15 apocraphyn says:
Ohoho, I like that, Hardly. You win the internet.
WARBOOT: FUTURE PICTURE
04/07/2012 at 11:15 rustybroomhandle says:
Twoface bad, warface good!
03/07/2012 at 21:23 Jamesworkshop says:
To be fair considering the nature of COD as the series stands now I’ve always thought that this would be a more effective system I’ve wondered why before that this isn’t the case, obviously it’s a lot of money to risk but I do think would better serve the customer and ultimately make more money along with the narrower scope making for a less taxing series to develop.
You could still maintain a single player boxed title and still pull Halo type numbers
03/07/2012 at 22:47 Puckoidiot says:
This is just all the Modern Warfares shoved together, isn’t it?
03/07/2012 at 23:53 Shooop says:
It’s China so it’ll be a pay-to-win model. That alone will allow Activision to buy another money printing machine, and possibly push even more people into the yearly full-price expansion packs called games that bear the CoD brand.
I really kind of envy them.
04/07/2012 at 02:08 Viiral says:
This is nothing new.. They have Counter Strike Online, Battlefield Online, Fifa Online, Company of Heroes Online.. already..
Asian online gmaing market is built around Free 2 play with micro transactions..
as many people play at game cafes etc.
04/07/2012 at 04:14 Raijin says:
A free Call of Duty? Wow, someone at Activision finally figured out how much the franchise is worth.
08/07/2012 at 09:14 suyangzuo says:
Well , I’m from China.
Your prejudice about Chinese players is very obviously.
Indeed, many Chinese players are “more steeped in internetiness” or “more money is more win” or something similar, they played few Classic PC Games and they only know “online games”. They are mainly after 1990s. Because they mainly played “online games”, so they don’t put much mind on “legal copy” or “pirate copy”.
But, there are still many players after 1970s and 1980s, just like me, born in 1981, we played more classic pc games. I have legal copy such as “Civilizations 3″, “Civilizations 5″, “Call of Duty Modren Warfare”, “Battlefield 3″, “Sydnciate”, “Diablo 2″, “Diablo 3″ and much more. And these game’s selling price is much more expensive for Chinese than for Western. For you, it may”59.99″, but we must pay about 400 to buy it. We pay about 1/10 of our monthly wages to buy a game, can you do it? Can you simply say “China is also steeped in rampant piracy”??? If the PC game’s selling price is more than 1/10 of your monthly wages, can you promise the Piracy Rate in your country won’t rise higher as China?
Still, China has many problems at PC or TV Games, but they are mainly cause by our government, not our people. So don’t make distinction about all players !
08/07/2012 at 09:19 suyangzuo says:
By the way, I did not feel any attraction toward “COD Online”, I have bought the legal “COD Black Ops 2″, purchase in advance, excuse for my poor English, I try my best.
07/11/2012 at 15:20 Richard Sorge says:
You know,they said it`s for chinese players。In China there is several million COD fans although
they are playing by pirate。 More people join CODO more cash,$$$$$$。i think i see a Printing press.