2010 was a year of ups and downs for me. Personal problems have made the last half of the year not the greatest ever. But I have enjoyed a lot of great games, music, movies and tv shows this year. So without further ado, here are my favorites for 2010:

Games

1. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

2. Fable 3

3. Red Dead Redemption

4. Dead Rising 2

5. Alan Wake

Music

1. The Damned Things - Ironiclast

2. Danko Jones - Below the Belt

3. A Day To Remember - What Separates me From You

4. Veara - What We Left Behind

5. Story of the Year - The Constant

Movies

1. Inception

2. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

3. Kick-Ass

4. Iron Man 2

5. The Social Network

TV Shows

1. The Walking Dead

2. Fringe

3. Dexter

4. Modern Family

5. Castle

So, after my last blog post about how horrible Call of Duty Black Ops (from this point on refered to as Blops) is as a game, I was a little hesitant to continue playing. But today I figured "Ah, what the hell. It can't possibly get any worse, right?"

The game answered swiftly and with great confidence: yes, it can and will get worse. The next mission, which was the first Vietnam mission of the game, is fucking horrible. Pardon my French, but it just is. It's 2010, I thought we were past this point in games and were finally able to make some decent games that are engaging and fun to play. I guess Treyarch feels different and has taken several steps back to ensure that Blops will never be any fun.

So now I'm just going to be a little bitch and write down my experiences with Blops as I play it. These posts will be long and there will be lots of swearing and general anger from my side. I will try to keep the (big) spoilers to a minimum and just focus on the gameplay/game design aspect of the game from here on out. If you are a fan of Blops or don't like reading long slabs of text, I suggest you stop reading this post right... about... now! If you like actual games and can't be bothered to actually play this crap, follow me on my magical adventures in Blops!

Edit: Since I posted this in my last post, I should also post it here: I am a huge CoD fan and a professional game designer. Most of my complaints come from my experience and education creating and playing games. I don't *hate* CoD by default. And before this backfires and becomes 'a thing', I should also add that these are my personal opinions. I do not represent anyone else, least of all the company I work for.

Charlie don't die

Ok, so the infinite respawn means, in my experience with the Call of Duty games, that you just push forward until you reach the checkpoint. So I go down one more level on the hill. Everybody still keeps respawning around me. Woods and Hudson at least follow me down a level and are now the only friendly soldiers around. We're standing behind some medium cover. This means if I crouch, I can't see over it but I also can't be hit from the front. I have to stand up to shoot over the cover. Woods and Hudson are both standing up, are not moving and keep yelling the same phrase over and over again:"Enemy by the trench". Yeah, I know, Woods. I've shot the same exact enemy about 30 times now. But thanks for calling it out. I should also add that in addition to standing in the same spot, not moving, being shot at and not dying, both Woods and Hudson are also NOT. FUCKING. SHOOTING! Not once did they shoot an enemy. Even the ones that were out in the open right in front of them. So I am literally the only one shooting enemies and they keep infinitely respawning. At this point I am at a loss for words. But I have to keep going because this game has to have some redeeming quality at some point, right?

Tenacious me!

I am not going to describe what happens next, but it wasn't fun. It was quicker than going down the hill because now I knew what horrible level design there is in this mission but it was about as much fun. And again, Hudson and Woods stood at the top of the hill, out in the open, yelling at me, not shooting anybody, not dying and just being assholes. And then, when you get to the top of the hill, *SPOILER ALERT!* they make you do the exact same thing that Modern Warfare 1 ended with! *SPOILER ALERT OVER!* Come the fuck on, Treyarch! REALLY?! For fuck's sake!

*MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT!* So I fall down, because I am the best soldier in the world, right, JFK? And Woods is a moron and attack somebody with a jammed weapon. He gets knocked down and the NVA he was attacking is about to shoot him. Magically, I have a revolver which I swear I didn't have before. So now I have to aim and shoot the NVA soldier before he shoots Woods. I have to admit, I let the NVA soldier shoot Woods the first time. I just wanted to see Woods die. So after that very emotional moment for me, I shoot the NVA soldier the second time. Woods gets up and RUNS AWAY! He literally doesn't say ANY-FUCKING-THING! Nothing. He just takes off. No "Hey Mason, thanks for saving my ass" or even a "Fuck, that was a close one". NOTHING! He takes off and my mission is now "Follow Woods". AAAAAAAAARGH! This was the fucking easiest moment so far to have a tiny bit of character development or emotion or bonding between this character that has been in almost every mission so far and there's nothing! How the fuck do you justify that as the game designer or level designer or script writer who is responsible for this? That is just fucking horrible!

Now we go through a tunnel and come to a fairly large area with a jeep. Woods tells me to get in the jeep. But, as I have noticed, whenever Woods tells me to do something and I don't do it, the game breaks. So I refuse and stand in the same spot. Nothing happens. The NVA in the background are shooting wildly at random things but never seem to hit anything. Hmmm... I wonder... So I shot a group of 4 NVA soldier in the distance. And lo and behold, 4 NVA soldiers spawn and run to the exact same spots where their fallen comrades have just died. So I shoot those 4 guys. And... 4 new ones spawn to take their place. And they don't just spawn off camera and run up, they fucking pop out of thin air at the back of the level and run to their assigned positions. Ugh, really? I know I'm really nitpicking right now but this happens a lot in Blops: when I don't do exactly what the game tells me, it takes me all of 5 seconds to expose how lazily this has been made. And you can say "Well, do what the game tells you then!", which is what I should do but Blops makes this too easy. And, I should add, this is a mission where Woods drives the jeep around and I shoot tanks. It doesn't even really matter if those guys respawn or not, especially if I haven't even gotten into the jeep yet.

This dragon needs a mint!

Story, schmory!

But this article is getting too long and I enjoyed that mission so much I don't want to ruin it with a potentially shitty mission so that's it for today. I need a drink and a smoke after all that.

So... I wrote a blog post ranting about Call of Duty Black Ops being a bad game here on Giant Bomb. I was going to send it to some of my co-workers and friends to see if they agreed and that was going to be that. But it seems people on Giant Bomb actually read these blogs. Silly me, underestimating the community here at the greatest video game website ever created.

One of the comments on my blog post ended with:

"i'm confused. black ops is a modern shooter. this is kind of what you get."

Now, I'm not trying to bash this person's comment but it's kind of shocking that we're at a point in history where crap like Black Ops is considered 'kind of what you get'. As a game designer and somebody who considers games the greatest art form in history, I can not stand for this, people!

So let me crank up the Danko Jones and tell you why that I feel this way. Quick disclaimer: this is probably going to be a long ass post again, so the TLDR crowd can consider themselves warned. Also, while I am a professional game designer (as in, I design games and somebody pays me to do that), I have never worked on a triple A title and do not claim to be the best game designer in the world.

What is a game?

The way I see it, a (contemporary) game is simply: a world. This world is populated by whatever the game developer puts in it (buildings, trees, cars, animals, people, whatever). Unless it's an MMO or a game with user generated content, this means that whatever the developer put in, that's what you have to work with.

Besides whatever the developer put in the game, there are two other important aspects to this world: the player and the rules. The player is what drives the game and the rules determine how the player drives the game.

The rules

The player

When you're making a game, the worst possible thing you can assume (in my opinion) is that the player is an idiot. He (or she) is not an idiot. They can do things themselves if you just tell them what to do and make sure they can do it. If we've learned one thing from Bioshock's brilliant plot twist, it's that players will do whatever you tell them to do. They're in a game so they want to play. If you program it right, there should be only one thing they can do: whatever you tell them to. You don't need to hold their hands after the tutorial, just be clear and make sure everything works.

Speaking of tutorials: Black Ops doesn't have one. None of the standard "Hey private, fire your gun down the range. Now do it crouched. Now do it down the sights. Awesome, you rule, here's a cookie." Nothing. But then the game does feel the need to make me follow another character around in every mission I've played so far. This might become a story thing later on, I don't know, but it's frustrating. What's the difference between having Woods (the character you follow) lead you around and placing a waypoint on the map for the player to get to? If you have Woods lead the player around, the player feels like a secondary character. If you place a waypoint on the map and let the player go there, the player feels like the leading character.

And don't tell me this couldn't be done any other way, because Woods and Bowman could have been following you instead of the other way around. If they did it like that, when JFK tells you you're the best soldier in the Pentagon scene, you would believe him! Now you feel like a jackass because it should be Woods in that chair and not you. At that point you've followed two guys through the first two levels, got captured by the enemy and lost the (seemingly important) character at the end of the second mission.

Laser eyes, baby!

For a long time, there was a phenomenon in comics and cartoon shows which baffled anyone with a decent brain: writers would just give a character powers that suited the situation, which they would then use and immediately forget about. I call this 'convenient writing'.

Hollywood is now the main offender of convenient writing and it annoys the hell out of me. Too many movies and tv shows seem to have scenes that were written by the director going "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if they did this ridiculous thing". This leads to a cool scene that usually doesn't fit into the world or story. In some instances it doesn't even fit into the laws of physics. I think we all know who has turned this into a major 'art' form: mister Michael Bay himself.

It seems games are starting to copy this style of writing and Call of Duty is the worst offender at this point. But in games it's worse than in movies. Why? Because in a movie, the viewer has no control over what happens and has to passively accept what is going on. In games, the player has control. You still have to accept what happens but you play a role in what happens. If games like Black Ops feel like they should treat the player like somebody who doesn't matter, players are going to get angry.

It's the combination of rules and the way the player is treated in Black Ops that does not make me feel empowered in the game. I don't feel like I am the engine driving the game. I'm treated like some kid who can honk the horn from time to time but I never get to really drive. And I really like driving because other games let me, so when Black Ops won't let me, I throw a hissy fit!

The point

So what is my point? Nothing really. I don't want to bash Treyarch because clearly they are very skilled at making games. It's just that somebody at Treyarch made some very strange decisions that ruin the game for me (and lots of others, apparently). In my opinion, they approached the game from an angle that is completely wrong and should never be used in any game ever again.

For a few years now, there is a big discussion going between the 'main stream' and the gaming industry/community about whether or not games are art. Obviously, gamers who have played games like Rez, Flower, Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime, Okami, Shadow of the Collossus and Half-Life 2 will call games art. But Call of Duty is one of the biggest game franchises in the world and any 'main stream' people seeing this game will call this trash. Hell, seasoned gamers are calling it trash (including me and I've been a gamer since I could see over the desk and reach the keyboard). And I can't blame them. If we are really going the Michael Bay way, then something is going wrong. I'm not saying every game should be the equivalent of a French art house film but it seems like Black Ops has no interest in being a game but would rather be... well... a Michael Bay movie.

So... Anyway... The point, yes, that's where I was going. If any game designer reads this (big or small), please: trust the player! Don't treat them like children because we're all big boys (no matter how some of us behave ourselves online).

And any non-game designer that are reading this: discuss! Because we're all backseat drivers anyway!

Me and Call of Duty, sitting in a tree

Call of Duty Black Ops though, is something different altogether. I've never been one to say Treyarch is a worse developer than Infinity Ward but they've really dropped the ball on this one. Before I start my 'rant' I have to say two things: I haven't even finished Black Ops and there will be spoilers. The spoilers are minor because I haven't finished the game and I haven't finished the game because it is already annoying the hell out of me (and I've only made it to the 4th mission). Oh, and I use some bad language, so... there's that.

The game is really into taking you by the hand and never letting go. It won't let you do things on your own at all and isn't that the whole reason why we play games in the first place? To feel like bad-asses who blow up entire bases with just an AK-47 and a pistol? Black Ops is weird this way because I get the feeling it doesn't trust me. It's annoying and weird that a big game developer made a game like this. And not just any game, a game in what might be the biggest franchise in gaming history. Below are my experiences with the first three missions in Black Ops. I know the text is quite long but I am trying to use examples for people who haven't played the game.

My issues with Call of Duty Black Ops

The next section, in true Call of Duty fashion, throws everything at you at once, people are screaming in your earpiece, you have no idea what's going on and you die. The game respawned me in a spot with 4 enemies surrounding me! FOUR! I died within seconds. This goes on for about 10 minutes and I keep dying because there is too much shit going on. Eventually, we get to an airfield and my buddies just fucking book it across the tarmac! I don't have infinite auto-run so I have no chance of keeping up. Already I feel like the game is getting sort of annoyed that it has to play around me.

Nex mission, I'm in prison. Somebody hands me a knife and the game tells me to stab dudes. Ok. I can do that. So I stab every guard in sight. Then I come to some prisoners fighting some guards so I try to stab them. I can't do that. I swear I've stabbed them for 2 minutes straight and nothing happened. Why do I have this knife and why are there guards that I can't stab? For the next 20 minutes or so, I follow some guy. I never get a moment where the game tells me 'Go there and kill everything', only 'Follow this dude'. The story also gets very dodgy in this level. It's all a bit too cartoonish and over the top for me and the voice acting isn't helping. I have a hard time buying any of this and it's not making the game very enjoyable. But the next mission really takes the cake.

The cake

So now I have escaped prison and I'm working for the CIA. Never mind how that happened, the game spends about 10 seconds explaining that so you shouldn't give it a second thought. Because I am a bad-ass (at least, that's what the game tells me), I get to go to the Pentagon! Nice! Now, let me describe what happens in this 'mission'. I arrive in a helicopter, get in a limo, go to the Pentagon, walk through the Pentagon, meet John F. Kennedy and get the mission to kill some dude. First of all, the game doesn't let me control my character! He walks on his own in first person perspective. Not for a little while, no, for the entire mission! Ok, so they don't want me to go off-script and want to keep the immersion going. But then, they cut away from the first person perspective to show THE LIMO DRIVING DOWN THE FREEWAY! What? That was cool enough to break the first person perspective in a Call of Duty game for THE FIRST TIME EVER? Then, they show my character walking around in third person! At this point, I am about to cry. This makes no sense. The whole walk through the Pentagon is in first person and I still can't control my character. Why, in the name of Kotick, did they do this?

There must have been concept art for this level, then somebody made 3D models for it, those were unwrapped and textured, put in the engine and lit. Programmers and animators made sure everything looked alive. This probably cost weeks to create and all so the game can rush me through it in 5 minutes without even letting me control my character? WOW! You know what's cool about games? Going to places you never get to go. You know where none of us is ever going to go? The motherfucking Pentagon!!! Why can't you let me walk around in this fictional version of the Pentagon for a while? WHY?! It could have been fun, you could have put in some Easter Eggs and people would have said "Dude, did you find the Playboy magazine in the bathrooms at the Pentagon in Call of Duty Black Ops? Man, that was cool!". Nope. 5 minute first person walk with no control over your character and no breaks. Awesome.

Nope, guess again. Next mission: I get to follow Woods around again. Seriously, if I am the best soldier the US has, then WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO KEEP FOLLOWING THIS DUDE AROUND?! Because, again, the game doesn't trust me to do things on my own. I like poking at games to see how far I can go but Call of Duty doesn't let me go at all! And when I follow Woods around in this mission, everything I do breaks the game. I shot my gun, the helicopter saw me: instant failure. Next section: it won't even let me shoot. Sometimes the game stops and Woods tells me to do something.

You know what, Woods, I don't feel like it. Fuck you, do it yourself! But he never does and the game just stays in that state until you finally do it. At one point, I get to shoot down a rocket going into outer space with a stinger missile. That was kind of cool. So I'm standing there, looking up at the rocket exploding. Looks cool. I look back down and everyone is gone! Everything is quiet and my buddies are waiting for me down the stairs. It's really, really quiet but the second I reach the stairs everything starts exploding! I could almost SEE the hitbox the level designer placed there. More following, more corridor shooting. Sometimes I think the game just throws in these corridor sections to make me feel like I'm at least doing something but it's not helping. Corridor shooting sucks! Woods, Bowman and some guy I don't even know are also in the corridor and they randomly charge forward and jump in front of my gun. Remember: we were pretending to be Russian soldiers so they're dressed in the same fucking uniforms as the enemies! They got really angry when I shot them. Well, don't stand in front of my gun. I'm not moving, you are, idiot!

At the end of the mission, we apparently failed to kill the dude we were supposed to kill. At no point in the mission was it clear to me that we were there to kill a dude (or shoot rockets out of the air, for that matter). The game hardly ever tells you what you should be doing. Anyway, we failed. And now the main character has the balls to say 'we searched the entire base and he wasn't there'. Fuck off, we didn't search the entire base, that thing was massive. Woods just dragged us from point A to point B! So I'm getting sick of the following, the vagueness, the story, the corridor shooting, everything having the same goddamn color and most of all, Woods.

My breaking point

The next mission is in Vietnam. Yeah, Vietnam! I like Vietnam movies (two of my favorite movies: Platoon and Apocalypse Now) so I was psyched about the Vietnam missions. So who shows up: WOODS! AAAAAAAARGH! The game takes control of my character and walks me to a Jeep and I don't even get to walk around the camp we're in. Now Woods starts briefing me again and I'm done. I don't care anymore. I've now played an hour of Call of Duty Black Ops and all I've done is follow two dudes around and odds are, that's what I will be doing for the next five hours. The game won't let me explore, won't let me do things on my own and won't let me mess around. Fuck it!

So I turned it off. And you know what I'm going to do now? I'm going to play Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. There is a massive open world there where I can do all kinds of things. That game does make me feel like a bad-ass, like the person who should be liberating Rome. It trusts me enough to open the world up, fill it with shit to do and say "Have fun, dude!"

Get to the point already!

Black Ops has a huge boner for how awesome, bad-ass and cool it is as a game. But this boner is preventing the game from doing what it's supposed to be doing: making ME feel like a bad-ass! I, the player, am living the experiences the game is giving me through this character. If the game doesn't trust me to be that character and holds my hand the whole way through, then what am I doing? It's the gaming equivalent of being an intern: they give you shit to do, but it's never the good shit and somebody's always looking over your shoulder to see if you're doing it right. And you have to make the coffee.