Now I'm not being accompanied on this trip down memory lane by a fish, no sir. COD is known to all but fisherman as the acronym for Call of Duty, which is perhaps the most successful and well known gaming franchise in the world. The series contains a number of games that each have their own resonance and meaning to gamers out there. Now I'm not talking about whether you like the games, or if they're good; it's the sphere of influence the COD franchise has emitted towards the wider gaming world and there are very few gamers out there (console or otherwise) who have escaped its influence.

 

For the record I would like to state that I have always enjoyed the single player/campaign mode for the games. They're challenging, memorable and good for achievements, you can easily squeeze 800-900 gamer score from a COD game depending on how many achievements/trophies are multiplayer based. So yeah, fun campaign but nothing worth queuing round the block for. So why do people queue? Why pre-order and book time off work/school to play every new franchise instalment upon release?

 

Multiplayer.

 

The biggest gaming revolution of modern times. Fuck voice control, motion sensors or even high definition graphics; it's internet access and competitive multiplayer that has been the driving force of gaming for quite some time. Therein lies the problem for COD.

 

I hate playing COD online. It's stressful, dangerous for me and my surroundings and I don't even suck, that's the problem. I'm quite a capable shooter player, years of gaming coupled with fast reactions and learning speed should let me enjoy the advantages of playing online against fourteen year olds who don't get enough sunlight or vitamins. But I don't. Now don't get me wrong, raging and frustration is part of any multiplayer game, it just seems to occur the most within FPS types. I don't lose my shit on League of Legends in the same way I do when I play Destiny, Halo or COD. There's just something about those games. However, COD games have always been the worst. I just can't grasp how buggy they are considering the amount of profit they yield. They could use all those dollars to create a near perfect online shooter but instead they seem to release yearly instalments that don't change much but still break records. A lot like iphones in that sense.

 

That being said I have a lot of fond memories with the games.

 

When I was in comprehensive school me and a group of friends would meet up on Sundays at a LAN lounge and not move for eight hours. I tell a lie, we used to get up halfway through the day to buy candy and sugar drinks. It was the highlight of my week. One of the games we would play was COD 2. We would shout abuse over our shoulders at the sniper who was camping (but technically playing the role correctly) and still hadn't been killed. Until someone used a rocket launcher to take him out then we would shout abuse at them for using the weapon in such a noob way.

 

When I started University, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare came out and flipped the script. Me and a friend would play multiplayer LAN and do maps where you could only use pistols and knives. It was such a beautiful engine that you could snipe across the map with a pistol and there was no bullet drop or hand sway. We played that game during our University Christmas day (was on the 21st or something) and we were in the flat; Turkey in the tiny oven and we had twenty minutes before the table had to be set. That was our only job you see, set the table and put the condiments out. So what could you do in twenty minutes? Play COD of course. Before Uni Christmas Day, my friend's flatmate's little cousin came up to visit and he's like nine years old and plays COD all the time. So naturally I offer him a game and humour him by letting him use any gun he likes while I can only kill using the melee.

 

The second year of University was a time of settling for the majority of students. The ups and downs of living away from home with strangers and their different accents had come to pass and everything, including partying, was supposed to take a back seat while academic pursuit became the main focus. The familiarity of a new COD game was the only comforting reliability for me that year as I didn't end up settling down socially or academically. So Modern Warfare 2 was released and it was a big, motherfucking deal. This was the peak of my COD experience, the best of the series, though opinions and profit sales may say otherwise. From a nostalgic point of view, MW2 was the catch of the day.

 

Getting the game to begin with was an experience in itself. MW2 is the only game I've ever queued up for during a midnight release. Nowadays I use amazon for that sort of thing but I was young and excitable back then. So my buddy and I are chilling in the snake of geeks outside Gamestation of Lincoln town centre. We're making eye contact with people, striking up small chit chat, treating the event like queuing for a gig. Some engaged us, others were trying to keep a low profile, afraid to be recognised and shamed. We were all there for a fix but it wasn't like we were waiting in line for heroin, so why the stigma?

 

Then comes the answer.

 

The midnight release was also the same night as Carnage. For those not in the know, it's a student night/organised alcohol poisoning event that has nothing to do with the Spiderman villain. So on one side of the wintery street you have enthusiastic gamers in parkas and beanie hats and on the other are the near naked bodies of intoxicated youth. A direct contrast and both respective parties viewed one another with the humorous curiosity that is reserved for observing animals at the zoo.

 

So this one brave girl comes over and starts shouting hooplah about us being losers but in the way that only a comical, staggering drunkard can. She's also waving her phone around like a war club and so the inevitable happens and she drops it. In a stroke of cosmic karma her phone doesn't just fall but it lands and smashes into three pieces; phone, battery and back case. The phone and back panel are in front of her but the battery slides over into our queue. No one rushed to pick it up for her, surprisingly. She scrambles over and rummages around the feet of unimpressed gamers. I don't know if she ever found it.

 

Once that debacle ended, there was this girl who worked at Gamestation and she was a dime, or maybe my memory portrays her in such a way because of all the films, posters and pictures of beautiful blondes I've seen since then. I do remember that she wore a green vest, camo face paint and a green sash tied around her forehead. This was her soldier outfit (obviously) and we would have been excited by her dangerous curves and military posture, had she not opened the midnight launch with "as if you all queued up in the cold for this."

 

Hardly a smoking barrel of passion.

 

Fast forward a few months after release and everyone we know plays the game. In the morning before lectures, afternoon sessions before and after the pub, before nights out, before or during pre drinks. Guys (and a few dolls) just loved playing COD at Uni. I wish I made a note of how many hours I spent screaming the TV due to streak ruining kill that was always, always at the hand of a noob. I remember having a quick bash on free for all before a night out and my friend's flatmate (the same with the little cousin during MW1) comes into the room and asks us if she looks fat in her dress. Bear in mind that I'm tucked into a corner avoiding noob tubes and stray sniper bullets. So my friend says no within the appropriate time limit (soon as she finishes asking, basically) but I take a little longer. Maybe thirty seconds goes by on account of me trying to unlock my predator missile. I get it and go prone then answer her question but by then it's too little too late. She gets upset, I get called heartless and the real shitter was that I missed with my missile. So we killed time, chased kill streaks, clambered after the ever elusive nuke and once I even got enough kills for it but then freaked out because the option for the bomb wasn't there. Then I realised that I hadn't equipped it before hand since I could barely get past twenty kills in a row, never mind the required thirty.

 

Then the other COD games came out but something had changed.

 

MW3, the Cold war sagas and Ghosts soon followed but I was playing other games and it didn't seem to have the same pull anymore. I couldn't figure out why until I saw fourteen and fifteen year olds getting shakey over the new releases and it dawned on me that maybe I was getting too old for this shit. The new COD games are as significant to the young bloods of today as the old games were to me. So when I heard of COD: Advanced Warfare I scoffed and reminded myself that I already played and enjoyed Titanfall. But you know what? After writing this little memoir and taking the trip with you readers along digital lane, I find myself curious and even hopeful that the game is exceedingly good. The hype behind it seems high as always but the Facebook comments against official trailers appear nonchalant at best. I want the new COD to be cool so I can order it, play it and be taken back to simpler times when I had no money for games but plenty of time to enjoy them. Whereas it's the total opposite nowadays.

 

If you can take one thing from this brief reflection upon the COD franchise it's to never be ashamed for your passions, the recollections held alongside video games are just as visceral as those that accompany sport, romance and music memories.