what's up guys this is M3RKMUS1C and i have a different type of video for you guys today in
the past with call of duty i've talked about different concepts that have existed for quite
some time we're talking about things like the call of duty cycle the call of duty formula and call of
duty's identity crisis and since we're starting to get some information about the upcoming leaks
for call of duty 2021 being call of duty world war ii vanguard i wanted to talk about these concepts
a bit more because for some reason i'm starting to get worried about the next call of duty game being
a world war ii game which is what the franchise actually started with so as of lately i've been
looking at myself in the mirror and i'm like you dumbass why do you not want a world war ii call
of duty game around the time of advanced warfare black ops 3 and infinite warfare you would have
been so thrilled to get a world war ii game right and if we look back at some of the older videos
i was i was absolutely thrilled for call of duty world war ii and then that game happened
so instead of doing a more typical call of duty video i wanted to dive more deeply into some of
these really fundamental concepts about what makes call of duty games good and bad the first thing we
all need to do is get a refresher on what a lot of these different terms mean like what is a call of
duty formula what is the call of duty cycle this call of duty cycle picture is basically a meme
that has been around for years and years and has actually been pretty spot-on to put it simply it
just describes how our enjoyment for the newest call of duty games end up dying pretty quickly
and then we get really excited for the next one ultimately to just repeat the cycle and kind of
be let down but what's really interesting is that not every single call of duty game fits this mold
as a matter of fact there have been call of duty games that you just want to keep playing for years
and years on end and what's really interesting is that the games that typically break this cycle and
have a lot of replay value end up selling more copies than some of the other games that stay
within the cycle and then of course you have the infamous call of duty formula this is something
that people within the call of duty community kind of came up with but then activision themselves
said that there was a call of duty formula how did call of duty become such a phenomenon
i've been asked to decode the secret sauce of call of duty countless times holy [ __ ] it
basically makes me think that there's a checklist and activision's over there ticking off the boxes
for every little feature that a call of duty game has to have in order to be considered a call of
duty game this could be things like the game has to have 60 fps it has to be fast paced i'm not too
sure about having a campaign after black ops 4. but ultimately the call of duty formula is like
activision's grocery list for what the game has to have you better not forget those [ __ ] brownies
and lately there has been a newer kind of concept that's been talked about which is call of duty's
identity crisis the basis behind this is that call of duty started off as a world war ii shooter and
then it evolved into being a modern military shooting game and then after black ops 2 when
they released call of duty ghosts and started to see the sales decline pretty sharply that's when
they made advance warfare black ops 3 in infinite warfare making the three call of duty games with
exo suits was their attempts to breathe some fresh life into the series try to get some more
sales and try to reinvigorate the community but ultimately at the time this idea didn't really go
over as planned advanced warfare definitely turned some heads it was definitely met with some pretty
critical reviews of the game as well and then of course after that you had black ops 3 which was
presumed to be like a direct successor after black ops 1 of black ops 2 but it kind of became its own
game and at the time black ops 3 ended up passing modern warfare 3 sales record at the time and it
generated a [ __ ] ton of money for activision even though we might have differing opinions
about these three different games black ops 3 was basically the pinnacle of it all and then
came infinite warfare now don't get me wrong infinite warfare had a good campaign and i have
fun just kind of goofing around on the multiplayer but the game's trailer got disliked bombed into
oblivion when infinite warfare was fresh and it first came out i had very strong feelings about
the game definitely leaning more on the negative side and i feel like a lot of that frustration
at the time was because we were not getting the call due to games that most of the community was
wanting they did bundle model warfare remastered with infinite warfare but we wanted to get a new
boots on the ground call of duty game that went back to the roots now here's the thing
since advanced warfare black ops 3 and infinite warfare we have not gotten a brand new exo call
of duty game a futuristic one since these games we've gotten call of duty world war ii black
ops 4 modern warfare 2019 and black ops cold war it's pretty clear that they've been listening to
the fans and they've been trying to deliver games that they think the community is going to like the
reason this is so fascinating to me is because initially people really opposed the futuristic
exo call of duty games but now i feel like people aren't as opposed to them
myself included and that's ultimately the main reason i'm sitting here and making this video
because the next call of duty game is potentially going to be a classic world war ii call of duty
game and i don't really want that weirdly enough i would kind of prefer to see advanced warfare 2
or infinite warfare 2. my mind is playing boggle right now i have no clue why that's what i want
instead of a more traditional call of duty game or maybe there's a catch maybe i actually do know why
i don't want world war ii vanguard so let's get into this today i actually want to introduce to
you guys a new concept called the call of duty x factor it's something that we definitely have
all realized about certain call of duty games but maybe we didn't have a term to associate it with
so that's why i'm coming up with the call of duty x factor i know what an original name but after
i explain exactly what this is i'm hoping that it will stick with you guys the call of duty x
factor states that every single call of duty game follows the formula but there's always going to be
at least one feature in each game that is going to make it stand out and be different than the rest
of the call of duty games so what we're going to do now is take a look at every single call of duty
game and figure out what was the x factor of that call of duty game what made it stand out and what
made it unique because typically the call of duty x factor is also the main reason why people want
to go back and play that game in fairness i'm not going to start with the original call of duty call
of duty 2 or call of duty 3 because those are not games that i started with so i don't really want
to step out of line and say something that might not really be true but starting with call of duty
4 modern warfare i have played every single call of duty games since so that's where we'll start
call of duty 4 modern warfare cod 4's old school mode is something we haven't seen in a very long
time but it was extremely fun you would spawn in with a scorpion and an m9 with extra health
higher jump heights and you had to try to pick up better weapons or perks off the ground in
order to get more kills and win the game it took call of duty's base multiplayer and made it more
like halo and it was pretty fun to play but what old school mode also did was it exposed how many
glitches there were in the maps but it turned out that the maps might have actually been designed to
accompany the old school mode old school mode just had a lot of depth a lot of replay value and it
was very unique at the time call of duty world of war a lot of people look at world of war as just a
world war ii reskin of call of duty 4. to be fair that's kind of a bad take because if you bought
world of war when it was first out and you played through the entire campaign you were greeted with
a brand new mode to the call of duty series called zombies that's right guys the x factor
for world of war was the fact that it introduced zombies to the call of duty community which is
huge and you have to respect world at war for that at the time zombies was a mode that was going to
be scrapped by activision but it was something that treyarch was just doing for fun in their free
time and it ended up growing into this massive amazing thing call of duty modern warfare 2. oddly
enough i think people come back to modern warfare 2 for three things one man army noob tubing trick
shotting and the customizable kill streaks these three things alone are the main reasons why a
lot of people will still go back to play modern warfare 2 even in 2021 one man army noob tubing
is fun casual and stupid this is something that was extremely annoying when modern warfare 2 was
in its prime and they could have easily patched it but they didn't and it's because a lot of people
have fun doing it even in 2021 and then of course you have the birth of trick shotting and really
the birth of phase modern warfare 2 is undoubtedly the home to trick shotting and a lot of that had
to do with the weird animations that you could create with like attack knife pistols and some
of the shotguns it was all about the style points bro but another thing that was really innovative
about modern warfare 2's multiplayer at the time was the addition of customizable kill streaks
and most specifically the nuke going for a nuke in modern warfare 2 added so much replay value to
the multiplayer there's so many different guns and kill streak setups you could run to try to go for
the nukes and i think the best part about getting a nuke in modern warfare 2 is that it would end
the game it felt so satisfying to get a nuke and win the game in modern warfare 2 and i think
that's model warfare 2's biggest x factor call of duty black ops 1. without a doubt it's wager
matches in black ops 1 you would earn cod points by doing contracts or playing the multiplayer and
again this is not called duty points you buy this was a currency they created that would allow you
to unlock camos and other things like that now obviously the safest way to earn cod points was
to just play the game and do contracts but if you wanted to get more cod points really fast
you'd have to wager up a certain amount of cod points depending on the type of mode you play
with high roller ultimately being the highest stakes you'd have to wager 10 000 cod points
to play high roller 20 000 if everyone doubled down and ultimately if you want to wager match
you could get 60 000 cod points which would get you gold camo it was very innovative at the time
it was very fun it brought in some really fun new game modes into black ops 1 and it added a lot of
replay value call of duty modern warfare 3. i feel like this one might be up for debate but i'm gonna
go with the community playlist the community playlist and model warfare 3 added some really
fun game modes like infected all or nothing in that playlist they did bring back gun game but
i would argue it wasn't as good as black ops 1. but i still feel like the community playlist in
modern warfare 3 is what added a lot of replay value and a lot of people enjoyed playing infected
especially on modern warfare 3. call of duty black ops 2. you could definitely make an argument for
league play here but i'm going to go with the branching storylines in black ops 2's campaign
it had never been done before in a call of duty game and i think it added a lot of replay value
to the campaign at this point for me personally i wasn't replaying black ops 1 or modern warfare
3's campaign that much because once you beat it that was basically it at the time i didn't
really see a need to keep playing the campaign but black ops 2 changed that you could customize
your loadout in black ops 2's campaign and there were different endings based off of your actions
which was awesome call of duty ghosts i think we all know what i'm going to go with here
just kidding i i mean honestly i can't really think of too much for ghosts gun game um
no no i've got nothing i'm drawing blanks call of duty advanced warfare now hear me out guys
advanced warfare's x factor is the exosuits if you bought advanced warfare when it was new this
was going to be the first call of duty game that you played that had 3d movement you could boost up
super high into the sky and you could dash side to side backwards forwards you could slam down on the
ground and crush people with your feet you could exo-punch them into oblivion advanced warfare was
a direct response to call of duty ghosts being too slow-paced so they really cranked it up and
allowed you to move around the map extremely fast with this exo suit obviously the opposition to
that was that the game was too fast paced and too all over the place and just kind of crazy
but without a doubt advanced warfare is the birthplace of the exosuit call of duty black
ops 3. i personally feel like black ops 3 has two different x factors there's the zombies mode which
it just had incredible zombies maps but the other x factor for black ops 3 is that they brought
back mod support on pc now it took some time to do that but the modding community for black ops
3 is insane and they're still making content for the game mod support for black ops 3 has added
so much replay value and it keeps the game alive call of duty infinite warfare i think
what infinite warfare at least did better than advanced warfare and black ops 3 was having a
more fair microtransaction system i don't want to necessarily say that it adds a lot of replay value
to infinite warfare but i think for some people it might have done that they might have felt like
infinite warfare's multiplayer was more fair to play because it was a little bit easier to get
access to these variants and instead of having brand new guns locked away in rng supply drops
you could actually work towards getting the base varies for free call of duty world war ii call of
duty world war ii brought back war from world of war but it actually is a completely different mode
oh my god to be fair the original war mode in world of war i think also counts as an x factor
let's put that one back in but yeah for cod world war ii this was a very unique and fun mode to play
and it definitely added a lot of replay value to the game call of duty black ops 4. the x factor
for black ops 4 is that the game was multiplayer only they decided to not do a campaign and to be
fair they introduced blackout which was the first battle royale we've ever gotten for call of duty
too bad i didn't like it call of duty modern warfare 2019 there's potentially a couple of
things that really stood out about modern warfare 2019 it was the death of season passes for call of
duty and they brought in the battle pass system we got 64-player ground war and also gunfight
which popularized 1v1s and 2v2s and i think 3v3s i didn't play a lot of gunfight but and not too
long after modern warfare's launched we also got warzone a free-to-play battle royale that uses the
weapons of modern warfare so yeah modern warfare 2019 surprisingly has a lot of replay value call
of duty black ops cold war i got nothing no for black ops chili corn dog fight i think i'd have
to go with outbreak zombies it is the one thing that is still binding me to this game i mean other
than that the multiplayer is pretty boring at least in its current state which is what brings
us to the next call of duty game call of duty world war ii vanguard i don't know if this is
exactly how you guys are feeling about it but it's just my opinion it's gonna be very difficult for a
world war two call of duty game in the year 2021 to really innovate or have a lot of replay value
or be just that fun or exciting to play and i've already said this multiple times but my biggest
fear is that they're going to make a world war 2 game just to put those guns into war zone on
the flip side if the next call of duty game is advanced warfare 2 or infinite warfare 2 they
could then just use that to put laser guns into war zone but ultimately whatever call
of duty 2021 is going to be it's going to have to have some kind of x factor something that's
going to bring something new to the table truly innovate and be unique and that's the main reason
i'm worried because i feel like if the game is in the world war two era it's not going to be able
to bring anything new in general there have been so many world war ii fps games it's kind of just
been overdone at this point and since we haven't gotten a futuristic or exo call of duty game in
about four or five years it's kind of overdue this is why we're at a fork on the road it's
basically how activision shot themselves in the foot with a more sniper rifle by moving further
away from call of duty's original identity of being a world war ii or modern military shooting
game and adding futuristic call due to games people are inevitably going to want to see more
of that at some point what's so funny about all of this is that one of the main things i learned by
[ __ ] on infinite warfare so hard is that there are actually a lot of people who love that game
and since i've seen so many people actually kind of bands together and go after me for hating on
the game it's kind of made me a little bit more sympathetic and compassionate towards the game
don't get me wrong i'm still going to poke fun at that game because i mean there are things to poke
fun at the supply drop robot vending machine [ __ ] cracks me up and you're not gonna take
that away from me but i'm not gonna just blindly [ __ ] on the game or hate it for what it is but
that's gonna do it for this video thank you guys very much for watching i hope you guys enjoyed
this little commentary talking about the call of duty x factor and i definitely want to hear from
you guys what do you guys think the x factors in each call of duty game are and do you personally
want to see the next call of duty game be call of duty world war ii vanguard or do you want to
see something different and with that being said i really do hope you guys enjoyed this video if
you guys did and you want to see some more call of duty videos like this one make sure to drop a like
and i'll see you guys later i don't need it i don't need it i don't i don't need a diabetes
uh