Call Of Duty Should Always Have Single Player

I know a good portion of Call of Duty players never fire up the campaign, opting instead to dedicate their time to the multiplayer modes. I agree that the multiplayer is the best part of Call of Duty. I don’t get the fascination of reaching prestige numerous times, but I’m a sucker for trying to improve my kill-to-death ratio, and I always find myself saying, “Just one more match” when I play Team Deathmatch, Domination, or Kill Confirmed.

Most of my time eventually goes to the competitive component, but I won’t sink a second into it until I see the story credits roll. Call of Duty’s campaigns are big, dumb roller coaster rides set atop exploding tracks. They don’t last long, but the memories I walk away with often make them look like the most elaborate games ever made.

After a night of playing, I can conceivably say, “I drove a tank through a building, dove into the ocean and destroyed a submarine, took to the skies and downed a dozen-plus enemy fighters, hopped onto the highway and bounced like Super Mario across speeding trucks, and at the end of it all, saved the President, the United States, and almost single-handedly took down an evil dictator’s regime.” Rambo has nothing on these heroes.

Call of Duty’s campaign is the equivalent of the Michael Bay summer blockbuster, lighting up the screen with explosions, nearly incomprehensible plot twists, and more explosions. The thrill of being an unstoppable solider usually doubles as eye candy. The production values are through the roof, frequently cluttering the screen with so much chaos it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what you should be looking at. That’s part of the fun; it’s a glorious carnival of destruction.

I also see the single-player campaign laying some of the DNA for the multiplayer experience. The maps and score-streak technology are often born from the campaign. Not having that source material to pull from would probably lead to these items being much different.

In my eyes, the campaign is just as important as the multiplayer. Yes, they vary in quality. And yes, there are some real stinkers in this series (I’m looking at you, Ghosts), but no matter their quality, they all deliver sizeable thrills in some capacity – usually with big things blowing up and the protagonist flying through the air like a damn moron.

The line between single and multiplayer is blurring more and more this generation. Games like Destiny, Titanfall, and the forthcoming Rainbow Six weave their stories into multiplayer. I don’t want that single player experience to disappear from Call of Duty. I look forward to it every year.