Cast your mind back to last year, to just before the release of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare. You might remember that developer Infinity Ward were making a lot of noise about the 2019 shooter being a gritty and authentic return to the series' roots.
There were some raised eyebrows, to be sure, but the majority of fans were pretty pleased about this - even though it would seemingly come at the expense of zombies. Fast forward a year or so and Modern Warfare has slowly but surely lost its grip on reality. With every new update things have gotten increasingly outlandish. Whether it's killer birds, or the inclusion of Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Modern Warfare - and now Warzone - have been content to leave reality in the rearview mirror.
Personally, I couldn't give a hoot. Modern Warfare is a video game, one that needs to try and keep people interested over a sustained period of time with frequent updates. I would also submit that even the game's harshest critics have been fine with the vast majority of inauthentic cosmetic items... at least until now. Now, it seems, Infinity Ward has gone too far.
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One of the more recent DLC packs is inspired by retro video games. It includes new weapons skins like a Genesis submachine gun, and a 16-bit death effect that sees downed players explode in a mess of pixels. It's this effect that seems to have reignited the debate about how Modern Warfare and Warzone handle reality.
Take a look at this new death effect in action below, or via this link. Full disclosure: I quite like it. It's like something out of Scott Pilgrim VS The World, and I've got a lot of time for that film.
As spotted by Eurogamer, this new effect seems to have split fans down the middle... with a slightly larger portion of fans arguably on the "against" side of things. While some have stated that it's just a bit of dumb fun, others insist that because Infinity Ward pitched Modern Warfare as gritty and authentic, to transition into something other than that is dishonest.
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"COD has never and will never be about realism," Theycallmemrlurker argued on Reddit. "Their graphics and sounds? Maybe. But gameplay wise? No."
"The game was advertised with one aesthetic and now we are switching to something entirely different," Lead_Sails said. "It would be like adding hyper realistic graphics to Fortnite; it visually clashes and doesn't fit. Why do we need to add goofy things to this game? Why can't it exist as it is? If you want silly things that's fine and there's nothing wrong with that, but go ask for it in a game that it makes sense being in."
A few other users agreed, stressing that there's nothing wrong with putting things like this in a FPS, but that if it's so tonally different to everything else in the game, maybe it shouldn't be in the game. Then again, as I said earlier, Leatherface and Billy The Puppet are coming to Modern Warfare soon, so anything goes.
Featured Image Credit: ActivisionTopics: Infinity Ward, Activision, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare