User blog comment:Damac1214/Call of Duty 2014 Being Developed by Sledgehammer Games, Call of Duty Moving to Three Year Development Cycle/@comment-6343006-20140206235853/@comment-6343006-20140207133024

When I say Zombies, I don't mean the literal definition of Zombies, or the idea of a horde mode; of course there have been Zombies in games before. What I mean is what Zombies actually represented when it was implemented in World at War; a sort of fun little bonus mode that eventually grew into its own thing. I don't think Treyarch added Nacht because they wanted to emulate Dead Rising or whatever it was back then, but it is a sure thing that IW added Extinction because they saw how popular Zombies had become and had to do their own thing. Ergo, Sledge adding their own thing would essentially be as a response to IW's response to Treyarch inital concept. It's not their own thing that they've added, it's something they've seen work in previous games and they want in on the action as well.

And, when I say "make the entire game about Zombies or whatever", again, i am not referring to Zombies literally, I'm talking about what it represents: a supernatural third element of the game, so making the whole game about it does not mean: make the whole game about Zombies, it means: take that third aspect and apply it to the whole game, because that has not been done before in the context of Call of Duty.

Also, Sledge doesn't really have any credientials to go on, other than making portions of Modern Warfare 3, and all I've heard of this game is that it might be another Modern Warfare, so there's just not a lot of faith this early on, unless you're going to suggest that Modern Warfare was the absolute best of the franchise. When the game is properly in May or whenever, then we'll have a clearer idea of what it's like and be able to make our own judgements on it.

And finally, Call of Duty is not quite like Battlefield, Final Fantasy, Mario and all those longrunners. Firstly if Final Fantasy resembled Call of Duty, then there would have had to have been a major installment released every since since the beginning, and it would have had to have sold far more than any other game released that year; and yeah, there have been a load of Final Fantasys, but nobody really sees that series the same way as Call of Duty, they sell fairly average, which means they're played by far less people, meaning they recieve far less coverage. Same thing with Mario: loads of games, but far more limited releases than Call of Duty.

Call of Duty, on the other hand, dominates the sales, or at least it did until Grand Theft Auto V came along. But unlike GTA, it's a yearly release, which means its massive presence is always there, meaning loads of people talk about it, thus it earns more criticisms for just being the same thing in every release.

All I can say to back up my argument, is to wait. When Sledge properly reveals their game, then we'll see if there's any validity to their claims of this being the "beginning of a new era". If it turns out to be a far better game than almost every game that came before then great, i do actually want a great Call of Duty; but it's risky at this point to imagine that it will the rookie studio who will be the ones to deliver.