The Call of Duty release cycle always comes with multiple issues in the game. Ninja identified the phenomenon of players going through the same cycle of emotions in a crude but not necessarily incorrect manner.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the new CoD is going to be riddled with glitches and cheaters when it launches,” Ninja said on Oct. 9. “But guess what: the gunplay is still gonna be good, and people are going to be jizzing over the mobility. That you disgusting… mentally abused… like players are gonna fall for it.”
Could Ninja have said this more politely? Sure. Is he incorrect? Absolutely not. The same complaints happen every single Call of Duty game release cycle. This time, Battle Rage is absurdly broken, although it was tuned recently, there’s no way it should’ve made it into a beta at the state it was in.
The beta is only on PS5, but there are reports of cheaters with jailbroken consoles, and the PC version still has yet to be released. There are so many bugs just before the November release that it’s hard to see Sledgehammer fixing all of them.
The Golden Law of Call of Duty is simple: The game is always a couple of tweaks away from being good again. Those tweaks rarely, if ever, get acted upon in a timely manner, and by the time everything is in a good state, it’s time for the next iteration in the yearly release cycle.
At this point, if you’re still playing Call of Duty over a decade after it held the gaming industry in an iron grip, you know what you’re signing up for. Expect no changes, and you’ll be excited about the changes you do get. Manage your expectations for this franchise in order to retain a semblance of your sanity.
