What’s Old is Old Again (Premium)

The nostalgia racket isn’t new to videogames—witness the Atari hits packages of the 1990s—but it’s starting to get out of control. Are there any new ideas anymore?

I mean, of course there are: Just witness the incredible indie games market on Xbox, in particular. But when it comes to big titles from big studios, the videogame industry—like Hollywood—is all about recycling ideas again, and again, and again.

As a lifelong videogame player—I’m part of the first generation of folks to grow up with dedicated videogame consoles and the first personal computers—there is a part of me that welcomes this trend. But as someone who likewise struggles to find new music that I like, I find the current push to recycle old ideas and re-release old gaming titles a bit troubling.

Call of Duty is, perhaps, the ugliest and most obvious example.

This game series just keeps repeating the past over and over again, reprising the only three franchises—World War II, Modern Warfare, and Black Ops—that have resonated with gamers. And of the three, World War II is the most threadbare, with six of the 18 major (mostly) annual releases—OG Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 3, Call of Duty: World at War, Call of Duty: WWII, and now Call of Duty: Vanguard—focused on this same scenario. There have also been four Modern Warfare games and five Black Ops titles, plus three would-be franchise starters—Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, and Infinite Warfare—that went absolutely nowhere.

But here we are again, 4 years after COD: WWII, and Activision is going back to the well again with yet another WWII COD title called Call of Duty: Vanguard. Part of me is OK with this. I am a fan of history, after all, and I’ve read so many World War II books, and watched so many documentaries, that my wife routinely mocks me with, “do you think it’s going to have a different ending this time?”

But from a gaming perspective, COD: WWII was a great game, and I finished the single-player campaign and have returned again and again to the multiplayer experience. Plus, I absolutely loathed COD: Modern Warfare (the 2019 reimagining), at least its multiplayer component, and I likewise gave up on COD: Black Ops Cold War for the same reason a year later: the multiplayer sucks in both cases. It just doesn’t feel right.

For this otherwise dedicated COD gamer, that one-two punch of terribleness has left me reeling. I was happy to revisit the fantastic remasters of the OG Modern Warfare 1 and Modern Warfare 2, in turn, but I’ve mostly stuck to 2018’s COD: Black Ops 4 in the wake of COD: WWII. That’s a long time to be stuck playing the same game.

But what’s the difference? No matter which COD title you do choose, you’re still playing the same game. The last three titles, in sequence, have all been new takes on older franchise hits. And it’s a sad statement that the most interesting thing about these games is when Activision’s three studios remake classic multiplayer maps from the past. I’ve played at least four versions of Nuketown in recent years, for example, five if you count COD Mobile. Which of course you should.

The recent re-releases of OG Quake, Quake II, and Quake III: Arena fall into the same nostalgic category, and since catching up on work this morning, I’ve spent a few hours reliving OG Quake’s first episode for what has to be the 20-somethingth time. I play that game, and its sequels, a lot in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Maybe too much: playing through Quake today, I’ve raced from level to level, finding most of their secrets, including the secret level, as if by intuition thanks to my deep familiarity with the game. This one I don’t mind as much as Call of Duty, however, in part because Quake, other than Quake IV, which launched with the Xbox 360 in 2005, has never made its way to Xbox for various licensing reasons, so many years have gone by.

But thanks to Microsoft’s purchase of Bethesda, which had previously purchased Quake-maker Id Software, the wheels have been greased, so to speak, and here we are. OG Quake isn’t just on Xbox, it’s on Xbox Game Pass. And while Quake II and Quake III: Arena are only on PC (and Xbox Game Pass for PC), Microsoft’s involvement has me hoping we’ll see proper console releases soon too. Plus the addition of Quake IV to backward compatibility so we can play all of the major games again.

In fact, maybe that’s the point. The original Quake is so fun to play now specifically because I haven’t been able to play it (on console) for so many years. And while playing this mouse-and-keyboard-based game with a controller is a tad too sensitive by comparison, it does work. It’s been a blast, and I’ll keep going until I finish the entire single-player campaign, which now includes new levels I’ve never played before. Even better.

I can’t fix Call of Duty as it’s a victim of its own success and can only keep plodding along, like the Fast and Furious movie series, getting more repetitive, and sillier, as it goes. It’s not like Activision is going to go smaller with some future COD title, or let indie studios take a stab at some less cinematic side games. But, you know what? Maybe it should. As we’ve seen with Star Wars on the small screen thanks to Disney+, sometimes smaller is better. Much better.

So I guess I can fix Call of Duty after all. But that assumes that Activision is paying attention. Which it isn’t.