first of all, Call of Duty is not a realistic game. Not with a "HALO shield".
The "HALO" shield was invented to make FPS playable on console.
FPS are terrible on console, because you can't use a mouse, so you have to first move the vertical, then move the horizontal. It's difficult to aim.
You can compare the experience of playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on PC, and playing Medal of Honor: Frontline on XBOX. Terrible on console.
You can compare the experience of playing Rainbow Six III: Raven Shield on PC, and playing Rainbow Six: Black Arrow on XBOX. Terrible on console.
Why? Because the player is so slow at aiming, due to the handicap of the console controllers.
Therefore, the AI in the console FPS was also dumbed down, in aiming, in reaction speed. In Medal of Honor on PC, you would get shot the moment you poked your head out. In Medal of Honor on console, you could stand five feet in front of the AI, and wait to get shot, and the AI would shoot around you, the aim is so bad.
Then came HALO.
HALO was the first console game to have a rechargeable shield, thus infinite health when managed well.
This is how HALO was the first FPS success on console. Because the AI no longer needed to be dumbed down in movement and aiming.
The problem, is that the game publishers always preferred selling console games to selling PC games. Why? Because there are now 4 different consoles: XBOX, XBOX 360, Playstation 3, Wii. The disc for each of these are unreadable by the others (though there is some compatibility between XBOX and the XBOX 360). This potentially allows a game-publisher to re-sell one game 4 times, by putting it in different data-disc format.
It's really a huge scam, the console game market.
The console games always have less buttons, compared to all the keys on the keyboard. Therefore the console games can only be good to a point, they must be kept simplistic, and can never match to well-made PC games.
Microsoft owns XBOX and XBOX 360.
SONY owns Playstation 3 and Nintendo (which makes the Wii).
These are huge trans-national Corporations, always wanting to make huge profits, which usually involve scamming people one way or other.
With their huge amount of wealth, they are always seeking to acquire, absorb and control smaller enterprises, like giant octopuses extending tentacles everywhere, and absorbing other creatures into itself, increasing its size and control.
Microsoft and SONY bribed or otherwise controlled EA Games and Ubisoft enough so that these game publishers are pushing for all games to be on console. They even seek to disappear the PC game market (which will never happen, because as long as there will be computers, there will be games on computers. And the computer is the best platform for gaming. It is absolutely impossible to play RTS and good FPS on console.)
Because of this huge scheme to have everything on console, the game publishers decided to import the "HALO shield" into every console FPS (even those in World War II!).
And that ruined gameplay.
You can compare the gameplay of Splinter Cell 1, 2, 3, with the gameplay of Splinter Cell 4 (utterly terrible). 1, 2 and 3 had a life-bar, which decreased (and remain decreased) when the character is hit. You have to find a medpack to re-increase the life bar. There are only a few medpacks per level, so you don't have infinite health, so you essentially risk your (virtual) life when you are doing game actions. That element of risk makes you try to be careful, and introduces challenges, which is the fun of gaming.
In Splinter Cell 4, the character has the "HALO shield". As long as he isn't hit too many times, he can go hide and his health would magically go to 100% in a few seconds. This can be done as many times as you like. So, the character has infinite health, as long as it's well-managed. This completely destroyed the gameplay of Splinter Cell 4. Splinter Cell was made to be a sneak-around game, so that you have to sneak around and avoid detection and avoid fighting. The difficulty of this (like sneaking through places with lights and guards walking around) makes the game fun. And usually alerting the guards means you are dead, or end up nearly dead. So there is the added element of risk (and reward, when you successively sneak around).
The infinite health totally destroyed the gameplay. Now you can get shot at infinite times, and there is no need to sneak around anymore.
Splinter Cell 4 had terrible reaction from the fans.
(and, stupidly, the development team of Splinter Cell 5 decided to make it even more of a shooter, and less of a sneaking-game. That's what set the Splinter Cell series apart, to be original.)
Now, Call of Duty.
In the first Call of Duty (Call of Duty 1), you had a life-bar. There were limited medpacks per level, so you couldn't have infinite health. Therefore, if there is a machinegun around the corner, you were careful to try to fire back, without getting shot, because the next medpack may be far away.
But, starting with Call of Duty 2, the series was made for console. You no longer have a life-bar. You have a HALO shield (in World War II !?) from the future year 2500, but you still wear a World War II uniform of cloth, you aren't wearing that green heavy titanium armor of Master Chief in HALO.
Now, if there is a machinegun around the corner, you can time yourself to run in the open, as long as you get shot at no more than 5 times in a row, you can always re-charge your health to 100% by merely waiting a few seconds.
That's not World War II.
That's sci-fi, without a sci-fi environment and storyline!
It completely ruins the risk-taking that a World War II FPS would simulate. Too bad if they have accurate replica of equipments (rifles, tanks, grenades), too bad if they have accurate place-names, and accurate uniforms, the gameplay is not World War II.
What's worse, the PC version of Call of Duty 2 is exactly the same as the console version! It had a HALO shield.
You'd think that the developers would have been nice enough to include a med-pack life-bar version, for the PC player to have limited life, to make the game more challenging, because not everyone is a 5-year-old. But no, the PC version is exactly the same as the console version.
Being a great fan of World War II games, I didn't even bother finishing the Call of Duty 2 campaign, even though I got it for free.
The HALO shield made the FPS unplayable. There is no fun in a war-simulation, when there is no risk. And there is no risk, when you have infinite health. Even on the hardest setting, you have infinite health.
The "shortness of breath" and the "heart thumping thumping" and the "vision going red" when you are hit 5 times and "about to die", makes the game even more fake, because you wait a few seconds and you go to 100% health again.
Wow, where was the 5 bullets that just smashed into your body?
What happened in the healing process?
At least a medpack or a medic makes it more believable (especially, only a few medpacks per map).
So the reminder that the player's character is a human being, combined with the instant-healing ad infinitum, makes the game even worse.
It is the same with Call of Duty 3. Except, Call of Duty 3 was so horribly made, that white American soldiers in World War II were gangster-walking (shoulders swinging this way and that way) and gangster-talking like Snoop Dogg. Those were WHITE PEOPLE in 1942 ! They certainly did not walk and talk like African Americans on MTV.
In real life, the men in WWII called each other "Mac", because most of them were Scottish or Irish. Their expressions were absolutely different from MTV. They walked like people, not like cavemen.
But, whoever made Call of Duty 3 made it only for console, and the World War II soldiers talked and walked like MTV in the year 2000!
That's the most stupid thing I have ever seen!
And what's worse, they had the HALO shield!
It is the same with Call of Duty 4. They have the HALO shield! Infinite health! You could fight in Iraq, and when you get shot, all you have to do is go hide, and you have 100% health magically!
I think it's some Hitler-type of propaganda campaign directed at young kids, to make them think war has no risks involved.
War definitely should have risks involved (except in sci-fi or fantasy).
So when people get shot, they should have decreased life-bar until they find a medpack. People's health should not regenerate by itself!
The game developers make the PC version and the console version the same, because they are ashamed at how much better (and more fun) the games are when they are on PC, with the life-bar med-pack system, and how much more ridiculous the games are on console, with the HALO shield system (in non-sci-fi situations).
To avoid this comparison, they hide it. So they pretend that the HALO-shield is the only way to portray damage/lifepoints in FPS.
But this treacherous cabal is undone by the likes of Half Life series (and all its mods), and Battlefield Series (and all its mods), and Splinter Cell 1, 2, 3. And Rainbow Six 1, 2, 3 (in this serie, you die with one shot, at most two, and no medpacks).
That said, I don't mind the HALO shield in HALO (or, in obviously sci-fi games like Crysis, where the character has a futuristic armor suit).
But it totally undoes the fun of gaming when it's put in non-sci-fi FPS.
Really, this "HALO shield" was a crutch introduced to help prop up the handicap of consoles, because the aiming is so much slower with controllers. And the "HALO shield" helps the console gameplay, by overpowering the player.
However, on PC, where the keyboard/mouse is the best combination of user-interface, where the player has no slowness handicap from console controllers, the "HALO shield" needs to disappear (or, at least be made into an option, like a cheat that the player can activate) because it ruins the fun of gaming.
It's too bad that consoles are handicapped in their control, compared to keyboard and mouse.
But don't handicap the PC games, deliberately, by bringing down the PC games quality, in order to hide the flaw of consoles!
The FPS on PC need to have the life-bar/med-pack system by default.
And the HALO shield as a cheat, perhaps, when people are unskilled, or when they are 5-year-olds, and need ridiculous extra over-compensation of in-game abilities.
And, Microsoft/SONY need not imagine that they can make the PC games disappear. Even if Microsoft/SONY can force major game publishers to only make console games (because it scams more profit), independent developers can still make excellent games, such as Mount and Blade. The Forgotten Hope mods of Battlefield series, the Red Orchestra mod (now a standalone game) were independently developed by average people.
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