Call of Duty 4 isn’t the first game to offer a perk system, but it looks like it’s becoming the newest trend in games, particularly in the shooter genre, which I think is a shame. Perks – a system that rewards players with special attributes or abilities based on their amount of time spent in-game – will only reduce the type of content developers add because the overall emphasis will be to constantly ‘level up’ instead of just enjoying the game for what it is. If the focus is only to create an artificial advantage over other players by unlocking better items or having better stats, the fun factor quickly goes downhill. Whatever happened to the idea of simply out-gaming your opponent on an even footing?
Some may argue that in order to unlock perks in CoD4, you need to have skill – but I’ve put that to the test by climbing up the ranks and unlocking perks easily enough, and I am not what you’d consider an expert player (believe me, I’m never going to see the top of any game charts with my skills – or lack of them). The fact of the matter is, all that really is required to level up or unlock most perks, abilities, attributes – whatever – is spending a whole lot of time glued in front of the TV with the console running and controller in hand. The problem is that it’s a huge frustration to get your ass handed to you over and over until you’ve reached the top of the perk pile and can finally start dishing out what you’ve had to take.
In the video game market, competing developers are going to copy that which proves to be successful. But what ends up happening more often than not is that it becomes overly satiated and causes the gimmick (let’s be honest here; that’s all a perk system really is) to grow stale and generally loathed by the gaming populace to a large extent. This not only creates a massive overkill in a genre by having every single game just like the last one (WWII shooters, for example, or games with bulking alien monsters in the wake of Halo2), but it causes developers to fall into that stagnant ‘must have’ game requirement, pushed by the demand of stockholders. Worse still – it causes casual gamers who jump onto Xbox Live looking for a little down time to become frustrated (“wow, I’m respawning – again!”) and quickly turn their attention away from what might otherwise be an outstanding game.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not against perks or a game’s innovative solutions to an over abundant genre; Halo’s matchmaking is top-notch and that’s something I wish every game took advantage of… I just don’t want to have to spend every waking moment playing a game to unlock something that will get me on a level playing field with everyone else! If a game offers an option for perks, that’s fine; but let’s not go overboard and make the entire game based around it. And if a game is going to be based around perks, how about setting it up so that the people you’re gaming against have the same amount of them?
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