imagine a conversion of COD MW2 to a rail shooter what would the gameplay and main differences be between it and the origional version except the inability to to freely direct the game character

Not that I want to misdirect the intention of your post but COD MW2 is nearly a rail shooter already. The game is designed to really only be experienced one way with little opportunity for emerging experiences or alternative ways to get past an encounter.

I've always felt that COD designers are trying to force the experience they want down your throat, rather than letting the player forge an experience for themselves. Granted, that experience is usually very entertaining (at least the first time through) and has a very cinematic feel to it. I guess I'm a little bias to games that have more of a sandbox to play with (COD's multiplayer does better in this respect than it's campaign).

It's almost as if the creative leads at Infinity Ward would rather be making movies but got stuck making video games. In fact I know they used to actually storyboard the first COD games, very similar to film production. I don't know if they still do this or not but it wouldn't surprise me.

Anyway, to answer your question I don't think there would be huge differences as a result of the conversion other than the points you already mentioned.

I think it would actually help them. I haven't played the new one, but I did the campaign on the last two, and every so often the guy would say, "Okay, you go first, get in there!" and I'd have to damn idea where he wanted me to go, so I'd wander around until I found the path and stepped on the switch that triggered the NPCs to rush down it.

I think the game would be best in one of those arcade cabinets with the little light gun, along the lines of Time Crisis, so you can duck behind cover and shoot at the bad guys as they pop out, but you never actually have to steer the guy or tell him where to look. It would eliminate all the frustrating "who's shooting at me?" moments, and it would play more into the frantic pace that they currently try to engender by providing endless fountains of bad guys until you pass a waypoint.

I always hated that, especially in that TV station level in COD4, that there would be hundreds or thousands of bad guys, but when you get to the right room it turns them off like a spigot. I can appreciate that they want you to have to advance through enemy fire, instead of clearing the room from the doorway and then waltzing through, but again a rail-shooter could do it better, since instead of waiting for the player to realize that only one play style will result in victory, it could just use the directorial tool of character movement to impose that style on your character, making him seem more unhesitatingly badass and preserving the immersion.

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Original post by WorldPlanter Not that I want to misdirect the intention of your post but COD MW2 is nearly a rail shooter already.

It just has a really big rail. :D

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Original post by NickGravelyn Quote: Original post by WorldPlanter Not that I want to misdirect the intention of your post but COD MW2 is nearly a rail shooter already. It just has a really big rail. :D

Ha, it's true. Most times you can just cower and move on and the game advances. But that's probably more of a narrative of how much I suck

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Original post by evolutional Quote: Original post by NickGravelyn Quote: Original post by WorldPlanter Not that I want to misdirect the intention of your post but COD MW2 is nearly a rail shooter already. It just has a really big rail. :D Ha, it's true. Most times you can just cower and move on and the game advances. But that's probably more of a narrative of how much I suck

Don't feel bad, we all do it. The only way I beat half the missions was cowering until AI teammates killed everyone, or running right by the enemies to trigger the checkpoint. [grin]