Hardcore can mean alota stuff.
Playing games on a hardcore level?
Games with a hardcore leaning curve?
In this case, I think it's pretty obvious - that "hardcore" leaning curve that used to be much more common in older games has sorta died out abit. Gaming used to be aimed more at more younger audiences. It wasn't as mainstream as it was today. Then it's like some devs found out that if you make games easy but fun/awesome, you can sell to both gamers and non-gamers and make a shit ton of sales. The trend went on and gaming changed. The challenge started to die out.
As much as I like a challenge when it comes to gaming, I honestly do appreciate games like CoD. I used to play PC games all the time and still love playing BC2 online (prefer it to MW2) for the awesome teamwork but, I never hated CoD. In fact, I'll give IW props for it. Really, I think the game gets so much undeserved hate. Maybe it's because so many devs try to mimic it all the time beause of it's success. In that case, why hate the game? They just created somethin that sells so beastly. Sure "hardcore" shooters might not sell as much as the casual CoD series but other devs still arn't being put at gun-point and forced to CoD'ify their games.
My problem with this gen isn't games become easier but rather, visuals and the "cinematic" experience being such a huge focus. I've found the graphics whores to be more of a problem. Now more than ever, the graphics of a game have become important to alota people. Many will say that CoD looks like shit, looks like an old game, etcetc, and start to dis it for other random reasons.
Well, find me another shooter that has as much content/features/variety as current CoD games. The thing there is, you won't because you can't. In the long run, the quality of a game's multiplayer is what will keep it running and that's why games like CoD, Goldeneye, Battlefield, and Counter-Strike became huge successes - they focused on what matter's most.
I wanted to love KZ2 but couldn't.......retarded classes and mechanics such as Assault/Spawn Grenades raped the potential for balanced matches and after a while, I just couldn't be bothered to look for servers that had all the right things disabled.
I'm no CoD fanboy and won't deny that it has it's major flaws but, it's rightfully earned it's place as the most played fps today next to Halo 3/Reach. I've had plenty of good times with friends playing it, especially everyone taking turns in the same room - brings me back when everything wasn't so online-focused and people actually went over to eachother's houses to play games. I planned on skipping on Black Ops for abit to get GT5 but because of the stupid delay, I'll be getting it day 1 along with some other friends and I'm honestly pretty excited.
Don't hate the CoD.....hate the consoles for being able to put out such amazing visuals. Sometimes it feels like devs got bored with focusing on gameplay and are now just obssessed with pushing the ps360 to their graphical limits. If you ask me, that's taking a step backwards for gaming. I'll pass on all these 10-hour-long games that strive so hard to bring you a cinematic experience - as good as they may be, I don't plan on shelling out $50-60 bucks for them anymore.
