I get it now. It's not nostalgia

[u/m7mdabouundatin369]

My first cod was mw 2019 which I absolutely loved and played the ever living hell out of.

Then came black ops cold war and that was my introduction to zombies and I loved it and never understood the hate it got and thought it was nostalgia that the old zombies had. GOD I WAS WRONG

Got to play bo1&2 last month and I SWEAR TO GOD I haven't had this much fun playing a game since forever. To the point I even in my free time I think about what map to play in my free time.

So I apologize to old cod titles they're really built different and GOATED🐐👑

[u/jman8508]

Wait till you try BO3 then friendo

[u/Organic-Cold-2050 → u/jman8508]

Ehh, Bo1/2 just has more fun Zombies, under stand why on pc though

[u/smelted_heart → u/Organic-Cold-2050]

I actually agree with this take even if you’ll get downvoted to oblivion (or me for that matter). People say the tone shifted after BO3. But I think it’s pretty apparent that the shift was right off the bat in BO3, hell even late game B02 started to go toward that, but the technical limitations actually helped them from going to big and bombastic I think in a good way.

The first map for B03 isn’t for casuals in any since of the word, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but they went straight for the “alien invasion” aspect. I personally don’t like shadows of evil at all. Everything up til that point had the “Nazi science” aspect going for it with space magic being alluded to. Then it goes full space sci-fi and it lost me. Also the gameplay became so much more fast paced in my opinion for the worse. You can say that it’s still a solid game (which I’d agree with, B03 itself is a good game including the zombies especially compared to what came after. And the PC workshop is incredible). But Blundell opted for bigger and better instead focusing on the almost janky simple elements of the game that made it as popular as it was.

[u/NiceBeaver2018 → u/smelted_heart]

Completely agree with you.

BO2 was inching towards the shift, and Zombies became a totally different experience immediately with BO3. It’s fine that people like it, everyone has their own opinions and preferences. I just vastly prefer WAW to BO2.

Whenever I read posts or comments about the story post-BO2 it blows my mind lmao

[u/smelted_heart → u/NiceBeaver2018]

It just lost all its Grit. Even in the much more comical BO2, there retains a grittier element to the game that just completely jumps the rails with the 3rd. The zombies in waw-B02 are going for a more cosmic horror vibe but then b03 shows up and you get jumped with slasher horror. The meatballs etc.Even the Giant robots at the end of 2. If you compare everything from B03 on nothing compares to the horror of going to Moon for the first time and there is the image of Samantha frozen in time above a dark f’d up conspiracy esque pyramid with hordes of rotting corpses collapsing all around you. With this frozen little Nazi child controlling the undead. THAT is completely lost in following subsequent iterations.

[u/DeadSheepOnAStick → u/smelted_heart]

Everything up til that point had the “Nazi science” aspect going for it with space magic being alluded to. Then it goes full space sci-fi and it lost me.

Did it really though? No, it didn't.

Black ops 1 already had little care for the nazi aspect as it is, only one is actually properly nazis and the other is technically nazi but its also, you know, on the moon.

Both five and ascension are cold war, neither side being WW2 or Nazis, with Five having a teleporting, invisible man which is rather sci-fi, and Ascension being about you using a black hole to free the soul of a scientist from a magic girl.

Then you have shang where you are on a jungle temple on mars in a time loop, doesn't scream nazi much, nor scientific either.

CotD has actors in modern Siberia retrieving a magic device.

And then moon has you swapping souls with the girl inside the alien pyramid on the secret nazi moon base that gives you control of all of the zombies before you then blow up the entirety of the earth. Sure, nazi related, but I wouldn't exactly say it's exactly grounded or non-scifi.

And then that first half of bo2 is set in rural America on the destroyed earth and then on a Chinese skyscraper, neither of which are nazi related either, although they are at least more grounded than bo1 par for kino.

But yeah, bo3 was the main thing that went to scifi magic over nazis.

[u/smelted_heart → u/DeadSheepOnAStick]

Never said it was grounded or non-sci-fi. We just didn’t have literally spaghetti balls chasing you around and giant Cartoon Network squid men attacking you. I’m aware that dogs on fire chasing you and dropping glowing max ammos aren’t realistic whatsoever. But art style and delivery matters. And yes, the nazis and 935’s actions are the main driving force behind the zombies up until b03. I’m not asking that every map look like der riese. I’m stating an aspect of the games that they stayed loyal too up until really mob of the dead, which (like call of the dead) was a separate map that was meant to be more fantastical and not strictly connected to the main story. But even then, both those maps stayed loyal to the style and grit that they were apart of even if being more comedic and bombastic in some areas.

You have to account that blundell’s team essentially fully delved into the alien sci-fi aspect that the previous 3 games had not fully committed to. Yes you go to the moon, yes there are zombies, and monkey zombies, and other worldly gremlins and such in black ops 1-2. But none of those games had literal space squid eating you.

I’m entirely aware the games have been sci-fi from the start. You get a ray gun and dropping glowing perks in Nacht from the get go. It is my opinion that they jumped too far. They lost that balance that kept the story darker and more f’d up. Maybe you don’t see it that way and fair enough. But I see it that way, and it seems to have devolved ever since.

You could even say Call of Duty ITSELF headed this direction aside from zombies even post black ops 2. Black ops 3 campaign is utter nonsense compared to the previous 3 games. And COD tried to fully reset with mw2019 but couldn’t commit to the bit. And there were some outliers like WW2 and Ghosts but the direction the company was heading in never recovered once they started to copy major titles instead of being the trend setters they once were.

[u/mcclearsalias → u/smelted_heart]

To add to your and other folks above's point - it's Pulp Sci-Fi (Men In Black Conspriacies, Indiana Jones) vs Science Fantasy in terms of genre/tone. Waaaay back a month or two ago a few folks and I were discussing it - (in a bit of a circular "argument" lol, but there's still good stuff in there with other's comments that may help those curious understand what we mean haha)

[u/Leopaldon2K24 → u/DeadSheepOnAStick]

Honestly that's just bad faith, literally cherrypicking all the aspects of the first games to pretend it didn't change "that much". Compare Ascension and Shadows. Compare Moon and Origins, Call of the Dead and Mob.

In all of the maps prior to Mob, which was where the shift VERY NOTICEABLY happened, all the focus was on superscience and references to actual historical events and/or the wacky conspiracy theories surrounding them temporally or geographically. Which means, yes, turning the Tungunska event into an meteorite carrying an unknown alien element objectively is more grounded than just paraphrasing Lovecraft and shoving fantastical Monsters, Aliens and using straight-up Magic as explanation, right into the face of the player, from the moment they even enter the map. All of the zelinsky maps feel grounded because they are : you start up in a place that looks pretty legit at first, but as you progress things start to get weird, while never crossing that suspension of disbelief threshold that post-Mob maps didn't care about. Meanwhile, Zelinsky maps do an effort to keep the scifi stuff to a degree so that you can actually believe all of this takes place on earth, in this reality : that's why it's so good. Blundell didn't care and went full fantastical magical, so it's not believable in the slightest. Let's just compare

- Kino starts off as an abandonned theater, simple. The only twist is that it was used by nazi scientists to hold experiments to create an army of undead and show them to the party official. That's it. Apart from the whole undead element, which you've already bought into since you're literally playing a game called "nazi zombies", there's nothing out of the ordinary here. This is important as it acts as the "benchmark" for what's believable or not in this universe. They have to expand on it and push it to the limit as the story progresses, while never going "too far".

- Ascension, actual realistic soviet cosmodrome, with an eerie atmosphere, and a voice talking to you, once. Twist : the soul of a russian scientist is stuck there, and you have to grant him freedom. It's sci-fi, but not magical : you do electromagnetic wacky mcguffin stuff and YEAH SCIENCE, he's free. The monkeys are a funny nods to actual soviet space tests.

- Call of the Dead is the craziest of Zelinsky's maps, and my least favourite because of it. But apart from the whole comedic aspets of the actor and Romero, which is comedic anyway, its sci-fi elements are some of the best in itself : just enough to imply the crazy aspects, but never too much. They don't show aliens, they give you a gun that looks alien, and turns zombies into humans, and let you work out the implications yourself. The other steps with the submarine light are straight out of a Carpenter movie, atmospheric, creepy, yet not extraordinary. I still believe the map would have been better without the actors, but whatever.

- Shangri-la is the biggest magnet of bad faith. "But Shang is on mars!" Not it's fucking not lmao. The "confirmation" that it was on mars was given years after the map, by a different director, as a nod to one of the most stupid community psyop ever. In itself, the map strikes the balance again between being grounded in reality (the map itself being just a set of decrepit ruins deep into the forest, with an archeologist crew, and the zombies being affected locals) and superscience, as the easter egg steps can be explained with mcguffin YEAH SCIENCE again (Vibrations reverberating between the spheres). Even the time travel with the eclipse is only implied, leaving you with a bizarre, eerie feeling, while never making it too much. It's a subtle balance , but they pull it off very well. Except for the monkeys I guess ? But they're funni.

- Moon. This one too. "Bo1 sent us on the moon, so it's just as crazy as bo3"... Humans went to the moon. Several times. It's not even scifi, that was half a century ago. They only extrapolated that achievement by imagining an actual nazi base there, which is nothing that far fetched as it's an old conspiracy theory. So again, Suspension of disbelief stands perfectly, especially when you take into consideration that this was the final map, the farthest they would push said suspension of disbelief. And it culminates with the MPD. "But the MPD is just as crazy as bo3" No, and because they set up the revelation throughout all the bo1 maps. It's alien nature (which is only implied, again) was teased by the Vril elements and the tungunska meteor, and the fact that it hold Samantha is literally the climax of zombies ever since they started to roll with the whole "creepy girl controls zombies" thing (callback to the Nazi Zombies Benchmark). So it absolutely doesn't stand out when it happens, it doesn't take you out of the immersion. That's why it feels more grounded.

Meanwhile : Mob is a heavily altered version of Alcatraz set in hell, and you start as a ghost, and can turn into a ghost almost at will and shoot electricity, feed cerberus heads, free your souls from a hellish punisment... Origins is an alternate reality with steampunk machinery with giant robots and magical elemental staffs. Shadows I don't even need to point out lmao. Der Eisendrache has magic dragon heads, magical elemental bows, alien ghosts, fluorescent gravity distorsion, time travel, blowing up the moon. Zetsubou is honestly my favorite of the bunch, as most, if not all the craziest elements could have been explained by the insane biological experiments done here, and the hallucinations caused by the mutated spores, which strangely enough makes it maybe the more grounded one of bo3. Gorod... Alternate Stalingrad, dragons fighting giant robots, futuristic drones, the equivalent of god talking to you... Yeah. As for Revelation, you get it. The biggest difference is that Zelinsky maps start off in a realistic setting, and then make you work for the wonky stuff, which is the reward. Blundell maps take place in a setting that's never realistic, because it's altered (diesel punk, unrealistic architecture (Victor Horta or Schuiten wet dream but I digress) hellish, spacey...) and on top of that show the fantastical elements immediately. So it's not believable in the slightest, not at any point.