4. Customization
In Modern Warfare, you all pretty much look the same; adult men with minor variety in ethnicity and uniforms, running around gunning each other down in pure, digital blood-lust. And it's damn good fun. In Call of Duty 4 and World at War, this was painfully obvious. Other than rank symbols, names, and the limited amount of camo patterns you could put on your weapons, there was no real way to be unique. Modern Warfare 2 was the first to branch out from this, offering catch phrases on titles combined with pictures to be put in emblems, offering variety among call-signs. Black Ops and its sequel, while not offering much in the title card department, allowed players to make customised emblems, and although the amounts of women's rear ends, dolphins with exaggerated genitalia, and odd-looking video game characters are usually what I see, I can honestly say it's nice to see some manner of unique expression among players. What I'd like is to see this extended to the player models. I'm fully aware the likelihood of Call of Duty offering player customisation akin to something like Skyrim or GTA's online mode is unlikely, but it's nice to think about. It would also help to draw a player into a game - you spend an hour or so customizing your character, and then you take your product and run into a map, dodging bullets and firing your own while you try to survive - and I think, in theory, that this would be an excellent gameplay element. However, I would be naive to assume that players wouldn't abuse this. I mean...look at what they've done with the emblem creator in Black Ops II. Some of that stuff is traumatising, man.