Call of Duty’s annual Halloween-themed event The Haunting is only a couple of days old, but gamers are pretty disappointed with what this year has to offer.
Modern Warfare 3’s Haunting especially pales in comparison to last year’s event, which featured a fully playable experience on the Al Mazrah battle royale map. There were special monsters to kill, like the Butcher from Diablo, a UFO, swamp monsters, and more, all with challenges associated with them.
This year, so far, has only added a new experience in Purgatory Island, which is a sandbox mode where players can explore, fight enemies, rank up weapons, unlock camos, and more on a demented, haunted variant of Rebirth Island. The rest of The Haunting will come later on in the season, or via store bundles.
Warzone players voiced their concerns in a Sept. 18 Reddit thread, where they called the rewards a “letdown” and the jump scares and overall excitement of this year’s Haunting event “disappointing.”
“The ‘Purgatory’ mode is two hours of endless respawning, which is only fun for about 15 minutes,” a player said. “They said we would have jump scares. Well, [I opened] about 50 crates and the only thing that’s jumped is the stupidly haunted boxes that tell you is a haunted box and takes down [a part] of your health. Last year’s event had a whole Warzone map, floating ghosts, and real jump scares from crates, which made it memorable.”
The Haunting will last until Oct. 17, so there’s plenty of time for more additions, including the arrival of the popular Zombie Royale mode. But even that will be limited to Vondel and not take place on the big battle royale map of Urzikstan.
“Al Mazrah Halloween event I think was really fun, where you could go to a cave in desert to kill zombies and spawn the boss,” another player said. “[To be honest], they should’ve done something similar and it would be nice. Played a couple Rebirth zombie games and wasn’t really feeling any fun.”
“This shit is fucking garbage,” said another angry gamer. “Every map should be night time. WTF is up? Playlist is dogshit.”
“It’s REALLY bad,” said yet another disappointed CoD fan. “Lazy, boring, glitchy, and super frustrating. I really do not understand how this franchise is just getting worse and worse the more money they make.”
I can sympathize with players as this year’s event does feel like a step back. But those who aren’t digging it can look forward to the fact that Black Ops 6 is just a little over one month away.