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Two things have been bugging me about the Call of Duty franchise recently. The first is all the rave reviews game sites seem to have given to Call of Duty: World at War. I haven’t wanted to say anything about this, lest I be deemed a World War II hater. I’m not. I was looking forward to another great COD World War II game, but I think the only way we’re going to see another great World War II game is if Infinity Ward does one more.

I have to give props to the Treyarch team, they managed to put some interesting details in their game, the way the Japanese fought made for an great take on the World War II genre that seems to have been stuck in the ETO for too long. But they also seem to have gotten stuck on gimmicks, suck as the use of fire. Yeah, the fire effects are really cool, and I do love tossing a Molotov cocktail as much as the next man, but who ever heard of a flamethrower with infinite fuel?

But the main thing that bugged me with World at War was the length. Three nights and I had finished it. Bear in mind that I’m not a hard core gamer, I’ve only managed to finish a handful of games in my life.

The online component – an essential part of any modern game, and what has kept me playing COD4 since it’s release and still playing it most weeks now – was a disappointment as well. I’m not sure why, but the multi-player levels just didn’t do it for me, They didn’t seem as well thought out as in COD4. The zombie level was a moment of brilliance, but with only one level, it didn’t take long for the losers to find the glitches and ruin the game for everyone else.

Of course, Treyarch have announced the first DLC map pack that includes an additional zombie level, which brings me onto my second gripe. DLC content penalises early adopters, those of us that pay full price and purchase the game on its day of release. We are the fans of the series, dedicated supporters of the genre. We fill the coffers and enable the developers to keep on doing what they do.

Down Loadable Content, it’s like giving fans the finger, it’s saying; ‘hey, thanks for buying our game, but to keep on getting the most out of it, you have to cough up some more money.’ What makes it worse is that a little later down the track, the Game of the Year Edition comes out, and with it you get the DLC content for free, and the whole package is probably cheaper than what the early adopters paid on day of release.

Now, probably to screw the last dregs of money out of the COD4 coffers, it’s been announced that you’ll be able to get the DLC map pack for half price next week. Will I get half my Microsoft points back because I bought the map pack eons ago? Nope. And why are they doing this along with a final double XP weekend this weekend? Probably because they’ve already told us they won’t be releasing any additional content, instead they want us to lay down onward of $100 for Modern Warfare Part Deux later in the year.

They’re probably already working on the DLC for that.

Of course, it’s not limited to the COD franchise, I’ve played other games where the content seems a little light, only to find out through press releases that the stuff I really wanted to see in the game will be released as premium DLC later in the year.

And what happens when you do lay down the extra money for some DLC goodness? Well you can only utilise it if everyone else you’re playing with has also payed and downloaded it, otherwise it just sits on your hard drive reminding you of the money you got conned out of.

As much as I’m looking forward to a second installment of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare, I won’t be doing what I’ve done with all the other COD games, I won’t be rushing to pick up a copy on day of release. I’m gonna wait a while and see what happens.