The Razor

I purchased this title in PC and PS3 versions – laying down $130 at Wally World for the sequel to the landmark FPS Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. While the Kid has played 3 hours on the PC, I’ve done about 2 1/2 on the Ps3.

My first impression? Intense.

There’s a warning at the beginning of the campaign that asks if you want to skip some levels that may be offensive to some players. After playing one of those levels, I can see why that warning is there. I’m one of those gamers that take a strangely moral attitude in my gaming. Even in D&D I played Neutral-Good characters because there is Evil in the world that needs eradicating so why not have fun eradicating it? Playing this one level early in the campaign was a bit stomach churning, but after it’s over it just adds to the game’s intensity – even though at this point I disagree that the story in the level makes sense . It sets up the first plot point of the story but I kept asking myself , “Why don’t I just shoot him? Sure the game would be over but shooting him now makes the most sense.” It’s a weak part in the story, one that I didn’t find in the first Modern Warfare – but perfection can’t happen twice.

I am a PC gamer, so I had some trouble getting used to the PS3 controls on this FPS. But seeing the game in full 1080p (it supports this resolution) on my 58” plasma made for a movie like experience.

But all I can say is that there are worse ways of wasting $65 including tax on this game (or $130 in my case). If you liked Modern Warfare, you won’t be disappointed with Modern Warfare 2.

UPDATE:
Fox & Friends reported this morning that the game allowed the player to be a terrorist and shoot Americans. They then went showed a snippit of a critic of video games who trotted out the same old tired arguments that video games encourage violence. The Chirpy Morning Blonde Gretchen Carlsen then peeped that she would never allow her kid to play such a game.

Well I have. I allowed my 13 year old to play it and he finished it this morning because he’s home from school. Guess what? He hasn’t sent emails to radical Muslim imam Anwar al-Awlaki – or if he has the FBI has decided not to investigate because to do so would show cultural insensitivity.

First lets correct a few things.
The incident Fox & Friends takes issue with is a level where an American soldier goes undercover to infiltrate a Russian terrorist’s gang. As part of that operation he participates in the shooting up of a Moscow airport named after the fascist leader that overthrew the Russian democratic government and sold nukes to a Middle Eastern regime  in the first Modern Warfare.

The level is gruesome. As mentioned above I have never played such a role before in video games. In it you watch the leader, his henchmen and yourself walk through the airport gunning down civilians and police alike. In this respect it is modeled after the terrorist attack in Mumbai on Nov. 25, 2008. All Call of Duty video games are what we term “on rails.” You have limited freedom in what you can and cannot do as the plot moves forward. While the massacre is going on, if you shoot the Russian terrorist or his henchmen you cannot kill them, but they will turn on you and kill you. You must then either shoot the innocent civilians yourself or shoot above their heads. At the end of the level you are shot and killed by the Russian terrorist as you leave the airport. He says something to the effect that finding an American at the massacre will ignite a war between Russia and the USA - and it does. The incident sets in motion everything that follows afterward including the invasion and occupation of the eastern United States by Russian forces. Because the Russians blame America for the terrorist attack, the world turns a blind eye to its destruction and it’s up to the heroes to fight the Russians, find the Russian terrorist, and prove that he has engineered World War 3.

I found the level tough to stomach. So did my son, and a friend I’ve communicated with who like me picked up the game the day it was released. “Do terrorists really act so calmly when they attack?” My son asked me this morning. Remembering the videos of the attack in Mumbai, I answered that yes, they often do.

Nevertheless I do take issue with the plotpoint. Story-wise it’s necessary to setup the invasion of the US - but I kept shooting Makarov in the back of the head and couldn’t kill him because the story wouldn’t let me.

Think about it: if you can get so close to the bad guy to plant a spy, why not just off him? I always hate when writers create an elaborate scene when a simpler one would work better. “Hi Alexi.” Blam! I think a more creative writing team would have been able to craft a plotpoint that didn’t involve participating in a massacre.

That said as I play through the game I come to see how well placed the level really is. Von Clausewitz famously wrote that “war is politics by other means.” Terrorism is warfare by other means should be the corollary to that statement, and by including the attack in the video game the developers show that terrorism is indeed a part of modern warfare. This puts the game at odds with those on the Left who try to elevate terrorism to a morally defensible position, or at best try to whitewash it as a matter of law enforcement. Playing through the level it’s clear that it’s neither: it’s brutal, ugly, and an act of war. This is what terrorists from Bin Laden to al-Zawahiri have been saying for decades: they are at war with us, and there will never be any accommodation between us until one side is victorious over the other. I’ll never quite understand why the Left refuses to listen to the terrorists; perhaps they are the ones who are racist and “culturall insensitive” because they refuse to take an Arab at his word.

The Call of Duty series has consistently supported values such as honor, valor and the sanctity of life. In Modern Warfare 2 there is a level where the player must kill Russian soldiers using oil rig workers as human shields. As the level loads the commander who ordered the operation is asked why we don’t just bomb the platform. He says something to the effect that “We don’t kill innocents. We use precision to take out the bad guys.” Sure enough as you raid the platform if you shoot a hostage you are forced to restart from the last checkpoint. This relates to a level in the first Modern Warfare where your team must stop the massacre of Russian villagers by the ultra-nationalists. It’s just one of several levels in the series where you must stop the bad guys from slaughtering civilians, keeping the morality of the game on a higher plain than video games like “Grand Theft Auto” (a game I refuse to play on principle yet do not ban from my home.)

At the end of the game you will shoot and kill American soldiers. These soldiers are under the command of a rogue American general hell bent on continuing the conflict with the Russians. What’s not clear (and I blame the writers here again) is the motive for the general’s actions. Unfortunately the game ends with a cliffhanger leaving the whole game dangling. Gamers will have to wait another 2 years for the conclusion of the story – just like a movie.

So was I troubled killing American soldiers protecting the general? Given how hard they were to kill, not particularly. I suppose some would, but by this time in the game it was obvious to me that it was necessary to save the world from tyranny. My commanding officer and I were the only ones in the world who knew the whole truth about the conflict raging around the world, and the rogue general wanted that truth buried.

Having the entire world against you tends to make the game more suspenseful, but does so rather cheaply. The story struck me as too convoluted to make sense, as if it had been written to paste scenes together that had been dreamed up at design meetings at the maker Infinity Ward’s studios. The importance of a well crafted story is a relatively new one in video game design, but as the games become more complex and movie-like, the importance grows. Unfortunately I think that the story is the greatest failing of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Besides. It was just a game – and a damn good one.

Finally, I think that Penn & Teller put the nails in the coffin of video game violence. See this video.

Note that my son did the same thing the first time he shot a semi-automatic at the gun range.

I grew up with video games starting with Pong, through the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Nintendo and still play them on the PC, and Playstation 3 today. Video games have been the bane of Lefties and some Right Wingers over that time. It’s been almost 40 years since Pong came out, yet American civilization has not fallen nor has society been overrun by Nintendo-addicts as was once feared. More importantly there has been no proof offered to justify the banning of video games.

I have a message for those on the Right: There are real things to freak out about. I’m pretty pissed about Obamacare and the apparent political correctness infecting our military and law enforcement in their handling of real terrorists like Nidal Malik Hasan. There is no need to get all bent out of shape over a video game, especially one as finely crafted as the Call of Duty series.