The title of this article isn’t just a puerile play on the title of the game (although isn’t it wonderfully puerile?) but also a serious comment on several aspects of the game in question that I will seek to address over the course of this, my first article for Gaming Lives.  First, a confession – I am not that good at games.  This isn’t a statement in that typically British self effacing way where we claim to be not terribly good at things in an attempt to avoid being vulgar like ‘the Yanks’, but rather a genuine admission that at the end of the day, I just don’t cut the mustard when it comes to madskillz(tm)

Anyway, I digress – let me embark on my own personal analysis of “The Year’s, perhaps the decade’s most anticipated game” (quoted from the back of the box).  Yes, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (hereafter referred to as MW2 to save my poor fingers) arrived in November to a fanfare of a size reserved in times past for all conquering armies, globally famous pop stars and, sadly in more recent times any person with enough lack of dignity and shame to eat their own poo on telly or whatever it is they make BB contestants do these days.  It was everywhere, and you couldn’t escape it, whether you liked games or not.  For the first time in recent memory, a game that didn’t have the letters GTA in the title penetrated the public consciousness, appearing in newspapers, being discussed by MPs (well, Keith Vaz) and to such an extent that my beloved fiancee, who knows absolutely bog all about videogames’ asked me ‘would you like that new shooty game, Modern Warfare for Xmas?’

It has to be said that I remained unmoved. I had my reasons. First up was that I had never played a Call of Duty game, including the first Modern Warfare.  It had just never appealed to me. I was a Battlefield Bad Company/Gears of War fanatic. Slow paced, tactical, team based online shooters as opposed to the twitch reflex shooters such as Halo and COD.  I had tried the Beta of World at War and hated it, so my mind was made up – I wasn’t really interested in this game.  Second, I (like many gamers I would assume) was thoroughly pissed off with Bobby Kotick (known in this household as Bobby Cock-lick – yes I know its not big or clever but it kind of is though, right?) and his ridiculous comments about the RRP, which to my mind basically equated to ‘all gamers are stupid and they’ll pay whatever we say they will for the game because its COD and they all love it’.  My beloved was firmly told that I did NOT want this game, and was then thoroughly bored to death with the reasons why (bless her)

So what changed? Well, I had a lot of friends who were stupidly excited about the game, including the friend who had lured me to the aforementioned WAW beta who waxed lyrical long and hard about the game. Video reviews everywhere proclaimed its greatness, magazine reviews followed suit, and slowly I had to admit that my interest was at least piqued.  My friend the beta man was getting it for xmas, and this made me start to crumble. The previous xmas we had both gotten Gears 2, and had spent a very pleasurable festive period playing through on co-op and then tearing it up online together. How lovely would it be then, if we could both play through the much vaunted co-op ‘special ops’ missions on MW2 together this year?  I still remained firm on one thing though – Activision would not get a penny of my money, and so remaining true to the spirit of the boycott (as so many didn’t) I declared that I may be interested in picking up the game at some point, but that I absolutely would not buy it brand new. I would purchase a pre owned copy, even if it was more expensive, because I have my principles.  Still, I thought no more about if for Xmas – I had my list of stuff that I had asked Santa for (funds being tight I had been told that Santa could only get me one game this year, so hit on the genius of 2 half price games and asked for Borderlands and Arkham Asylum).  Santa informed me that all was sorted and that an extra surprise game had also been purchased at the insistence of a colleague and having remembered hearing me talk to a friend about wanting it. My mind filled with possibilities, but ironically MW2 wasn’t one of them – I still wasn’t THAT bothered by it.

Needless to say MW2 it was (pre-owned, proving that my beloved DOES listen to me!) I played through Arkham (which I had wanted since forever) and had a quick pop online with MW2 – I quite liked it, but then knew I would having borrowed a copy of CoD4 from my neighbour a couple of weeks previously.  It was ok – still a bit ‘twitch shooter’ for my tastes but acceptable enough.  Then, Arkham exhausted, I picked up the campaign.

I hated it.

It probably didn’t help that stupidly I decided to go through my first playthrough on hardened.  Unfortunately, Infinity Ward is clearly one of those developers that believes that harder difficulty levels should just mean stupid amounts of enemies, all with the crack shot abilities of Annie Oakley, guns that fire through solid brick and uniforms made of Adamantium, whilst giving you all the bullet resistant qualities of a wet paper bag and a gun with the power of the average asthmatic grandma powered pea shooter.  I raged, I ranted, I threatened to throw the controller through my expensive and impossible to replace TV, but I persevered.  I wanted those achievements, and the ability to hold my head up high – to say that I hadn’t ‘just’ finished the game on normal.  Finally I overcame, and exhausted I dropped the pad, vowing not to touch the campaign again for at least a month.

Two days later I was back on it, this time on veteran.  What was I thinking?  Was I insane? Had the hours of being unfairly murdered on hardened addled my mind? It was still unfair, I still raged.  Several people on my friends list deserve a mention at this point for putting up with my screaming, whining, shouting frustrations (so thanks Simon, Phil, Mike and Gareth – you know who you are) But I did it, and the feeling at the end was beautiful, while at the same time dirty.  You see, having thrown down the pad in victory I had my first glimpse of what would later prove to be true – I had become that which I have decried so often in the year and a half since joining the current gen – an achievement whore.

This was confirmed the next day when I sat down to do the campaign again (this time on recruit) to hunt down all 45 Intel items.  At the same time I was ticking off each achievement that I could get in SP.  I started with Pit Boss – an achievement awarded (as I’m sure anyone who cares will know) for doing the opening firing range (designed to assess your potential ability and therefore recommend a difficulty level for you) in less than 30 secs. I wasted 2 hours getting this, doing the course over and over, watching videos on YouTube for tips.  That was when I had to admit for sure – I was an achievement whore. I am now 9 achievements away from getting all achievements on this game – a first for me given my aforementioned ‘not-very-good-ness’ at games.  But its not just the achievements that make me feel dirty.

Modern Warfare 2 has a nonsense story – its generally the gaming equivalent of a big Hollywood Summer Blockbuster. Switch your brain off at the door and be entertained by all the pretty explosions and the constant set pieces.  The problem is that in amongst all of this Infinity Ward decided to plant a level that would make people take the game seriously (or if you’re of a more cynical bent like me, that would get them lots of controversy and attention) I am speaking of course of the infamous ‘No Russian’ level.  I won’t repeat what others have said – suffice to say that the content is in my opinion gratuitous, badly handled and nonsensical in terms of the plot. What I find particularly uncomfortable about this level is that you are not allowed to run, you can’t shoot any of the terrorists even if you want to and end of the level (I won’t spoil it for those who have yet to play) kind of makes you wonder what the point was.  No Russian is everything that is bad about video games these days writ large.  There are people who defend it by saying that at least IW had the balls to try it. In my opinion this misses the point.  This level does not expand the story, it doesn’t challenge the boundaries of the medium in an artistic sense and it is not handled with anything like the delicacy and seriousness that it should have been if those were the intentions. It is the video game equivalent of torture porn, and I am not a fan.

But worst of all, the most bitter, bitter pill to swallow is the fact that I have to admit I am liking this game.  Yes it has a nonsense plot, yes I hate the ill advised airport based sadism simulator, yes the publisher is beneath contempt for the comments it has allowed its representatives to make about the gaming community, yes the online is full of campers and grenade spammers – yes to all these faults and a million more, but god help me I can’t deny the facts – I have played little else this festive season. Arkham was finished and I have yet to go back and do the challenges and trophy hunts, Borderlands has barely been touched and Left 4 Dead 2 (which I got myself a week before Xmas) also lies relatively unused. Modern Warfare 2 has taken over my gaming life, and like a beautiful but cheap whore I can’t resist revisiting it, dirty as I feel every time I pick up that pad and hear THAT opening music.

So to sum up, here we have a video game that has made me feel dirty in many ways – through encouraging me to become a whore for those little G’s,  through making me play a level that is basically voyeurism for sadists and finally of course by making me helplessly and totally entrapped in a game that I really REALLY wanted to dislike intensely.  Thus, Modern Whorefare it is and will forever be.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some spec ops achievements to hunt down….

Last five articles by Greg

• Under Press(ure)
• Timing is Everything?
• Might As Well Face It... I'm Addicted To Live
• Bad Company 2 - First Look
• Generation (s)Kill?