THE EDUCATION OF JARVIS SLACKS

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 asks a simple question.  Can a video game cause an emotional reaction?  I’ve been sad before, by playing a game.  I’ve been a bit upset, a bit bothered, a bit concerned about the characters.  But it takes a ton of stuff to get me to care about actions in a video game.  I play video games to get away from my problems, not rush to them.  MW2 attempts to fix this.  In some places, it works.  In other places, they try to make it work and it doesn’t.  But, overall, the game succeeds in making the player actually say, “Oh Shit!” or “NO WAY!” or “Oh My GOD!”   Those moments alone are worth the sixty bucks.  Spoiler Alert.  After the break, I’m going to ruin this for everyone.

Modern Warfare 2 takes place five years after the first Modern Warfare game.  The world is all mad at each other, as usual.  Americans are still in Afghanistan.  Tensions between other countries still flare up.  And the British Special Forces are still way, way cool.  The game moves in three simple steps.  Some guy is mad at us.  He frames America.  We go to war with Russia.  In one scene, you are in Virginia and you see Russian troops parachuting down onto the populace.  You actually have to guard a fast-food restaurants. You shoot rockets through houses, American houses.  This bugged the crap out of me and I wanted more and more and more of it.  Let me fight in a major city, game!  Oh, wait.  What?  I have to fight in downtown DC?  I have to defend the Washington Monument?  I have to try and clear out Russians in the White House?  Really?  Thank you, Modern Warfare 2.  Thank you for letting me be the American that I always wanted to be.  These grand moments, these moments where you are trying to defend the Capital of America from people who want to shoot us, these moments were great moments.

Those moments contrast the moments where the developers wanted an emotional reaction from us.  There is a scene early on where you have to watch and even participate in the murdering of hundreds of people.  You and three other characters have sub-machine guns and you mow down regular people.  You can’t shoot the bad guys because you are undercover and you don’t want to blow your cover.  Yeah, it should bother you.  But, I mean, of course it is going to bother you.  When I teach students how to write stories, I always tell them to avoid these large, monster emotions.  Love, hate, fear, those guys.  They, by their very nature, create emotional reactions.  As a writer, the trick is to create an emotional reaction without using easy emotions.  You want to do it with some skill.  It is an art form.  Watching innocent people getting killed?  Yeah.  That is going to cause an emotion.  It was the scenes in the game that were simple that made me react, that made me really engage with the narrative.

But, in a weird way, I’m glad that Infinity Ward tried to do it.  It is easy to play it safe and do what other games have done, relaying on cut scenes and not taking risks.  Modern Warfare 2 tries to do something different.  Win or lose, the effort impresses me.

As for gameplay, this might be the most impressive, and the most difficult, single player campaign I’ve ever dealt with.  Single-player games have two options when it comes to Enemy A.I.  There is the Halo model, where a certain number of enemies spawn and you have to deal with all of them before you can move on.  The other option is what Call of Duty games do.  You set certain marks on the map and you have to make it to those marks, with enemies coming at you without pause.  Oh, and Modern Warfare does this new and amazingly annoying thing of spawning enemies behind you.  Or, allowing enemies to run and flank you.  I was playing and I saw a character run around a building.  I thought, no way this guy is going to come around me.  And, yep, I was dead three seconds later.  If you don’t like shooters, or if you are just generally bad at shooters, don’t play this game.  You’ll only get frustrated.

The multiplayer is just as good as the last game.  There are perks, different weapons, etc.  For some reason, and I don’t know why just yet, the multiplayer has a “tone” that annoys me.  I think it is the map design.  Some maps just make me depressed with others get me pumped.  It is sort of like walking into a room with pretty colors versus a rainy day.  Eh.  It isn’t anything I can shoot dudes and forget all about.  Another final introduction is the co-op missions.  These are the good stuffs.  You and a buddy fighting the computer.  This will always be a good time.  It isn’t as robust as ODST’s FireFight, but they are still fun.

Is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 fun?  Yes.  Is it as fun as the last one?  Yes.  Is it designed so that every gamer can jump in and have fun?  Hell no.  Seriously, do yourself a favor.  If you are not one of the millions of gamers who enjoy shooting guns for hours at people that don’t deserve to live, don’t buy this game.  It is unforgiving and brutal.  It isn’t bad game design.  It is a game that wants you not to live, and is actively trying to end your life.  For Men Only.  Infinity Ward should put that on the box somewhere.