A last desperate act.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare¹ is a game about exactly what it says it is: what it means to be a soldier in the Year of Our Lord 200whenever it came out, 8 probably. For the first time in history, a majority of the people fighting in an honest to God war grew up playing videogames that play at war. The rock solid geniuses over at Infinity Ward have, in response, made the first and only game that really captures the zeitgeist of the Bush Years, probably—hopefully—without realizing it.

The brilliance of MW is that it turns the usual videogame oo-rah power fantasy on its head by subversive measures and actually entertaining gameplay. It stands out best as a contrast to Bioshock, which wore its “lol videogame” on its sleeve and managed not to say anything about anything in the process.

MW is one long series of failures. There can only be one conclusion to draw from the game’s presentation: that violence begets violence.

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Warning: There will be no discussion of stars in this review.

On a base level, an obvious comparison between videogames is available: Braid is to time as Portal is to space. It is capable of—no, it actively changes the player’s perspective and fosters new ways of thinking about the world. For this experience alone, Braid is well worth playing, but it further reveals itself to be intricately more (or, you may feel, less) than the sum of its parts. I reacted, as I find myself doing with most any work that so requires interpretation, on an intellectual more than an emotional level, and yet Braid is a very emotional work. It may take time to see it, as it did for me, but I believe this to be an earnest and sincere expression.

Upon first experiencing the final action-puzzle event, I was inspired with the presumably intended awe and horror but also rage. If it weren’t for that meddlesome, distracting text framing the gameplay, this lovely, clever, unassuming platformer could have accomplished a simple and elegant feat of storytelling. Instead, I felt, it is wrapped in convoluted, analytical prose that stinks of pretense (and I am not one to use that word lightly). Let me describe the changes necessary to create my ideal version of Braid: No cloud rooms. That’s it. No cloud rooms with text (or alt-text) about Tim leaving his woman to see a movie and then invent nuclear weapons. Just get rid of it.

What’s left?

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