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.
- Navy SEALs fuck up and allow a nuke to be detonated in a populous Middle Eastern city. OOPS.
- A Marine platoon’s heroics to save a downed helicopter crew result in all of their deaths, including the player character’s. OOPS.
- Flashback level with hardened stealth-snipers in ghillie suits climaxes in “assassinating” a guy who we know is actually still alive, meaning the mission failed. OOPS.
- Attempt to capture a terrorist for information results in cornering him and him blowing his own brains out. OOPS.
- Torturing a second terrorist for information produces none at all; instead his cell phone rings by happenstance, we get our info from the call, and then our fearless leader shoots the prisoner in the head. OOPS.
- Our constant pressure, coupled with our constant failures, have pushed Big Boss into a corner but simultaneously empowered him to take control of ICBMs, which he launches. OOPS.
- (To the team’s credit, they do succeed in one thing: preventing the nukes from detonating.)
- At the end of the game, every single one of the named characters is cut down like a dog just to give you the opportunity to shoot Big Boss in the head and get airlifted out in critical condition. OOPS.
- As we now know from MW2 previews, killing Big Boss (the entire point of MW1) was worse than futile, as another Big Boss instantly filled his shoes, and this one is even crazier and more brutal. OOPS.
A big mistake.
What must be noted is that, moment-by-moment, each one of these missions is incredibly badass. MW’s combat is intensely satisfying and tactically challenging. It is only on a broader, more strategic level that we see each of these segments as a failure. The language of videogame power-fantasy is being effectively used to describe the futile powerlessness of a soldier’s life in modern warfare, i.e. global counterterrorism. These men are trained and honed to perfection and can execute their maneuvers flawlessly but somehow never seem to actually “win” or improve anything. Their skill only deepens the hole as an ever-widening circle of violence is fueled.
In fact, the smooth, pincer-like appeal of the game’s combat is slowly encroached on by an eventually overwhelming feeling of fear. Many people have complained about the arcadey nature of the respawning enemies: push forward to where they’re spawning from, and they’ll stop. The idea, though, is to impress upon you the utter lethality of combat. You must stay within your teammates’ field of fire. Since they are actually quite effective at protecting you, you form real bonds with even the anonymous soldiers that fill the ranks. But you are the point man; you must move forward. The longer you wait the more of your own men die, simultaneously making you more vulnerable and more guilty (since you allowed your comrades, who were preventing you from being vulnerable, to die). You must push, but not push too fast, or they won’t be able to cover you effectively. Every level is this same delicate balancing act played out over a different environment. Hence there are small waves of mounting fear—gotta move, gotta move—within each setpiece.
As the game rolls on towards its Sum of All Fears conclusion, each of these wavelets punctuates a boiling, subterranean dread. The giddy joy of each combat encounter chafes more and more with the realization that nothing these men are doing is accomplishing anything —even when they “succeed.” Their banter starts to sound wild-eyed and irrational. By the time the main characters were joking about the beers they were gonna drink together once they got home, during the chase scene at the very end of the game, I knew they were all dead men.
Contrast this with Bioshock, an incredibly clumsy attempt to upend power-fantasy videogames by explicitly telling the player he’s a tool, but simultaneously allowing him to actually win/succeed (therefore proving that he is not in fact a tool) while continuously undermining itself with its own less-than-entertaining mechanics. It’s silly, shallow and insulting by comparison, and self-contradictory to boot. (Players commit heinous acts of violence at the behest of someone they don’t know all the time, it’s almost like they’re MIND CONTROLLED, GET IT, now let’s also talk about the SERIOUS MORAL CHOICES players will have to make in our genius game, which is not actually choices plural, and which has no actual moral dimension, but wait wasn’t the point of our plot that players have no choices, nevermind here’s Ayn Rand.) Perhaps most importantly, by misunderstanding its own nature so thoroughly, it actually limits the subject matter of its (unilluminating) commentary to the least interesting thing—videogames—since no one with a brain could ever be fooled into thinking it was actually a critique of something like a philosophical system. Meanwhile, MW, by virtue of the combination of its self-understanding and the sheer entertainment of its minute by minute gameplay, uses games to talk about something important—soldiers and modern war—rather than being limited to talking “about games.” Videogames as reality as videogames.
To say that this “mainstream,” “blockbuster” “first-person shooter” is incapable of evoking these sorts of emotions is like claiming that Terminator 2 is “dumb fun.” When created with enough professionalism, with enough humanity, and enough common sense, the “action” genre lays bare the strongest and strangest feelings of the human heart. That isn’t to say that Modern Warfare is perfect: for instance, it leaves out a staggeringly important element of modern warfare—civilians—though the sequel seems set to remedy that problem. And ultimately it’s probably slightly too invested in being “fun” to explore itself to the furthest extremes. But it’s not hyperbole to say that I consider it the Full Metal Jacket of our generation. An electronic, manic, purposeless videogame for an electronic, manic, purposeless war.
1 I’ll refer to this game as “Modern Warfare” or “MW” rather than the traditional “CoD4” in light of the fact that Infinity Ward, progenitors of the Call of Duty franchise and developers of 1, 2, and 4, don’t own the rights to the name “Call of Duty” and are calling CoD4’s sequel simply “Modern Warfare 2” while Activision runs Call of Duty into the ground with some other shit developer. In retrospect, “Modern Warfare” is a better name for the first game anyway.
TV's Adam
on Jun 1st, 2009
@ 2:40 pm:
This is a great piece.
I’ve always liked the emphasis on timely forward progression of the Call of Duty series. Not only does the game urge you on by hurling opponents at you non-stop unless you move, but it also makes a certain bit of sense, particularly in the earlier, WWII-set games, as there should theoretically be countless hundreds on the battlefield with you.
I really need to replay this game. It honestly hadn’t really occurred to me until you pointed it out that it really is just a string of failures punctuated with small but ultimately useless successes. It’s interesting that it still feels like a success to complete the game despite all that.
Toph Stuart
on Jun 2nd, 2009
@ 11:17 pm:
My homeboy over at selectbutton, Broco, had this to say in response to the post that formed the nascent germ of this article:
“That was a clever and thoughtful attempt to present the game as having a Nabokov-like moral message below an ironic surface layer of depravity. But you gloss over prominent aspects of the game that undermine it — notably, the sheer silliness and naivete of the ticking-time-bomb terrorist plot. That’s pure Hollywoodian trash, presented unironically, and it shows both that IW’s writers have a shallow understanding of warfare, and that the overriding concern of the game is cheap excitement and “emotion”. In light of this, the only plausible reason for the tactical victories and strategic failures is just that they want to keep the player winning yet at the same keep cranking up the stakes, purely for the sake of an intense experience.
“I too had high hopes for the story in this game, since it does have flashes of sophistication. For instance, I liked the revolutionary speech on the radio in the car, which struck me as empathetic to the Islamist point of view. But later I realized the game didn’t really value that empathy for its own sake, but rather for the sake of the vividness and “realism” of the player’s experience. MW’s creators have a lot of talent and intelligence and have the potential to make a sophisticated game, but they’re too devoted to the idol of immersion to consistently work towards any other qualities.”
It’s an extremely cogent critique. Be warned that you may very well agree with him over me.
TV's Adam
on Jun 3rd, 2009
@ 10:37 am:
…nah.
I certainly get where Broco’s coming from, but I think that’s a pretty tall order for a game like this, and not even a tall order I’m sure I’d like to see filled. “Hollywoodian trash” handled thoughtfully can and does make great games and occasionally great movies, and I think CoD4 is a pretty good example of that. A more sophisticated, genuine look at warfare would be an interesting game to play and probably great on its own merits, but I’d say that this is not that game (though it may pave the way for one), and it doesn’t have to be, and it probably doesn’t even aim to be.
But you could make a case that there IS a certain level of irony in how the game tells its story, simply because of what you pointed out – that its major plot points read as a laundry list of failures for the supposed heroes. That’s not exactly a common technique in war narratives aimed at a mass audience, and certainly not in video games, even if the main focus of CoD4 is your standard “evil terrorists with nukes” fare.
Maybe I’m reaching, but the summer-blockbustery overall conflict of the game coupled with the game’s eagerness to show you and the rest of the good guys fucking up – even going so far as to have you play through a protagonist’s death – to me suggests the developers are winking a bit; subverting the conventions of the material just enough to be interesting, with minimal risk of alienating that (substantial) portion of their paying customers who are just there to shoot, kill, win and enjoy.
(That does suggest there’s a certain element of “talking about videogames” in there, however, which some may find unfortunate but doesn’t really bother me.)
Skye Nathaniel
on Jun 3rd, 2009
@ 8:50 pm:
It’s the subtle details that make all of this truly great. For instance, only on my most recent playthrough did I notice that Victor Zakhaev is the man who takes a phone call in the passenger seat of the car that drives Al-Fulani to his execution. Russian helicopters and tanks swarm the skies and streets to the point where it feels like this Middle Eastern city is being invaded. The SAS intercept a Russian nuclear warhead on its way to the United States with an Arabic blessing. The clear backing provided by Zakhaev is ironic given Al-Asad’s emphasis on overthrowing the yoke of Western influence.
Never is an explanation offered for why it is the British who launch an operation in the Bering Strait to protect the U.S. from a nuclear attack. Nor are we told why the Marines are sent to invade the Middle East as a result of their coup—presumably, the words “oil-rich nation” have something to do with it, but we really don’t know. We aren’t told. The roles of good guys and bad guys are assumed. The entire first half of the game takes the form of an impersonal war-as-usual videogame affair; it isn’t even until after the nuclear blast that the name Zakhaev actually comes up, if memory serves.
And I especially enjoy the fact that there is a timer counting down when Sgt. Paul Jackson runs to rescue the downed pilot just before the nuke goes off, implying that finishing on time will guarantee safety. I think that the game consistently subverts our expectations about what a wartime first-person shooter will do, and its omissions are used to as much success as its provisions.
Toph Stuart
on Jun 4th, 2009
@ 2:30 pm:
“Maybe I’m reaching, but the summer-blockbustery overall conflict of the game coupled with the game’s eagerness to show you and the rest of the good guys fucking up – even going so far as to have you play through a protagonist’s death – to me suggests the developers are winking a bit; subverting the conventions of the material just enough to be interesting, with minimal risk of alienating that (substantial) portion of their paying customers who are just there to shoot, kill, win and enjoy.”
I hate this kind of reasoning. Certainly it happens all the time, but I won’t countenance the possibility that anything I consider great is even partially pandering to a “demographic.” Modern Warfare is a highly-polished piece of entertainment. It works for the same reason that all great entertainment works: it’s cohesive. Divvying up the game’s timeshare into “winking references for smart people” and “dumb fun for frat boys” by necessity makes the work incohesive: two-faced and lying about itself to itself at every turn. That’s what I was trying to suggest about Bioshock, in fact, even though I don’t think that game’s designers were aware that they were doing it.
No, Modern Warfare is too obviously self-aware (not in an ironic 4th-wall-breaking sense) to make that mistake. Insofar as it comes off as an episode of 24, it does so by virtue of the same singular design philosophy that produced the touches of genius that lay beneath it.
It makes me excited to see Modern Warfare 2, actually. I have a feeling that neither Broco nor I will be vindicated, but rather that both of these threads will simultaneously be amped up, making the friction even more distressing and delicious.
Bert Lafleur
on May 19th, 2010
@ 1:24 am:
Did you really write this post by yourself? It seems…TOO GOOD! Haha, great job man, I love hearing about video games, especially Call of Duty ones! :D Have an awesome day and thanks for your post! :D