Rewind: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

This is an other entry in my occasional series where I demonstrate how out of touch with modern pop culture I am by reviewing something that was all the rage months ago but which I’m just getting to. Last time was my review of New Moon. This week I turn to video games. All around Christmas I was hearing how the first major take on the whole political turmoil of the war on terror was a video game rather than a movie. Yes, Hollywood has been pretty ham-fisted and out of touch dealing with the war on terror. And most of the movies have been disappointing. I kept hearing how Modern Warfare 2 was complex and brought you to understanding what is going on. (I’m going to abbreviate it as MW2) Then there was the notorious level where you play a terrorist.

OK, let me tell it like it is. First this game does not live up to the hype. Maybe it is a killer game if you are playing it on XBox Live. That’s where most games aim nowdays anyway: the multiplay competitions. I’m judging it on its own merits as a single player scenario. The problem is that it wants to be Tom Clancy with all these characters everywhere. That’s great in a novel but just doesn’t work well in a video game. (Halo tried this with Halo 2 but wisely moved away from it with Halo 3 — but there we had only two characters not tons) This switching between characters lets you see events around the world but de-engages the player from the game which also dilutes the effect of the game. It loses a certain “virtual reality” quality to it.

I also found the political intrigue to be vastly overblown. Honestly if you’ve seen a season of 24 the past few years you can guess everything that happens. (Spoiler ahoy – but honestly I can’t imagine anyone not knowing this at this late a date) Yes, the bad guys turn out to be semi-fascist Americans. Why is it that Hollywood always turns to this? It’s not just that it ends up being a facile and superficial type of political commentary. It’s rather that as a plot point it has been done to death. Further it is not the least bit shocking. You know Kubrick did wonders with this back with Dr. Strangelove but even he had more subtlety to it than Hollywood has the past 10 years. So when this game embraces this conceit it just comes off as trite and silly. Certainly not the first real commentary on the war on terror!

The second problem is that this film really is embracing some over the top silliness from Hollywood movies. It’s honestly pretty hard to take seriously an unnoticed surprise Russian invasion of suburban Virginia. Come on. This is supposed to be a realistic political treatise or techno-thriller? Don’t get me wrong, shooting Russian commandos from a Taco Bell was fun. It’s my favorite level of the game by far. But the game was sold as something more. Something less campy and silly.

So onto the game play. How is it? It’s good. You can sneak around and there’s a lot of value on being quiet rather than guns a blazing. Even if the plot is silly and unengaging a lot of the levels are pretty well designed. There are a few poor ones but by and large it’s worthwhile. Is it as good as the Halo series or even Gears of War? It’s definitely not up to Halo standards (although I’ve not played the last game of that yet either). It’s different from Gears of War, although probably of equal playability in my view.

I guess I’m ultimately just disappointed that game makers aren’t (yet) really engaging in real political commentary with the games. I think it is a medium really open to that. And there’s definitely a vacancy Hollywood has left open. But despite the hype, this isn’t the game that does it.