Second Wind Playthrough Special – Call of Duty

Part Three, World At War

In his next tour of duty, FBT is at war with himself.

I originally disliked the Modern Warfare trilogy; not because it was crap, but because it was so successful it decoyed the series away from its roots. It was because of MW we had to suffer endless re-treads as the series settled into being a multiplayer with a story-mode for a tutorial. But, on a replay MW turned out to be an awesome series … so WaW should be the ultimate FBT shooter – modern game, classic era.

WaW is … off somehow. I should be loving this, it’s what I kept banging on about as true CoD; I expected a 1940s-set Modern Warfare but instead it’s the original CoD with better graphics. Isn’t that exactly what I wanted? Turns out, no. I’m impossible to please.

WaW’s first order of business is to bring home the horror of war – it opens with a fellow grunt getting his eye burnt out with a cigarette. Soon after, we call in an air-strike to soften up the Japanese -as standard- but when we pass through we encounter dazed and injured troops wandering and dying. Shots cause bodyparts to tear off, they don’t die straight away and there’s blood and pain everywhere. This is not a fun Boys Own Adventure game, and I can’t quite work out if that’s a good thing or not.

We’re split between two events and two soldiers – Private Miller, who’s fighting in the Pacific theatre against ‘banzai!’ screaming Japanese, and a Soviet campaign where Dimitri battles brutal Nazis on the way to Berlin. We do switch out of the two leads occasionally, into aircraft gunmen cutting down ships and planes. They’re solid enough diversions, but this is what I moan about when I say CoD does too many character switches for no reason, they’re pure padding that adds nothing. It’s like the cutaway gags in a Family Guy episode.

Miller’s levels are exhilarating at first. Idyllic islands ruined by war, a lot of effort has gone into making it as immersive as possible; that is, horrible. The Japanese leap out of the tall grass, from foxholes and out of the trees screaming with bayonets at the ready as we pick through hidden pillboxes and booby-traps. Throughout Miller’s levels there’s an intensity, and it’s most intense when it’s quiet … then suddenly ‘banzai!’ and they’re everywhere. Miller’s missions are about digging out an entrenched and fearless army refusing to surrender, while the US’s response is typically US; kill ‘em all. And that quickly gets tiresome, so much killing.

WaW is very CoD I, but it feels oddly tired. Then again, what else can a war shooter do? And that’s the problem. WaW can’t change its setting but it could add depth, even some flair; in many ways the original CoD did this better, it found ways with the limited tech and setting to make events thrilling, here there’s no limitations but nothing else, just a faithful recreation like you’re playing one of those war re-enactments on The History Channel and it feels flat as a game, and dated as a shooter. What’s missing is a personal story.

You’d expect then, that if the American campaign with its change of scenery didn’t get much of a rise out of me, the Soviet missions where we fight through farmyards and villages as we push through to Berlin wouldn’t keep my attention either. This we have done before. But we’ve never done it with Gary Oldman.

Oldman plays Reznov, a wounded sniper. We first meet lying under dozens of dead soldiers after a German attack cut us to pieces. Rez hands me his sniper rifle and the two of us scramble through a bombed out, occupied city – but Rez isn’t looking for an escape, he wants to put a bullet in the head of the General responsible for those atrocities and leads us into the Germans rather than away from them. The mad bastard.

Rez is certifiable and the best companion in the entire series. He is committed only to mayhem, to causing as much bloodshed as possible. He’s this charismatic, Rasputin-like character who demands everyone die for the motherland; it’s like being partnered with The Joker, what insane plan is he going to come up with next? Every two minutes he’s screaming about killing, telling everyone the overwhelming odds are fine since they’ll be dead soon anyway so might as well take some of them with us. At one point he takes someone’s diary off them, telling them it’s a waste of time since they won’t get to finish it. As you battle through levels all you hear is Rez yelling that we’re not killing enough Germans. Must try harder. He’s like some office manager who’s been on too many Inspire and Influence courses and had a breakdown. Where’s the cover sheet for your TPS report?!

Rez is just awesome and somehow this digital character actually does get your blood boiling. Kill more Germans! He’s a very subtle manipulator; once we’ve survived a few rounds with him, he rewards us with a ride on a tank rather than walking with the grunts, then points us out to them saying they could get a ride if they fought as well as us – you catch him telling new recruits of the legend of Dimitri, using you to inspire more young men to run towards the bullets. Late in the game he makes us decide if we should show compassion by gunning down German prisoners or let them get set on fire. Either option seems to please him. He’s that mate that suggests a swift half after work then you wake up in Faliraki with a new tattoo. I don’t think I’ve had a better sidekick. Most don’t usually encourage me to die though.

Dimitri’s missions are, on the face of them, very generic. We even get a standard tank piloting mission. But they’re insanely intense, a real scramble. This is the push to Berlin of course, the last Nazi stronghold so you’d expect some resistance but we’re so against-the-odds it doesn’t seem fair. But then we do have Rez on our side. Seeing him slaughtering everything as he goes inspires you to just go ‘fuck it, no one lives forever’. The level design is beautiful though. I really am storming the Reichstag.

WaW is bland, but it also feels very much like Activision closing the door on WWII; we’re playing through two key moments that brought down both the German and Japanese sides, there’s a sense of closure – but much to my surprise, it’s the first fail during this playthrough – no plot beyond setting each level’s scene and objectives, it’s repetitive and it commits the cardinal sin; it re-treads – we stormed the Reichstag in CoD 1. There’s too many shifts into padding characters, no connection with the leads; Rez aside, this is the CoD I grumble about. Thanks to MW’s tour-de-force, I’m more excited to see what the future holds.

Up next is the Black Ops trilogy, is that going to be more MW excitement or where CoD settled into its rinse and repeat release cycle? At least Rez is in it.

Read the next part of FBT’s CoD Playthrough as he tackles the 60s, JFK and the (welcome) return of Rez in Black Ops.

Second Wind Playthrough Special – Call of Duty

Part Two, The Modern Warfare Trilogy

FBT leaps into the future, when he thinks CoD went a bit shit. Is Modern life rubbish?

CoD I & II thankfully are still great games. I can’t see why Activision shifted away from the era so quickly – I missed out on CoDIII so maybe the setting was getting a little tired, but still; was creating an entirely fictious war in a modern setting wrong or brave? Surely that means a story is key here? I’m playing all those CoD’s to prove story matters in FPS; if you’re going to invent a something you’d better convince me it’s worth fighting for. For me, MW signalled the beginning of the same old experience rehashed over and over. Not that I’m pre-judging it or anything. Let’s get this crap over with.

MW 1 – Whinging before I’ve even clicked on ‘new game’ is text-book pre-judging but the one thing I’m not looking forward to is CoDs multiple perspectives. I want a constant hero I could get behind, not interchangeable arms that exposed how repetitive CoD was. If they provided an alternative take or showed the impact of our actions that would be something, but they’re not different perspectives just different angles – just once I’d like a CoD character to be an innocent bystander trying to escape the madness. Surprisingly then, MW1 does exactly that, as we play the President of Iraqistan or somewhere. Only able to move my head, the about-to-be-new president Al-Fulani shoots me in it; well that was a unique perspective.

The oil-rich country with a new US-hating dictator worries the West; when an SAS team uncovers a connection between Ultranationalists within the Russian Government and Iraqistan – a nuclear weapon – the US invades Iraqistan while the SAS contend with the Ultranationalists who have provoked a civil war in Russia. Holy shit, that’s a story.

The US invasion levels are basically Black Hawk Down the video game. It’s extremely jingoistic fighting as ‘Jackson’ through the streets of Iraqistan but like all good propaganda, I’m swept up and killing with glee as we seek to dispose Al-Fulani; Go Democracy! If I wanted a subtle comment on US war policy I’d have played Homefront or The Line – which I have, and they’re thought-provoking. This isn’t, but it’s hella fun.

The SAS missions, playing as ‘Soap’ are a lot more pressured and stealth based; I seem to spend a lot of time staring at the backside of Price, my commanding officer as we go prone and wiggle about disrupting the Ultranationalists plans with zero presence. Except, I keep swapping a silenced peashooter for a sexier looking local’s gun … I’m less SAS more SASS but luckily, I’m forgiven when I ‘go loud’; you just get yelled at by Price. If you make it.

Flipping between gung-ho and go-quietly can be jarring, as are the occasional shifts into entirely different characters, usually observing or supporting, but it’s not as disruptive as I thought. Because I don’t care about them. And this gets hammered home during the push on Al-Fulani’s stronghold. It’s a huge, exhilarating level, playing as a chopper gunner clearing a path as Jackson fights through the streets, until Al-Fulani detonates the bomb … Jackson succumbs to the blast and it’s a shock. Heroes don’t die. But then I realise Jackson isn’t a hero in the same way a game’s hero usually is; he didn’t do anything heroic, didn’t have a boss fight with Al-Fulani, he was just a grunt – no offence. But, within seconds I’ve forgotten all about Jackson – it’s just another mission end. On with the show.

Some levels are real standouts, like a flashback to Price on a mission in the ruins of Chernobyl – which punctuates a brilliant level where we’re in a running battle while waiting for extraction. That’s a typical shooter mission but the terrain is complex and it’s tough as hell. It could have been avoided if Price hadn’t made us all listen to story time while the enemies closed in, but I wanted context … The US missions, while essentially all the same are always just the right side of ‘shit that was close’. A desperate rush to save the pilot of a Black Hawk down is great, as is the SAS’s final run to stop the Ultranationalists. I keep expecting this to get samey but it doesn’t. MW1 is great. It’s an intense shooter and a pretty good story-arc. What’s going on here?

I think MW2 might be the most conflicted game I’ve played. On the one hand it’s an absolute master-class in intensive, urgent shooters. But it’s also a victim of its own success. This is the game the rest of the CoDs tries to beat, it’s here that I see almost every other game in the CoD series. This is the template, this is the game we’ve been playing ever since.

The SAS chaps are now ‘Task Force 141’, led by Soap, who is a lot more capable than he was in MW1. Because I’m not playing him; instead I’m ‘Roach’, and I’m Private Allen from the Rangers, who’s abilities during an insurgency put-down in Afghanistan gets him assigned to a special mission. I wonder what that can be?

It might have something to do with Makarov, the Ultranationalists’ new leader who gets the Russian people riled up about the West and eventually provokes war. We’re splitting our time between Roach, as the TF141 try to scupper Markov and now Ramirez, an Army Ranger fighting on US soil as the Russians invade. While TF141’s missions are a bit more urgent this time around, and take up the bulk of MW2, Ramirez’s stuff is actually a lot more interesting. Fighting around American Suburbia when the Russkies invade just makes for a more refreshing landscape and a more relatable fight than MW1’s Desert Storm or even Soap’s tail-chasing here. So if I’m now Ramirez, where’s Allen? What’s he got up to?

Allen was embedded with Makarov’s men and enters a busy airport – where they slaughter everyone before Allen is left for dead so the US is blamed. As a catalyst, ‘No Russian’ is one of gaming’s greatest scenes; a mature, serious look at extremists and how they manipulate fear and anger. It’s grotesque and shocking – exactly how it should be, except for the fact we’re a willing participant in it.

The game asks if you want to skip it, but you don’t, and Activision claimed you can just observe but that’s not true. You’re in a running fight against SWAT teams, and trying to get past them using only defensive moves is impossible; no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stay innocent.

The most unpalatable part is that we don’t understand why Allen went along with it. This is where story is critical. We’ve not gained any insight into him or his mission – there’s undercover and then there’s complicit. It makes no sense Allen would let this happen; he goes from tutorial to terrorist, was he turned by Makarov? It may be critical to the plot that I’m a patsy but if I have control, I should have turned the gun on Makarov. Why didn’t I? Only a story can explain – and justify – this. But I’m forced to go along with the atrocity with no context and that makes it uncomfortable. A cut-scene would have done.

Although it’s not made clear, the most likely candidate for Allen being exposed is General Shephard. We discover his duplicity too late of course, after watching him immolate Roach; Shep wanted revenge for the loss of his men in MW1. Which is lame, a typical action-movie cheat like they needed a twist at the end. He wants revenge for his men dying by provoking a world war? But then, massacres aside, MW2 isn’t really concerned with complexity. It’s a Boy’s Own Adventure just like CoD I. And what an adventure.

MW2 is epic; there’s not one duff level, not one draggy mission. There’s a great stand-out early on, a fight in a fast food shop – what could be more American than defending junk food? While MW1 recalled CNN’s Desert Storm coverage, MW2 does go Michael Bay; there’s even a The Rock nod where we fight in a shower room after storming an Alcatraz, and Rodriguez’s missions end with us lighting flares to stop a bombing run.

As a story it does the job; just interesting enough to push us through the levels. The narrative is a bit convoluted though, if we had a chance to stop and think about it; the most jarring is where we go to rescue Price from a Russian prison. I just don’t get why we hadn’t bothered to get him before now, why Soap never questioned his disappearance. It’s not even explored. Why he’s needed isn’t clear either, other than he’s the one guy Makarov is afraid of. No explanation why, Soap’s the one who shot his boss in MW1 and Price doesn’t have any info that really helps bring him down yet he suspects Shephard; but doesn’t warn TF141 of his suspicions until it’s too late. I’ve just been set on fire Price, anything you’d like to share?

Price decoys us to a submarine and fires it’s nuclear weapon so the EMP downs the Russian attack force – a stunning move – but it was a ground war anyway and kills untold numbers of US troops and a passing astronaut. It’s a pretty extreme way to level the playing field. It does give the marines a chance to take back Washington in one of the best running gun battles of the entire series, but still. Price takes being disavowed to extremes.

MW2 is a cracking shooter. But is it a good story? Yeah-no. Plot-wise we’re just chasing Makarov about, and the No Russian scene was crying out for backstory – without it, the threadbare story’s just an excuse for all the shooting. If MW1 was how wars start, this was war where the why no longer matters. Let’s see if MW3 has a happy ending.

MW3 picks up with the Russia-US war in full swing; we’re looking at WWIII and the only guys able to stop it are a disavowed SAS Captain, his critically injured pal and a Russian loyalist. Sure there’ll be some US Grunt who gets sacrificed too; I won’t get too attached to him.

When it comes to the Task Force 141 missions, we’re primarily in the boots of Yuri, starting with helping Price get a critically wounded Soap out the town they’re holed up in when Makarov’s team descend. It’s a decent little re-entry into the MW world as we’re heavily outnumbered and gun our way to an extraction point; this time though, Yuri has control of a remote-controlled mini-tank, kinda like one of those sit-on lawnmowers with a mini-gun attached. It’s fun but an example of CoD shifting away from the men vs men tone and into tech. And that’s about as critical as I can get about MW3 … I was all set to dislike MW3; this must be the one that started my CoD Clone rants, right? Wrong; my enjoyment never dropped below ‘shit this is good’.

While TF141 makes their escape, we pop over to the US to see how the invasion is going. We’re Delta Force Op ‘Frost’ (real name Derek). Again, it’s another solid tooth-and-nail firefight through Wall Street to knock out the Russian’s comms, leading to a helicopter firefight before we stop off to turn a Russian subs’ missiles on the rest of their approaching fleet, which forces the Russian withdrawal from US soil. Not bad for an opening mission. Go Frost! No, no, I can’t get invested in you, you’re going to die.

MW3 doesn’t deserve to be this good. Each mission is desperate and often futile – the teams fail as often as they succeed and for most of it Makarov has the upper hand which gets you riled up and focused. War is hell. TF141 blazes through Sierra Leone and Somalia trying to avert Makarov dragging the other nations into a full-scale war – via chemical warfare. When we miss the shipment, it’s actually nerve-wracking. Nerve-gas wracking.

It’s then that we hit one of the best missions of the series; a SAS team fighting through the London underground trying to stop one of the dirty bombs. London looks just how the Americans imagine it but despite playing chicken with a tube train, we’re unsuccessful and the bomb is detonated – which we see through the video camera of a dad filming his family. It’s a now-standard CoD controversy scene but unlike No Russian which forced you to contribute to the horror, this you just watch in horror as your daughter chases pigeons towards the van. Kaboom. This is how you do controversy. And plotting.

With the world now at war after the bombs went off around the world, Frost and the Deltas war through Germany and France (knocking down the Eiffel Tower while they’re at it) while TF141 tries to get to Markov. It’s all so desperate you’re almost yelling ‘No!’ when it switches between characters; you’re behind those guys, you want to see the war ended, Makarov dead. We’re doing it for that little girl. When TF141 and Deltas team up for an against-the-odds mission to recover the Russian president you’re totally up for it, and when Price and Yuri stage a personal revenge attack on a Dubai hotel, you’re practically cheering.

The game just really wants you to lose your shit while playing. Even the jumps into secondary characters are stellar – besides the London sequence, there’s exhilarating mini-levels like Makarov’s capture of the president in mid-air resulting in a zero-g gunfight; it’s an all-out, balls-out shooter. TF141’s missions play like the Bank Heist in Heat while Frost’s are every war film you’ve ever watched. Buildings collapse on top of us, tanks roll over us, planes crash on us, everyone’s yelling, everything’s exploding, it’s exhaustingly intense. It’s not art, but MW3 is awesome. It’s a fitting end to what you realise is Price’s trilogy. He deserves that cigar.

And Frost survived! Where is he? The one time a character survives and what, did he just sleep in and miss the Deltas’ final mission?! I took a moment to work out how many arms I’d played in MW that didn’t make it. I lost count.

I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong. I finally ‘got’ MW when played as one game. There’s just enough story to keep you invested – in fact, we’re playing the story instead of the characters. They each play a part, and while all the missions in MW could be played on shuffle and you’d not notice, what MW is saying is who or where doesn’t matter, only the mission. You just Ooh Rah and dig in; it’s all the same once a shot is fired.

Another aspect I dismissed but now realise works, is how rail-shooter linear CoD is. It is a locked down, forward-push game but as I ran down dead-ends, into houses, into grenades, I realised it doesn’t feel like you’re being herded. It’s not about the route, it’s about having the wit and awareness to stay calm while holy hell is exploding around you.

The last criticism I had of the modern era was that it was modern; but freed of the WWII setting, MW doesn’t get weighed down trying to lend some gravitas to the fact we’re playing for fun what men actually died doing. It has parallels with Desert Storm and Gulf War II but lets me play as a modern soldier in a realistic yet entertaining way. I’ve run out of excuses; I love MW. Shit.

Question now is, if MW does everything right, where did CoD go wrong? I swear my belief that CoD recycles itself must have come from somewhere. Ironic then, that the next game is World at War, a post MW1 return to the trenches. Is that going to reset my historical love?

Check out the third part of FBT’s CoD playthrough as he returns to WWII; but will it seem dated now he’s modernised?

A second wind special review – Call of Duty

Part One, Call of Duty I & II

In this mega playthrough, FBT signs up for no less than 13 tours of duty

It seems as if Call of Duty has always been here. Since 2003 there’s been 14 main games plus some 10 spin-offs. But to me, there’s only ever been one CoD game. And I don’t mean one so good it eclipses the rest, I mean they’re all the same. Since Modern Warfare, CoD has been the same game rebadged, the story-mode reduced to a tutorial for the multiplayer. I could read the review of a CoD game and think “Haven’t I played that already?” Now Activision has finally dropped the pretence with Black Ops IIII; it’s multiplayer only. Those Fortnite band-wagon-jumping sellouts.

While I had no intention of playing BOIIII even if it had a story-mode, it got me thinking. Is story really that important once you get a gun in your hand? It’s the story that drives you through Bioshock but who cares when there’s a Big Daddy charging, while Doom has less of a plot than porn but I never complained about that. Do I really care why or what I’m shooting once the cut-scene ends? If I’m honest, for all my bleating on about immersion I am a fan of the ‘skip scene’ button. Is story really important if the shooting’s good enough?

What better series to test that theory than CoD? If I play enough plotless CoDs and enjoy them for what they are, I’ll accept story doesn’t matter; Private FBT reporting for duty, sir.

CoD I – This is it, where it all started. Released in 2003, it looks it, and plays it. Running on the good old Quake III engine, we’re in classic pre-Half Life 2 mode. After a now-quaint tutorial mission we’re split across three campaigns; as a US private clearing Germans out of towns and taking out anti-aircraft guns and emplacements, a Soviet solider doing basically the same but with NPCs calling me comrade instead and as a British chap doing sabotage and intelligence gathering. By clearing towns and taking out emplacements.

The add-on for CoD I, United Offensive is more of the same, but works well because we stay within single short campaigns. We battle through the Bastogne conflict before a plane gunner gets shot down and must escape occupied territory then make a last-stand as a Soviet solider holds a town until his pals with tanks can arrive. UO is actually a great little add-on, full of action and nice moments.

On the face of it, CoD I is just a regular post-Doom shooter that happens to be in a war setting – hold this area, rout troops, knock out AA Guns, find the documents, and lots of ‘isn’t there anyone else who can do this’ like suddenly being in control of tanks or being the only one who can snipe. Why are all FPS heroes odd-job men? There’s zero story beyond mission objectives, but CoD I has one important edge over other shooters of the era; watching old war films on a Sunday afternoon with your grandad.

CoD I is pure old war movies; The Damn Busters, The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far – it’s not about historical accuracy it’s about good old heroic grit and exciting set-pieces; we’re sent in cars to deliver messages while Germans try to take us out, firing bazookas at Germans on motorbikes, blowing up bridges, taking out Stukas, liberating soldiers from prison camps, sneaking onboard German boats, desperate last stands; we even have a mission at the dam the bouncing bombs took out. It just feels like we’re in an old war movie rather than war itself; I might be playing multiple characters, but I’m John Wayne.

I don’t get behind any of the characters or really understand half of what we’re doing, and the missions are compartmentalised with no bearing on each other; we’re just fighting through levels not a story. But I didn’t actually miss a story because I’m having a lot of fun. Almost every mission had a nice bit of adventure to it that I got caught up in and happily went along with. CoD I, Story 0. Maybe porn had the right idea.

CoD II – The first thing you notice about CoD II is how more advanced it is to CoD I. It’s almost unrecognisable from CoD I to look at; and to play it’s almost unrecognisable too.

There’s a lot of advancement here – our silent heroes have consistent comrades that actually stick out from the other NPCs charging about, health packs have been replaced with replenishing health and the Germans are a lot more tactical and aggressive. The levels have great complexity and detail for the age – Germans emerge from smoke drifting up from explosions, there’s splinters and debris and the weapons have a meaty, realistic feel. It’s got a nice desperate panic to it. CoD II is a huge improvement. But it’s not nearly as much fun.

The British campaign is set in Africa where we’re putting down overwhelming German odds – early on it’s like we’ve wandered into Serious Sam as dozens of them rush the town we’re attempting to hold. The American campaign, which includes an element of storming Normandy on D-Day is more close-quarter re-enactments while the Soviet missions are often desperate skirmishes trying to push out embedded Germans. Again, there’s no story to speak of, just more real-world battles to act out, but without that derring-do that CoD I had, it’s lost that flair, the war-movie feel. There’s a nice Soviet level where we infiltrate a factory via steam-pipes which the Germans shoot at if they hear us, but in the open you notice the repetitiveness of it, that we’re largely confined to arenas where Germans respawn until we fulfil the same parameters over and over. How many emplacements do the Germans have?

It is action-packed but it gets a bit wearisome, especially when it falls back on Odd-Job Man so often; guess who’s the only one who can attach sticky bombs to tanks? I get that I’m here to be the hero, but I don’t feel like a hero. We just shoot. We’re interchangeable and there’s no personal story – we’re also jumping into another soldier on occasion, which is a first. And unfortunately, not a last. I’m surprised; I held the originals up as brilliant games that the MW ruined, but CoDII has all the makings of what irritated me about CoD. Still, it’s a bloody good shooter; as soon as I got my orders I was off and gunning. It’s just missing that Guns of Navarone tone. It’s missing a story, a purpose.

Both CoD I & II were good shooters and I did get caught up in the events, but I’m still not convinced there’s no need for a narrative in FPS. The war had one, but I didn’t. Maybe that’s part of the issue for CoD’s setting; no one person won the war, it’s not like CoD could have taken the Wolfenstein route and had a boss battle with a chain-gun wielding Hitler. It just never felt personal, like I was building towards something; every character ended just how they began. Then again, most shooters pre-Half-Life 2 were exactly the same so maybe it’s the era not the games. So what’s Modern Warfare’s excuse?

Next week, read part two of FBT’s call of duty playthrough as he signs up for The Modern Warfare Trilogy; a war that hasn’t happened. Yet. That will take some explaining surely…