I purchased and installed Modern Warfare 2 this past weekend. I just got around to playing a little of it one night this week.

First off, the graphics are amazing; everything looks almost photo realistic. And to go with the great graphics, the artificial intelligence and animation are superb. The soldiers (allies and enemies) move realistically, react realistically, kill realistically, and die realistically. It’s a total package of amazing.

When I play a computer game, I like to really get into it. I turn off the lights in the room, put on my headset, and have no distractions so I can fully immerse myself in the game environment. The graphics and animation of this game really helps the immersion factor.

The main story of this game has the player (me) as a British and/or American soldier fighting enemies in war (standard practice for the Call of Duty series). But there’s one battle scene in this game that some find offensive. I had heard of it before purchasing it, but I didn’t think the concept offensive.

At one point, for one “battle,” you play on the side of a terrorist group. You play as a member of the bad guys when they assault a crowded civilian airport. Although I wasn’t offended by this idea, I was a bit unnerved by playing it.

Again, I knew this battle scene was in the game — I even chose the option in the game to allow me to play through this level instead of automatically skipping it. But the realistic graphics, the realistic animation, and the realistic artificial intelligence reactions startled me, here.

It’s one thing to play as a soldier in battle, fighting and killing enemies fighting back at you. Even when the graphics and all look realistic. But this scene of gunning down civilians who scream in terror and pain, bleed all over the terminal floors, fall, crawl, and die in very realistic ways, is stunning. The scene is gory and gruesome. Disturbing, even.

When the terrorists started shooting the civilians (and I was standing with the terrorists), I soon turned on my “allies” to kill them. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t let you kill your own side. This makes sense, as doing so would completely derail the story line.

As the terrorists continued shooting, and moved forward, I slowly came to accept that I was supposed to be role playing a terrorist right then. But I couldn’t bring myself to gun down the civilians. I eventually started firing my gun, but I shot high, intentionally missing all targets.

It took me a few minutes to convince myself, Come on Bullgrit, this is just a computer game. These are not real people no matter how eerily realistic they look and act.

When the civilian police forces showed up at the scene, and started shooting at us, it started to feel more like the standard army versus army game I was used to. I eventually took on the role play of the terrorist side.

After about 10 minutes, the scene ended. I was rather glad for it to end, too; I didn’t like playing that scene.

I was not offended by it, but I was somewhat shocked. I don’t think what is shown is anything worse than what has been shown in some movies. The only thing different, really, is that I was playing the part of the bad guy. I wasn’t just supposed to watch bad guys killing a bunch of people, I was supposed to actually do the killing personally.

And I really don’t think it was the playing the role of the bad guy that got to me so much. It was the realistic graphics and animations and sounds and reactions of the people. It’s so real-looking that it’s downright disturbing.

Bullgrit

Last night, I just started Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare (not MW2, yet). This is a really great game. The play of the game, the plot, and the graphics.

I loved the first CoD (I’ve played it all the way through at least 3 times), and this is a fantastic continuation of that style of FPS. I love having the teammates.

Not only is the standard FPS fun in CoD4, but I love the chance to gun from the C-130 (the 40mm is my favorite). And then gunning from the helicopter as the marines fly into the Middle East county, great fun. And I have to say, the ending of the Middle East battle: Shocking and Amazing.

And really, the graphics are so realistic.

And I love that just like in the original CoD, you can still knock the helmets off enemy soldiers :-)

Bullgrit

I have my new computer, and wow almighty! Computer tech has come a long way since my last computer purchase.

For my previous computer, I specifically looked for something that could play the then latest hot new game: Half-Life 2 (November 2004 — almost exactly 5 years ago). This time, my game benchmark is Modern Warfare 2. So I now have:

Intel Core-2 Duo 3.0 GHz
1333 MHz Front-Side Buss, 6MB Cache
4GB RAM
Video card: NVIDIA GT 220 1G

These numbers amaze me — they’re all around 3-4 times the specs of my previous computer.

I haven’t picked up MW2, yet, (I will this week), so I pulled out my old HL2 game disks and installed them on this slick new hotness. With my old setup, I could run the game with the graphics set to a medium-high level. It looked great, then, but now . . .

I set all the graphics levels to the maximum, even the resolution to 1920×1080. With the 16:9 ratio on my new 21.5″ monitor, the visual quality is magnificent! And framerates are plenty high. I’m amazed at how nice this old game looks with everything cranked up to their max. I can only imagine what something new, like Modern Warfare 2, will look like.

Calfgrit8 was with me on my last computer shopping trip, and he heard me tell the tech that I wanted a system that could run MW2. Afterward, he asked me if he could watch me play the game (like he’s seen World of Warcraft and Portal).

“Um, I don’t know,” I said, “it’s an adult game. I’ll have to look at it first and see. It’s probably pretty violent.” (I know it’s pretty violent.)

“Yeah, I’d like to see it,” he repeated. “It could give me some good ideas.”

“Wh-what?” I stammered. “What kind of ideas?”

“For playing army,” he answered.

Hmm. I don’t think I’m going to even let him find out when I’ve bought the game.

Last night, I did let both boys watch me play through the opening sequence of Half-Life 2. In the opening, there’s no weapons in hand, and there’s no real violence or scary stuff, so they can watch it. All I did was run from the bad guy aliens through an urban landscape while exciting music played. It was thrilling and fun, but once the unarmed opening was done (and I came to the first gun in the game) we stopped.

Afterward, while the boys were in the bathroom (one in the tub, the other on the pot), I overheard them telling how they would deal with the bad guy aliens chasing them.

Calfgrit8: “I’d set up a trap for the aliens chasing me, so when they came after me they’d hit it and fall off the building. Or something would hit them on the head.”

Calfgrit5: “I’d get a gun that shot poop and pee at them.”

Their plans and plots and tricks and traps got weirder — so weird I can’t really think of how to write out the conversations. I’ll just say that if the Half-Life 2 scenario ever plays out for real, (aliens take over world, enslave humanity), my Calfgrits will have a unique place with the Earth resistance. A unique, and probably lonely place.

Bullgrit

I just discovered this music video (came out August 17): Do You Wanna Date My Avatar by Felicia Day and The Guild. I’ve watched it probably a dozen times over the past couple days or so — it’s fascinating and enthralling, to me, on several levels. This video introduced me to the The Guild web video series, and I’ve watched the first season (10 episodes, each about 4-8 minutes long).

I used to regularly play World of Warcraft, (I’ve only dabbled in it for the past year), and all my gaming buddies are WoW players, so I fully recognize and understand the gaming references in the videos (although the game The Guild plays is not specifically identified as any particular one). I don’t know if non-gamers will get the gags and jokes or caricatures, but for me, this series is absolutely hilarious.

I’m told by someone who has seen more than me that the second season of the show is even better than the first season. If that’s true, I can hardly wait for time to sit and watch the next season. If you’re an online gamer, or you have a good enough sense of humor to laugh at references outside your experience, you should check out The Guild. It’s worth the few minutes per episode for a good time.

Bullgrit