Video Game Review: Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare

I have to do this... I know most people aren't gamers and the fact that I even used that word subjects me into the chasm of loserdom, but I played Call of Duty 4 this weekend and it is epic. Usually video games are just a casual mind-break in the same vein that someone might use marijuana, but every once in a while, the game strikes a sentimental chord that is hard to let go the next day.

The earlier Call of duty 2 was such a game. I remember distinctly, playing the Point du Hoc scene, which recreated the seizure of several German artillery casements in anticipation of the Normandy invasion. After securing the casements, you are unwittingly pushed back by a German offensive to the cliffs that you had originally scaled. You can't help but feel that you had failed the mission, but as you approach the cliffs, President Ronald Reagan's speech in commemoration of the Boys of Point du Hoc crescendos to drown out the gunfire and you realize that all the aggravation and retreat had provided just enough time for the Allied invasion into Normandy to begin. Rarely do books fully capture what it must have been like to stand against all odds.

I realize I digress but it is the emotion that captures these games and Call of Duty 4 has picked up the mantle and brought feeling to an otherwise confusing and conflicted US operation in the Middle East. Urban warfare has been done to death in today's video games but never before has a game allowed you to play the Ranger incursion team and then provide the coverfire from C-130 gunship as the same Ranger team maneuvers through a Middle Eastern village (graphically, the C-130 scene was just like the IR I used in the military and there is nothing like shooting a 105 mm cannon at some poor bastard who has no idea where you are). From there, you begin to understand the utter confusion that can come from urban guerrilla warfare and give up a strategic point to advance on another, and realize that your previous position is now overrun and you are taking fire on all sides. Gameplay is brilliant, story is expertly crafted and the graphics what you would expect from a next generation game.

I will venture forward enough to say that the day will come when video games will be a respectable form of media and storytelling and it is games like Call of Duty that are going to add respectability to this relatively new medium.