Dave Critiques - The Cat Lady: Suicide can lead to a happy ending?

Transcript

Hey hey everyone. Today I’m going to be critiquing The Cat Lady. It’s a horror-themed adventure game that I will be talking about in depth. As always, if you wish to avoid spoilers, stop the video now, and come back once you’ve played the game. For everyone else, let’s continue.

The Cat Lady is about depression. The game starts with protagonist Susan Ashworth committing suicide and finding herself in the land beyond. It seems that death was not the end of her suffering. After some unnerving encounters with her corpse, Susan comes across an old lady who refers to herself as the Queen of Maggots. She tasks Susan with going back to the real world to murder 5 parasites. To aid her quest, Susan is now immortal. These parasites are dangerous, but ultimately they will pose no threat to her.

The game doesn’t clarify the details of this task. We have no idea who exactly the woman is (and Susan’s guesses in conversation with the Queen of Maggots are deflected). She just grants you immortality and tells you to kill five people. Her justification is that they are awful people, murderers who have hurt others and will hurt more. Aside from the moral questions of whether it is right to kill anyone, even someone that reprehensible, why Susan is chosen and not allowed to die after her suicide is never made clear. Susan is not clear about it either so at least we are on the same page with the protagonist. Kind of. We only learn about the reasons for her depression much later on, but their reveal seems to come at the ‘right time’ like its reveal is a landmark moment for Susan admitting it to herself and continuing to get better.

Because while this game uses a lot of horrific situations, contains murderers, and has some particularly nasty moments, the recovery of Susan’s mental state is front and centre the entire time. Learning to cope with depression, making friends, and dealing with the parasites so that they never hurt another person again. Sure those of us with depression don’t necessarily go that far, but perhaps it can be interpreted as a metaphor for getting rid of the negative people in your life who drag you down and negatively affect any progress you are trying to make.

Speaking of friendship, the Queen of Maggots warns Susan that the parasites are liars, and will use any means necessary to get close to her. This puts the player on edge when people are nice to Susan. Two examples are the nurse Liz that Susan meets when she wakes up in the hospital from her suicide attempt and Mitzi. Mitzi is one of the main characters of the game. She wants to rent a room from Susan, and through their time together tries not only to get Susan to open up but help her find the man responsible for her boyfriend’s death. Remembering the words of the Queen of Maggots, the player can be quite weary of Mitzi, especially since the Queen herself appears near her shortly after Susan shows her the spare room.

But Mitzi can be trusted, to a point. One of the final scenes in the game has her admitting all the lies she told Susan to achieve her goal, but despite the deception, Susan and Mitzi do become friends. It’s almost as if the Queen of Maggots’ warning is just meant for initial caution in the player, especially after what happens to Liz. Through my first playthrough, I didn’t necessarily trust Mitzi until the very end, but I liked her and enjoyed watching Susan become friends with her.

But one of the most interesting aspects of the game is the agency of player choice. This is first introduced in the talks with the psychiatrist at the start of chapter two. When asked about her family and her work, you have the ability to answer in multiple ways. The game gives you an opportunity early on to frame Susan in the way that makes the most sense to you as a player. Did her childhood and what she thinks of her parents cause her suicide attempt, or is it completely unrelated?

Then the entire end sequence of the game gives you multiple options. A poison gas fills the room, and you have one gas mask. Will you give it to Mitzi or wear it yourself? Sure, it seems like an easy option as you are immortal, but then again, Mitzi has cancer, and not long to live. Perhaps you don’t entirely trust her at this point. Maybe you want to save her from confronting the Eye of Adan. If you do decide to sacrifice yourself, the Queen of Maggots appears and gives you a choice of the two candles that remain. The caveat is if you choose the wrong candle, your life will end. You can also decide to walk out of the room blowing out no candles. I’m listing out the options here so that when I explain my thought processes, it will make sense in context.

Then waking back up, you confront the Eye of Adam, who you may recall had a hand in her boyfriend’s suicide. Despite what she told Susan, she wants to kill him. Partially for her own vengeance, and also so he can never corrupt the mind of any other person. This is what the Eye of Adam wants. He’s released a significant amount of oxygen into the room so the firing of a pistol would blow everybody up. You now have more options. You can talk Mitzi out of killing altogether, you can leave and allow her to go through with her plan, or you can support her in this final act.

In the episode of Errant Signal about Life is Strange, Chris Franklin spends a lot of time talking about the final choice in that game. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it here. You can watch either his video or my own if you’re interested. The reason I bring it up is he talks about the choice that makes sense to him from a narrative perspective. One of the options will complete a narrative arc for not only the main character but her best friend as well. That reasoning is behind the choices I made in The Cat Lady.

Going back to the ending choices, giving Mitzi the gas mask was the way to go. Due to Susan’s power, no one had to die. Why needlessly sacrifice Mitzi’s life right before she receives closure? When you talk to the Queen of Maggots, it becomes apparent that while she is not the physical embodiment of depression itself, she at least feeds upon it. That is why she’s so interested in Susan. It’s why she sent you back to murder the parasites. Your continued suffering sustains her. Realising this, I decided that I no longer wanted to play her games no matter the cost, so I left.

Refusing to be used any longer, there was no reason to allow Mitzi to kill the Eye of Adam, especially when doing so would sacrifice herself in the process (and no matter how controlled an explosion, there’s a whole apartment building of people that could be hurt as well). As the Eye of Adam is paralysed and his father is now dead, there is little he can do if he is unhooked from his computers. The only thing to do is to stop Susan’s only friend from making a mistake she would regret, even if it didn’t result in her own death.

And with these choices made, Susan receives close to a happy ending. Yes, Mitzi dies eventually, but they had a few more months together as friends. Susan now runs a blog to help people suffering like she did. If you needed any more proof that the game is about depression, the final image of the game is a prompt that states “press any key to live”. The depression is not gone. Susan herself admits she still has bad days. As someone who suffers from depression myself, I admire the themes of hope and regaining control that are sometimes overt, but always there when you’re not dispatching killers and suffering terrifying hallucinations.

Dave Critiques - Life is Strange: Changing the past doesn't matter

Transcript

Hey hey folks. I’m gonna be trying something a bit new for this critique video. For starters, you probably noticed that I got rid of my disclaimer about spoilers before the video. I feel that it might have been off-putting. Instead, I have added the spoiler tag to the video title, and will reiterate here: I am going to be talking about Life is Strange in detail on an episode by episode basis. If you do not want any of the game spoiled for you, please stop the video here, and come back after you’ve played it. Ok, let’s get to it!

After I had finished episode one, I felt like Life is Strange was akin to playing a television series. I think it’s the setting and the way everything played out (multiple issues among multiple characters). It sounds like the premise for a high school drama doesn’t it? The main character gets the ability to rewind time. How does she use it to uncover the seedy underbelly of Arcadia Bay? Of course, we’re talking five episodes that are movie length, so in terms of time spent, videogames are definitely still their own beast, even when stylizing themselves after other media.

Episode one is an excellent introduction to the game. It starts off with an introduction to the time mechanic and its various quirks (such as if you take an item and rewind time, you will still have that item, or will be in the spot you were standing). You then are introduced to the Telltale choices that a lot of players should be familiar with. Only this seems like an evolution of the systems Telltale's games are known for. Not only do you get to make choices that have an effect on the story (or at least give the illusion that they do), Max comments about the fallout of the decision after it plays out, giving you a chance to see how things would be if you had taken the other route. You now have the ability to walk yourself through all the pathways available to you before you pick one. This culminates at the end of the episode score chart where you get to see the choices you made and the percentage of players that chose each option. More than other games of this type, Life is Strange had me saying “Oh man, I didn’t even realise I could make that choice” on more than one occasion.

Episode one even has some great uses of the rewind mechanic to solve puzzles, such as getting in the dormitory. Sadly in this area, episode 2 makes a grave misstep. To begin with, there’s a lengthy sequence in the diner where you have to tell Chloe specific details about what she has in her pockets before correctly observing and predicting the future. This is one of those trial and error puzzles where you either take a lot of notes, or rely on your memory, and thus have to replay these sequences over and over again until you get them right. As you may have already guessed, I chose the second option. After that, you get sent on a hunt for beer bottles that actually had me looking up a walkthrough to find where the fifth and final bottle was hidden. This was the only time I did so for the entire game, and it was an odd experience to seek help, not for the solution to a puzzle, but to find where an object was placed.

Now Episode two ends with Kate Marsh on top of the dormitory roof about to jump off to kill herself. The tension with Kate has been building  (although the seeds were planted in episode one when you witnessed David harassing her). Max almost kills herself using her powers to get onto the roof, and the consequence is that this conversation you are about to have with Kate has no rewinds. Based on your actions, and the correct answers, you either talk Kate down off the ledge, or she jumps. This was an incredibly intense sequence. At a couple of points, I thought I had said the wrong thing too many times, and she was going to jump. When it ended with her stepping down, I breathed a sigh of relief alongside a release of tension. This is only the second episode, but the game has done such a great job allowing you to play out the consequences of your actions using the rewind mechanic, that even at this early point in the game, taking it away was nerve wracking. Based on where the game heads from this point, looking back it seemed unimportant overall but deprived of its place in the entire narrative, this sequence is one of the most memorable for its effect on the player.

I recently watched an anime series called Erased. That show has been compared to Life is Strange, and episode three is where that comparison makes itself known. In Erased the main character finds himself thrown back in time into his childhood to try and stop a string of disappearances and murders committed on his classmates, so hopefully it will change his present timeline. Near the end of episode three, Chloe makes it known that more than anybody else, she blames the death of her father for everything that has gone wrong in her life. Wanting to help her friend, Max finds herself staring at a picture of the both of them at a younger age when William was still alive. Max’s powers activate a new ability, and she finds herself entering the time period of that photograph. Back in the past, you now have the opportunity to stop William from driving his car to pick up his wife, as it was this action which led to his death. You are successful in this, and head back to the present having significantly changed the course of time. The episode is called Chaos Theory for a reason.

When returning you now find yourself a member of the cool kids at Blackwell Academy. One great touch here, and in later sections of the game when you change time, you can look at the SMS history of your phone, and there will be changes in who is sending you texts and what they are saying. So knowing that William is alive, Max rushes off to see Chloe. William opens the door and the episode ends on Chloe appearing to see her friend Max after all this time. Chloe turns out to be in a wheelchair, paralysed from the neck down. Out of all the possibilities that might have been thrown our way to shock the player, this is definitely one I did not even consider.

The next episode begins with Max and Chloe talking about Chloe’s accident, and reminiscing about better times. You find out that Chloe’s medical bills are bankrupting their family and causing friction between her parents. You also discover that Chloe’s pain keeps getting worse and that she probably doesn’t have long left. This leads to the toughest choice I think I have ever made in a videogame. Chloe has had such a great time spending the last day and night with her best friend, that she wants this day to be her last. She asks you to tinker with her medical equipment so that it kills her. Now it’s one thing to say you support euthanasia in theory, it’s another to be confronted by it in real life. Having to make a choice in a videogame is admittingly closer to the theory end of the spectrum, but the decision felt momentous nonetheless. What made the whole experience less impactful is that right after your decision, Max decides to return to the past and change things back to the way things were, resulting in that memorable moment being completely redundant. This is foreshadowing to how episode five is going to play out.

Episode four ends with Max being drugged, Chloe being shot in the head, and the reveal that instead of Nathan, Mr Jefferson the art teacher is the psycho behind the recent abductions, disappearances, and murder. I imagine there are clues that I might have missed, but it didn’t feel that surprising a revelation, or entirely unreasonable either. I kind of just nodded and said, “Ok then. You better have a good explanation for this episode five”. Sadly, there really wasn't one, or maybe the whole mystery angle wasn't made to be as important as time travel powers and environmental catastrophe, even if the disappearance of Chloe's friend Rachel was the inciting incident.

Trapped in Jefferson’s art dungeon, Max uses her photograph power to travel through time. It takes one or two tries to get back to the start of the game. In this classroom setting, you can fix everything without having to leave the room. You send a text message to David, informing him of Jefferson’s lair, comfort Kate so she knows people care and doesn’t despair to the point of wanting to kill herself. You confront Victoria about her insecurities, and then submit a photo to Mr Jefferson for the ‘everyday heroes’ contest. Time rights itself, and Max is on her way to San Francisco, ready to live the life she deserves. Everybody’s happy! Well not quite. If you remember, the game starts off with the vision of a town wrecking tornado. As the game has gone on, whales have washed up on the beach, and there’s even been another moon in the sky. Obviously, Max’s time powers have consequences, at least from a causality standpoint. Chloe phones you at the gallery yelling about the town being destroyed. Everything Max has tried to do for five episodes has been to help her best friend. She can’t just let Chloe die with the rest of the town, even if it means destroying her happiness. It looks like it’s time to go back to the past.

From this point on, the game becomes very surreal. There’s an extended dream sequence in which Max is trapped in her own subconscious. You get to relive horrors, and you get to relive all the fun you had with Chloe throughout the five episodes. You finally talk to yourself at the two whales diner, with the whole town of Arcadia Bay along with your subconscious blaming you for their deaths and unhappiness. It was only after the game ended that I realised this was a setup for the final (and only) major choice of the last episode. Chloe in an act of selflessness believes that all the problems are because of her. By trying to save her, you’ve been ripping at the fabric of the universe, and the tornado that will wipe out the town and kill everybody is an act of balancing the scales. Chloe believes that in sacrificing herself, she can save everyone in the town. Her reasoning is that all those people do not deserve to die because of her. This is the final decision; save Chloe, or save Arcadia Bay.

I chose to save Chloe. Let me explain why, as this was almost as difficult a decision as to whether or not I would kill her when she asked at the start of episode four. I think that sacrificing Chloe is the “right” thing to do, and I put the word ‘right’ in quotation marks. An entire town’s worth of people is not worth the life of one teenage girl. I don’t think it even has to do with the actions of Chloe herself (is any one life worth the lives of many?). Despite all the pain she suffered, I can’t say I actually liked her as a character. You would think this would make her easier to sacrifice. That it would be simpler to do the “right thing”. The reason I chose to sacrifice the town is that despite these very valid points, the whole game revolved around Max and Chloe. Max’s power was first used to save Chloe’s life, and the rest of your time spent in the game is rescuing her over and over again. If in the end, I had chosen to sacrifice her, my entire time spent in this game would have felt worthless. Even more so than when the decision of whether or not to euthanise Chloe was made redundant.

Sacrificing the town isn’t exactly a clean break either, even with this reasoning. There’s a lengthy sequence in the final episode, where you help save lives in the tornado. Not only that but what about Kate? There are plenty of actions that are made just as useless by choosing the lives of the townsfolk over the life of Chloe. What does this mean then? Is the game trying to say that the outcome doesn’t matter? That it’s only what we do in the moment? That it’s our intentions that are important? Or is simply a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario, where you’re asked to weigh up what’s most important to you? Would you sacrifice the world for one person you genuinely care about, or would you do the “right thing” no matter what? Life is Strange may not have left me with a satisfying ending or an answer to this question, but it sure did gave me a lot to think about.

Why Flower is one of my favourite games

Transcript

Hey hey everyone! Dave here, and welcome to the second episode of Dave’s Favourite Games. We’re gonna be doing things a little differently from the first episode. While I wanted this series to be more conversational in tone, not using a script for the first episode led to more problems than I would have liked. Chief among them, a longer, more rambling video. So this time around I’m going to be using a script, but I am trying out a more conversational writing style to see if I can keep a similar loose tone while still having some structure to the content. Let me know what you think.

Now the title of the video and the footage will likely have clued you into that this episode I am going to talk about Flower. Flower is what I will call my latest favourite game. Let me explain what I mean by that. I have put some thought over the years as to what classifies a game to be a favourite, and I have come upon two rules that have helped me to determine this. The first is the five year rule. I think you need at least 5 years to go by before you can begin to think about if a game is considered one of your favourites. That means that of right now, my cut-off for a game to be considered one of my favourites, it had to be released in 2011. Flower was released in 2009, so it qualifies. The second rule explains why a game I love such as say Super Meat Boy released in 2010 hasn’t trumped it. I call the second rule, the three plays rule. For a game to truly be considered one of my favourites, I have to have returned to it at least two times after my initial playthrough. Notice I didn’t say ‘completed’. The reason for this is many games on my favourites list from the NES era like Super Mario Bros or Mike Tyson’s Punch Out I have never completed. I’ve gotten close on many occasions, but despite not having finished them, I return to them time and time again. To me, they are endlessly playable. Returning to Super Meat Boy. That was my favourite game of 2010, but I only played it the once, and I haven’t returned. I would like to someday. Perhaps it and other games since will one day be among my favourites, although the older I get, and the larger my backlog grows, the more difficult it becomes to return to those games one has already spent their time with.

But this series in an excuse to do just that. Ok, let’s talk about Flower. Sorry for the long explanation, but if any game had the footage to keep you entertained while I rambled on about my categorization process, I feel this is it. Flower is my favourite game by Thatgamecompany. Most people would balk at that, citing Journey to be their master work. Now don’t get me wrong. I love Journey! It’s just that, I feel that the emotional arc of Journey was first tested in Flower before it was polished for that game. It has similar beats as you make your way through the different locations. For example, both games have a very depressing moment before the final stage explodes in a shower of joy and whimsy. I just prefer the abstraction of Flower more. Yes, Journey is abstract and ambiguous, but you are still playing a character that has a definitive goal; reach the mountain. In Flower you are a series of flower petals riding the wind. Sure there are heavy themes of growth and rebirth, as you bloom flowers, light pathways, and colourise houses, but… and I apologize for the pun, it’s less about any particular goal, and more about being swept up in the moment.

Another reason I love this game and find myself returning to it is that no matter how many times I play through, or invite a friend over to have them play through it, I always have this huge smile on my face. Riding the wind contains feelings of peace, blooming the flowers and listening to the emergent soundtrack evokes wonder, and there’s just a strength of colour and fluidity to each stage. You can really take as long as you like, whisking through to the end (like I did in the recorded playthrough), or just relaxing as you play around with what the level has to offer (such as the ability to paint the grass at the end of stage 2). I love how each stage is its own distinctive element. The core mechanic of moving on the wind and blooming flowers is always there, but each stage introduces a new element that only is used within that stage. Growth, colour, wind, light, destruction, and then creation. As the purpose of these videos is for me to gush about the game, I don’t want to ruin too much more for those who have not played it, but these differing ideas all link together rather spectacularly.

So my first episode Loom, I completed my footage playthrough of that in an afternoon. This playthrough of Flower took me a little over an hour. So far, one shared aspect of these two favourite games is their length. I love a game that can be completed in an afternoon. Not all of my favourite games are short, but I think its length speaks in Flower’s favour. It presents an idea, then moves through them in quick succession. It doesn’t so much assault the senses as relax them, despite its reliance on colour and music. It’s one of those games I like to show off to those that dismiss the medium of videogames as being violent toys for children. Flower is the type of game that makes me happy to be playing videogames, and that is why it is one of my favourites.

I hope you enjoyed the video. I bought myself a capture card for my birthday this past week, so am able to record console footage now. I’ve been mainly testing it on my PS3, but hooking up my Wii will give me access to a lot of my favourite games from the 80s and 90s. Also look for some critiques on console games I have an excuse to give more time to, now that I can make videos of them. Thanks for watching, and I hope you all a wonderful time.

Dave Critiques - Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China - Perceived Inconsistency

Transcript

[Hi there! Just a friendly reminder that this is a critique. I will be discussing the game for those who have completed it. If you haven’t, perhaps you should stop this video now, unless of course you’re still interested in what I have to say, and don’t mind the risk of spoilers.]

In my first ever impressions video, I made a joke about how I could sum up the game I was discussing with one sentence, but that it would be unprofessional of me to do so. Assassin’s Creed Chronicles China could easily be described in one sentence as well; It’s Mark of the Ninja as an Assassin’s Creed game. Of course once again, stopping there would be unprofessional, even if that description was the reason I wanted to play through the game after spending thirty minutes with it.

Now one of the reasons I liken it to Mark of the Ninja is my approach to playing both games. To me, the goal is to remain unseen, and therefore if I actually am spotted by guards, I will reload the last checkpoint and try again until I can get through either as a ghost, or leaving a pile of bodies in my wake. What excited me about this approach in the Assassin’s Creed universe is that despite the name, the games don’t really allow you to play beholden to a particular creed. This game did, although choosing to play in this manner was not without its frustrations.

Like any game based on challenging the player, there is an escalation. New soldiers and new abilities are introduced, but they play counter to each other. If you’re choosing to play as I am, the new soldiers don’t pose the challenge they’re meant to because their challenge is in fighting them, while the new abilities allow you greater opportunities to skirt by unseen. Even the last boss is susceptible to an instant assassination kill if you come upon him while his attention is diverted. That’s one of the things I love incidentally; from start to finish you actually feel like an assassin rather than hammering on foes until they die or waiting for counters. You’re silent and deadly if you choose to be. The challenge lies in getting away with it.

Meanwhile the landscapes you inhabit feel like a brush painting out of a storybook. The gimmick of China as a 2D Assassin's Creed game if you want to call it a gimmick is its use of depth, where beams of wood or an overhang that you can attach your rope dart to, will allow you to travel into the foreground or further into the background. there were plenty of times I stopped playing momentarily to stare at the mountains, oceans and rice fields in the distance, and while deadly, the game’s use of fire is beautiful in its own destructive way.

Fire is used in three of the game’s levels where your slow, methodical movement is turned into a mad dash to flee for your life while the world burns around you. Before the first of these levels, I had wondered why I had unlocked sliding and jumping kill attacks, as they would leave bodies out in the open and seemed to be of no use. Then the game springs this escape scenario on you where you get to put these new skills to the test in an exhilarating outrunning of the flames. These levels were a nice change of pace, led to some spectacular moments, but they also highlighted one of the main problems I had during my time with the game.

I will call my issue ‘perceived inconsistency’ as I am unsure whether it was the game itself or simply my perspective of what was happening. In these chase levels, there would be times when I was consumed by the fire, and then on a reload, doing everything the exact same way, I would get through unscathed. This also happened in the other levels. A guard who never looked up at the ceiling would all of a sudden do so, or his cone of vision would be angled just that little bit higher in order to spot me. On my next reload, his vision is back at normal height. Even the way the noise darts or firecrackers worked would seemingly change from time to time. As I stated earlier, I am unsure whether I was just doing something wrong, or if the game was being inconsistent with its rules and structure, but it happened with such a frequency throughout my play that it left this doubt in my head. I would leave my play sessions frustrated instead of excited to return to the game.

And this likely is why even though China is rather short, it still feels like it overstayed its welcome. There are two other games in the chronicles series after China, but even though overall I did enjoy my time with this shift of the Assassin’s Creed formula, I don’t see myself seeking out either India or Russia anytime soon.

Dave Critiques - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Does it deserve its praise?

Transcript

[Hi there! Just a friendly reminder that this is a critique. I will be discussing the game for those who have completed it. If you haven’t, perhaps you should stop this video now, unless of course you’re still interested in what I have to say, and don’t mind the risk of spoilers.]

After completing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, one of my greatest concerns was how to approach critiquing a Call of Duty game, especially one that’s been written about so extensively. Due to its infamy the series often gets maligned by those not interested in it, but perhaps due to its popularity coupled with this attitude, these are games that could use more thoughtful critique. While I will of course endeavour to add to this ideal, I’m really only writing my reactions to playing the game, and hopefully in doing so will inform and entertain those who are watching.

I will say as someone who doesn’t play many AAA first person shooters (and has only ever one game in the franchise, that being Modern Warfare 2), I was quite amazed by the density of opposition in each level. You reach these choke points where you expect a prolonged firefight, but end up staying there long past the time you thought it was going to take. How many armed soldiers can a ruined apartment building hold anyway, and how many more foes are going to run down all these alleyways? There’s certainly never a dull moment, and it makes me shudder to think about playing the game on any harder difficulty, where I assume health and damage are exponentially increased.

Let’s discuss the silent protagonist. Modern Warfare gives you two Gordon Freemen (see what I did there?). Soap McTavish, a new addition to the SAS unit, and an American marine whose name I forget. Soap is more memorable not just because of his name, but also because his squadmates stay with you right until the credits roll (although it’s difficult to tell who exactly you’re playing in that strange plane mission afterwards). Captain Price even gets his own level in a flashback segment, and how could I forget a soldier named after my favourite Invader Zim character, Gaz? It’s this attachment to your squadmates that makes the end of the game resonate when they are put in actual danger. I don’t think I would have shed tears if they all bought the farm, but I did exclaim something similar to, “Aww, that’s how you’re going to do this?”.

One of the reasons I forget the name of the American marine is he dies during one of the game’s most infamous moments, the detonation of a nuclear bomb. The staging is quite ingenious. After a rush to rescue a downed pilot after a series of intense alley and ruined building shootouts, you escape in the back of a helicopter only to see the mushroom cloud emerge from the distance, before your aircraft gets thrown into a tailspin and all becomes black. Afterwards there is a short mission in which you’re crawling through the irradiated wasteland before your injuries finally become too much for you. If I was unaware this was coming, it would likely have a much greater impact instead of its almost subdued presence during my playthrough. The missions leading up to this, I was in anticipation of when it was finally going to happen. Instead of a “holy shit” moment, it became more of a, “Whoop, there it is!” moment. Where it was effective is in creating greater stakes for the end of the game when you’re trying to halt the launch of a series of nuclear missiles headed towards the east American coastline. I think that the threat of nuclear carnage is not as scary if you aren’t reminded of its devastating consequences, so even though the detonation did not shock me, as I knew it was coming, playing through it still had the desired effect for the remainder of the game.

Things are not over once you halt the missile attack. Zarkeav (who is responsible for it all) is sending huge quantities of troops your way, and after an action filled car chase and shootout on a destroyed bridge, he shows up himself to finish off everybody. In slow motion you are thrown a pistol and have ample time to plug him and his two bodyguards in the head, ending the game. I mentioned before that the only CoD game I have completed was the sequel to this, Modern Warfare 2. In that game, the man responsible for everything is dispatched with a slow motion knife thrown right at his head. I get the feeling that the developers wanted to top themselves. I understand gratuitous dispatching of the main foe has become a Call of Duty staple since this game’s release. How much more ridiculous does it get, and is it still a satisfying conclusion?

I would like to mention one level in particular, and that is ‘All Ghillied Up’. In a discussion with a friend a while back, I challenged him to name a game that included a forced stealth segment that wasn’t terrible, and he shot back almost immediately with this level. He was correct. Having to hide in the grass to avoid a marching army, or sneaking underneath cars as soldiers patrol around you is not only exhilarating, it’s one of the high points of the entire game. Then to perhaps top their efforts, your commanding officer becomes injured and you have to carry him, placing him down when you encounter enemy resistance. Not only is this level a forced stealth segment, but it turns into an escort mission as well. Truth be told, this section isn’t terrible either. It’s almost as if the developers were testing themselves to create a level that housed two of the most despised scenarios in gaming’s history. That they succeeded is likely a high point for all who worked on the project.

So to end on somewhat of a bizarre tangent,  as one of the few people who hadn’t played Modern Warfare yet, I was quite shocked to discover that on Steam, the price point sits at $50 (AU) at the time of this video. The game is nine years old. I haven’t seen any AAA game maintain such a high price so long after release that hasn’t been made by Nintendo. Even Rockstar discount their Grand Theft Auto games a couple years after they come out. Over at G2A, I ended up paying $17 for it, which I felt was more than a fair price (especially since I enjoyed my time with it). Seeing that I played Modern Warfare 2 back in 2009, I’m interested in maybe giving it another go as a continuation of this game’s events, but perhaps not for a while. I shudder to think at how much they’re charging for a newer release of a Call of Duty game, even if it’s only two years removed.