Call of Duty: Black Ops and Medal of Honor will be doing battle for our cash this Christmas but this time, I’ll be staying firmly neutral (like Switzerland but without the gold, far less chocolate and a crap watch). For all the excitement about new weapons and new settings in Call of Duty: Black Ops and the controversy over the Taliban Medal of Honor multiplayer option, the prospect of switching from seeing real wars on the TV news to virtual combat just doesn’t thrill me anymore.
I know the Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer trailer was stuffed full of cool looking new features and that Medal of Honor promises to give that franchise a seriously needed reboot up the backside. But after years of pulling on my virtual boots and trudging through hours of combat, often with the catcalls of irritating American teens reverberating in my headphones, I just don’t have the energy to enlist for this year’s campaigns.
Each series has its own problems. Call of Duty: Black Ops picks up from where Treyarch left off with Call of Duty: World at War (Reznov, the sergeant from the Soviet campaign in that game even makes a return). And while there’ll be new weapons to handle and new ways to meet your demise (napalm looks particularly gruesome), I can’t shake off the sense that the Call of Duty series has become a sausage factory for Activision, a guaranteed money spinner.
When it comes to Medal of Honor, the choice of Afghanistan as a setting and the inclusion of the Taliban in multiplayer mode is unsettling. Of course EA has every right to create a game that represents real life events. If film and TV can tackle contemporary topics, games should be allowed to as well.
But the immersive nature of games adds a layer of complexity to representing a current war. While we play Medal of Honor for fun, soldiers are dying for real. And for many who have lost love ones in Afghanistan, the idea of “playing” the Taliban is likely to be a hard one to stomach. Of course, it’s just a game but EA’s explanation of its logic doesn’t ring true.
It compares playing the Taliban in Medal of Honor multiplayer to childhood game’s of cops and robbers. Someone had to be the goodie. Someone else had to be the baddie. But we’re talking about a war that’s currently being waged, a situation of incredible moral complexity. The decision to include the Taliban as playable characters in multiplayer was just that, a decision. EA didn’t have to make that choice. It it partly for the inevitable press attention.
I know that Call of Duty: Black Ops and Medal of Honor will be snapped up in huge numbers in the run up to Christmas. But the increasing realism of war games and the unending stream of real life horror stories from Iraq and Afghanistan has put me off playing soldiers for fun. The darker the real headlines are, the more I crave the dream worlds of games like Super Mario Galaxy 2 and the pick-up-and-play joy of Plants vs Zombies.
Think I’m wrong about Call of Duty and Medal of Honor? Feel free to frag me to pieces in the comments below.
