“What? Don’t be silly, you can’t play a movie,” you may say.
The next generation of video games is here, now. And yes, it’s like playing a movie, with you playing the major characters.
Last Tuesday, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out. It was widely expected to be one of the hot titles of the season, and I bought it opening day. G4’s X-Play gives it 5 stars out of 5.
I finished the game — well, the single player portion of the game — last night, and can say X-Play is understating when they say it “follows a US Marine and a British SAS soldier through a series of increasingly complex and escalating events in the Eastern Hemisphere.” I found it to be a totally immersive experience, better than many action movies. The game is rated M for good reason; definitely not for the kids!
If you play this game, you will find yourself on a variety of missions wherein you attempt to get off a sinking ship, rescue fellow soldiers, try to capture a foreign leader, attempt to escape a nuclear blast, skulk around the ruins of Chernobyl, snipe, blast, shoot, blow things up, watch people die, and find yourself in a chase scene that puts Mission Impossible’s Chunnel scene to shame. Oh yeah, and you get to save the world too — just in the line of duty. The ending was very unexpected; it came quickly but was satisfying (and there’s a bonus mission after the credits, so don’t quit just yet).
So tonight, I will be getting into the multi-player part of the game, taking a little time off from Battlefield 2, which by the way is probably the game Mr. Bush was playing with the troops. It’s the only game we can think of around here that allows players to “shoot the bad guys” in the Middle East and “simulate riding in a car or boat.” I just don’t know that I’d call a 2 year old game “cutting edge virtual reality games”.
In closing: Samsung pulls out of Japanese consumer electronics market; Mr. Armitage admits it was “foolish” to out Valerie Plame; the myth of the ticking bomb; are homeowners “too big to fail”?; thanks to Mr. Krugman for pointing us to this report on health care expenditures; Expert Ezra actually takes some time to “partially” defend employer-based health insurance; and too cute for Cute Overload, it’s the Weirdest Mothers in the Animal Kingdom. Well worth reading is this piece from Pandagon about those who think the family can be “strengthened” by making it harder to get divorced. Agreed that divorce is not a good thing, and not fun for anybody involved, but that’s not the answer. You don’t solve this problem by making it harder any more than you “cure” tuberculosis with cough medicine; it may stop the coughing but you’re still dying and contagious. If you want stronger families and fewer divorces, make it harder to get married, and provide more opportunities for counseling people before a marriage hits the rocks.