The dark side of Call of Duty

I’ll repeat this joke as it was texted to me: “Single virgins meeting, 9th November at midnight. Location: GAME.” For most of you trying to work out the meaning of the apparent non sequitur I am referring to the release of the latest Call of Duty game released at midnight on Tuesday to great fanfare in most video game stores.

Those of you walking along Spurriergate recently past GAME can hardly have failed to notice a mini bivouac, complete with autumn leaves, proudly displaying a copy of the aforementioned game. (Incidentally, why would you have leaves in a high street store? It’s cold outside and the wind is currently making the curtains move even though the window’s shut. It’s like buying a Mac and finding out you still have to contend with that annoying Paperclip from Microsoft Word; it’s something that you’re deliberately trying to avoid!)

Anyway, Call of Duty: Black Ops represents one of the biggest movements in gaming in the last few years: the online ‘community’. Online gaming is huge; no longer do you have to invite mates over, or like me, beg and bribe them with cookies; you can instead duel with people from America, or Canada, or anywhere that has an Xbox Live subscription. Even better: you can talk to them through a headset!

I would have loved to have seen this discussion taking place in Bill Gates’ volcano fortress, and watch the one dissenter pointing out that listening to gamers talk rubbish about each other might be a bad move suddenly vanish into a shark tank. Anyone who has ever played Call of Duty or Halo or the umpteen other first person shooters online will know that at some point someone will insult you and usually or not, the choice insult is ‘fag’. Brilliant. We’re back to calling each other "gay" in the playground.

But that’s not my (main) beef with Call of Duty or any of the FPS inspired by it. They’re not fun. They pride themselves on very realistic bullet damage, where any difficulty level beyond insultingly easy will have you bleeding your gall bladder over five different locations. Yet somehow when you’re injured you go and sit behind a corner and you’re back to normal! They suck all the fun out of gaming with their encyclopaedic knowledge of warfare and plots sucked straight out of a Tom Clancy novel. Also note to game developers everywhere: The Cold War ended 20 years ago. Russians are no longer just the go-to bad guys. I long for games like Serious Sam; cartoonish violence where you could run out into the open with a sack of grenades and twenty guns bristling from available orifice and walk away with a big grin at the end of it. It’s great to see franchises go from strength to strength and Call of Duty’s latest will no doubt offer more of the same hyper-realistic brand that has served it well, but I would like a new line of first person shooters, led by an anthropomorphised ocelot with bazookas. That launch sharks.

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