[...] than the game On inclusivity What my television set can learn from videogames The year of thirds Modern Warfare’s hollow victory IKEA, and the logic of videogame design Arkham Asylum, and the space of traumatic memory Boring [...]

Christian – yes, you’re on to something with guilt being part of the militarist’s agenda. I’m beginning to wonder whether what I saw in MW1 was simply the guilt of the developers showing through more strongly than in other military-based videogames. It’s funny you should mention sanitisation though – if you’ve played MW2 then you’ll probably have noticed the briefing section late on in the game where one character (Sheppard, I think) says “We are not barbarians – we do not kill civilians.” Interesting.

Jickle – Yes, the story is told really poorly. I struggled to put all the pieces together, though even your comment here makes things a little clearer.

Though your comments about civilians again bring up one of the game’s most hypocritical aspects: where is everyone in Washington and Virginia? Clearly there would still be stragglers, even in an all-out warzone. The civilians are there when you’re an invader, but absent when you’re a defender. Pretty telling on what lines Infinity Ward were willing to cross.

I absolutely agree with your comments on the first MW. What I’ve found with MW2 is that it actually contains a great story – the problem is that they do a really bad job of telling it. I had to use Wikipedia and forum postings to piece it all together. Shepherd’s motivation is very poorly explained. From what I can gather, having been disgusted over the lack of reaction to the ‘nuke’ scene that wiped out his troops in MW1, he essentially instigates the war between Russia and America in the hope of being hailed as a war hero, as he feels he deserves to be.

To me, the most obvious ‘theme’ of MW2 is the role of the ‘invader’. Aside from No Russian, I think one of the key moments in the game comes after the EMP strike, when you’re walking the streets at night and come across those troops who don’t return your callsign. Even as an Australian, there’s a certain significance to taking the fight to American soil, seeing the Washington Monument wrecked and broken, and not knowing whether those guys walking down the street need to be shot at or not. And then, of course, in the early levels (the Favela, the one that goes through the school), you’re the invader in a civilian area – civilians can get in your way, and it doesn’t neccessarily stop you from firing.

If nothing else, plot wise, it gives you access to some new perspectives, even if the actual plot is delievered terribly and the blockbuster moments are oddly jarring.

You were far too kind to the first game, and only mildly too kind to the second.

To see militarist masturbation in full flight, play Killzone 2. “This Autistic Imperium is Nihil Reich.”

COD4 seemed to be more than just a war game, and I loved it for that. However, MW2 seems to have tried to do so much in so little time it is quite confusing. Price starts going off on one constantly, and even though he was my favourite character in the game, I was beginning to question what the developers were trying to do with him.