Before the release of Modern Warfare 2, Infinity Ward bragged that it had replaced this "cheap tactic" with a more dynamic enemy AI—perhaps in response to a near-decade of player complaints that infinite spawns made the games too difficult, the design "too lazy." This is a classic example of artists taking the words of a boorish public too closely to heart, perhaps because the artists themselves didn't understand the full power of their design. I'd argue that many dislike these spawns because they work against our deeply ingrained, dominant play methods of taking cover, clearing a room, and moving to the next. The idea that better artificial intelligence could relieve the burden of design betrays a depressingly common technological determinism shared by game developers and consumers alike.

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Where Modern Warfare 3’s campaign gameplay is gleefully moronic, Battlefield 3’s is just moronic. Futilely trying way too hard to emulate well-known Call of Duty tropes which its rival has, ironically, evolved away from slightly in its latest entry, the combination of insanely rigid scripting, clairvoyant, overly aggressive AI and a total disregard for the player’s involvement make Battlefield 3’s campaign an utterly indefensible misery. Managing that rare balance of being both boring and infuriating at the same time, it’s a master-class in hackneyed linearity and non-interactive pseudo-drama.

And the fingerprints of the money-men are all over Battlefield 3. From the orange and blue packaging (“science says its more appealing!”) to the online pass code in the box and the “deluxe” edition with some extra maps, every aspect of the games marketing and presentation to the public has been engineered to get money out their pockets as efficiently as possible. Before that, there was the desperate attempts to massage public opinion; the pathetic goading of Activision’s Modern Warfare franchise and the strong-arm tactics used on the gaming press to make sure the “right people” at any given site or publication were reviewing the game.

And once you start playing the singleplayer campaign the feeling that they hate you never goes away. The whole thing reeks of money. From the high production values, (I’m sure Johnny Cash would be delighted to be featured in the campaign soundtrack) to the gorgeous visuals, you quickly realise you are witnessing something both superficially attractive and creatively bankrupt. The 360 version that I played was a little buggy with some visual weirdness, but the lighting and detail are almost enough to distract you from the fact that not a single original idea is present throughout.

You’ve seen it all before. The interview interspersed with flashbacks. Slow motion breaching. The air mission played out with aerial cameras. The turret section. Exploding red barrels. Quick time events for close quarters combat. Not a single genre trope is missed. When EA released Medal of Honour last year it was rightly criticized for being an unoriginal Modern Warfare knock-off. This is much, much worse. Rarely has a game showed such little imagination in any aspect of its gameplay or structure. In truth, it made me genuinelly angry until I thought of the poor developers who had to work on this. Talented young people, working on one of the biggest releases of the year who probably thought they could finally make something they could be proud of, then quickly realising that they would be working on the equivalent of Transmorphers.

I don't particularly mind the level of violence in computer games, partly because it's absurd, and partly because I'm hopelessly desensitised. What I do object to is the dick-swinging machismo that infests games like this. If I had a penny for every time I've spent the opening moments of a game sitting in the back of a transport vehicle listening to a soldier called Vasquez repeatedly use the word "motherfucker", I'd have enough money to buy the Sesame Street game instead. And even that probably starts with Sergeant Grover warning Private Elmo that "Shit is about to get real".


Every soldier in every game I've ever played is a dick. A dick that sounds like a 14-year-old boy reading dialogue discarded from an old-school Schwarzenegger action movie for displaying too much swagger. They seem like a bunch of try-hard bell-ends, desperate to highlight their gruff masculinity. What, exactly, are they overcompensating for?


In other words, Modern Warfare 3 would be nothing but a gigantic needlework simulation were it not for the storyline, which is the most homoerotic tale ever created in any medium, including Frankie Goes to Hollywood videos. Behind the military manoeuvrings, the human story revolves around people backstabbing, bitching, making catty asides, breaking off friendships and betraying one another. Ignore the gunfire and it's like a soap opera set in a ballet school.

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The only misstep comes in a short and frankly pointless interlude where you find yourself in the shoes of an American tourist in London as a dirty bomb is detonated. The scene isn't as wantonly crass as Modern Warfare 2's airport massacre, No Russian, but it still feels cheap, nasty and exploitative. Putting the gamer in horrific, hopeless situations only works if there's some greater insight to be gained. Doing it just to underscore the obvious is an abuse of the first-person perspective; tragedy porn of the worst kind.

Straight-up beasting.

Here’s where IW succeeded in an important step in gaming. They, maybe for the first time in the history of mainstream releases, inspired a gamer to choose whether or not to pull the trigger based on who they are as people, rather than some sort of Pavlovian point-based reward system. Consider how this scene would be different if points were awarded for every civilian killed, a la Grand Theft Auto. Well, the game would then be more of a bizarro world of dark humor rather than a serious commentary on the ethics of killing. Instead, the mission can be played out by either never firing a shot, or participating in the slaughter.

However you cannot be the hero and preemptively kill the Russians. And here lies the problem with the scene, and by extension a major problem with gaming to this day.

This level, and the game by extension, does not really provide you with any choices. It is more of post-cinematic experience rather than an interactive story. You push the plot forward by clicking so

After all, there's little evidence in any of the acrimonious and occasionally astonishing legal documents flying between the two sides in the dispute that suggests that Activision executives actually turned up with a carving knife in hand, keen to slice the studio up.

Rather, it seems that the publisher's sin was simply to expect the team which had made one of the most successful games in history to turn up the next day as if nothing had happened, put their heads down and get to work on a sequel - on a fairly tough timescale, at that.

In their counter-suit, Activision claims that West and Zampella (before they were fired) were intentionally delaying the pre-production of Modern Warfare 3 in order to use it as "leverage in their negotiations with Activision" (via Kotaku). Activision also says in the case that the duo's alleged secret meetings with their "closest competitor" (almost certainly Electronic Arts) contributed to the delays, and that "as a direct and proximate result of this breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, Activision has been forced to commit additional resources to Modern Warfare 3."

SANTA MONICA, Calif., April 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft today confirmed that last week's release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package shattered Xbox LIVE® records as more than one million gamers worldwide downloaded the new map pack from Activision and Infinity Ward in the first 24 hours alone, surpassing the 2.5 million mark within the first week.

The average Tier One - sorry, I forgot, none of them are average - is somewhere on the windswept crags of a lonely mountain range, probably disguised as a shepherd, and sporting an amazing beard.

Beards and goats: unlikely as it seems, that's what makes Medal of Honor seem pretty exciting. It doesn't appear to be a glitzy neo-con fantasy. It hasn't redrawn conflicts to make the enemies more old school and simplistic - "Phew, it's only the Russians again" - and it seems to want to deliver something other than vivid spectacle as it tells its story.