Battlefield Conundrum

Oh Call of Duty... we hardly knew ye.

When I left Skewed in the dustbin of my hard drive in 2008, my game of choice on Xbox Live was still Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. In the years since, Grubbs and I moved deftly from CoD4 to Call of Duty: World at War, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and lastly, Call of Duty: Black Ops. The collective currency we dropped on these titles was sizable to say the least. Each game offered its own enjoyment, and yet, after months of play, the same cracks always appeared.

World at War was Treyarch's take on World War II, with the Modern Warfare graphics engine bolted on. Online play moved from AK47's to Mauser's, MP40's and Panzerfausts. We loved it - after all, what could be more fun than coming home from a long day of work, setting a few people on fire with your flamethrower, decimating a few enemy tanks with your satchel charges, and then sniping the enemy with your bolt action Kar98 from an actual bell tower. The sound of Grubbs' manic giggle still resonates in my memory.

Modern Warfare 2 was supposed to be the second great coming of the Modern Warfare series. And while we initially enjoyed its offerings - filled with powerful kill streaks, diverse weapons, and new maps, we soon grew tired of the massively broken system that Modern Warfare 2 was built upon.

The last great gasp of the Call of Duty series was Black Ops: the most finely tuned Call of Duty game ever made. Balance was the watchword. No killstreak could overpower a match, super weapons were removed, and character classes were more realistic - at least more realistic than a silent, throwing knife wielding ninja wearing body armor and carrying a riot shield.

And yet, the systemic problems of Call of Duty always reappeared - sooner or later. Call of Duty is built around a frenetic, twitch reflex style of gameplay. The first Modern Warfare featured maps that allowed for sniping, effective use of cover, fire and maneuver, and generally realistic tactical situations (or at least as much as you'll get in a video game). As a result, Grubbs' ROTC training and my background in Millitary History served us well. We could work around the games infirmaries. But Call of Duty's spawn system - the code that spits your reincarnated soldier out somewhere on the battlefield, was always glitchy - leaving you to wonder if you were going to spawn behind cover or in the middle of a pack enemy soldiers, all firing at you the moment you appeared. And some nights, being spawn killed became the norm, rather than the exception.

Colorful obscenity usually followed.

Then came the weapons. As the series progressed, the assault rifles became less distinct, less accurate, and promoted more of a spray and pray style of gameplay. And while World at War proved promising - featuring the first use of vehicular combat in a Call of Duty game - this one defining feature was eventually removed by the game's developer, Treyarch. Why? Because too many players complained. What was left was a watered down, vanilla shooter that lacked the personality of Modern Warfare, and yet retained all of its foibles and follies.

Modern Warfare 2 essentially broke the series for Grubbs and I. Riot shields, throwing knives, ninja abilities, super sprinting, small maps which nearly all featured funneling routes left the RTOC kid and the Wehrmacht historian scratching their heads, cursing excessively, and wondering just how in the hell you counter a a pre-pubescent, hyper-fast, riot shield wielding, micro-uzi toting, coked up lunatic on a Code Red bender. The answer was simple: you couldn't, at least, not unless you responded in kind. And we refused to stoop to that level.

Black Ops promised a return to sanity, and yet, in the end, wound up producing more of the same. Let's review, shall we? Assault rifles so similar that you couldn't pick an AK47 out of a police line up? Check. A spawn system so broken that you might literally appear in your enemy's lap? Check. Small, cartoonish maps that feature set pieces so over the top that you expect Cobra Commander to appear wielding a spring-loaded gun and Kung-Fu grip? Check. A sea of players so immature that team killing becomes a hobby? Check.

Colorful obscenity continued. Thankfully, for us, there was Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

The difference between the Battlefield series and Call of Duty is simply night and day. Call of Duty is a near-arena style of gameplay, whereas Battlefield is just that, a Battlefield.

For the sake of brevity, I'll give you a simple example. In Call of Duty, Grubbs and I might find ourselves occasionally pinned down by an enemy sniper. If he played his cards right, and buried himself in a heavy structure like a house, he could make our lives miserable. The solutions available were less than ideal. Trowing smoke grenades to break up his line of sight, hoping one of us could hit him through the wall with heavy machine gun fire, sniping him in kind, or running for our lives became the order of the day. Striking him with an RPG, hitting him with grenades, or bombing him from the air did nothing - why? The buildings in Call of Duty are impervious to destruction. Simply put, the house will still be standing there, even if you carpet bomb the damn thing with a B-52.

Now that's more like it!

In Battlefield, if a sniper is gives us grief, which they often do - after all, the maps in Battlefield cover several square miles - we have a multitude of effective and delicious options for removing the ghillied menace. The choices are numerous: Option one: Call in a light mortar strike from a distance, level the surrounding countryside and flush the sniper out into the open where Grubbs promptly puts his brains twenty feet behind him on the ground. Option two: put Grubbs to work: Snipe him in kind - adjusting for bullet trajectory, flight time, and distance (something Call of Duty doesn't do). Option three: Roll in a tank, rotate the main gun on target, put one high explosive round through the building, and reduce it and the occupants to pieces; thus removing the building, and the offending sniper from play. Option four: Level the building from the air by utilizing attack helicopters. Option five: Take out the sniper and the wall he's hiding behind by using the barrel mounted grenade launcher on my assault rifle. In short, the options are limited only by your imagination and the sadistic nature of your being.

Or as I like to say, pick whichever method would make you giggle the most and go with it. After all, what is life without listening to the yearnings of your heart?

As I explained to Ryan just the other night: The differences between the two games can be boiled down to this: Battlefield is a civilian legal DoD style military simulator. Combined arms, fire and maneuver, destructible environments, vehicular combat all come into play. The eerie echo of anti-aircraft fire blasting into the sky, the deep rumblings of artillery, the shouts of soldiers calling out targets, moving to cover, and returning fire, all make for a challenging and realistic game: at least as much as I'd ever care to experience. For example, might hear the following in a game of Battlefield: "Targets moving from cover! 12 O'clock low!" "I see them! Calling in 75mm mortars." "Good effect on target!" "Grubbs, move up the Abrams." Grubbs then appears with a large tank, fires a few rounds through the house the targets moved into, we all giggle, and we hear Grubbs calmly say: "Clear."

In a game of Call of Duty, you'd hear the following from one of the random players online: "Boom! Headshot! **** yea! Let's play Firing Range... AGAIN!!! Cover is for **********! You all gonna die! I'm running my Uzi with Ninja, Slight of Hand Pro, and Scavenger! I got my killstreaks lined up, bitch! I got my remote controlled bomb car, my attack dogs, and a Valkyrie rockets! Hell Yea!"

Need I say more? I'm sorry Call of Duty, but we're going to have to break up. It was fun while it lasted. It's not you, it's us. We want, nay, we need something deeper and more meaningful from our games of death. We require a more intellectually stimulating game that's actually rooted in some basic form of Newtonian physics and human logic. I know, Battlefield may not be as pretty as you are, but it doesn't spawn us into automatic gunfire, it doesn't shoot us in the back by a ninja wielding a blow dart, and it doesn't keep fleecing us for money for more maps.

If you need us, we'll be playing Battlefield: manning Bradley's, Apaches, Abrams tanks, and downing tangos until the sun comes up. Observe: