The Modern Warfare 2 controversy to come

For weeks, not one television network took the trouble to examine the context in which Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor made the “make policy” and “wise latina” remarks that fed this summer's 24-hour news cycle. I can only imagine how they'll handle footage captured from the forthcoming Modern Warfare 2 in which players unconscionably massacre civilians during a terrorist attack on an airport. If they weren't willing to sit through the Duke University and Berkeley Law School speeches from which Sotomayor's commentary was stripped, they certainly aren't about to play a videogame before using it to tar an entire medium by association.

Of course, without that context it's impossible to come to any worthwhile conclusions (including whether developer Infinity Ward was courageous to include intellectually challenging content that can sustain complicated readings; foolhardy in its assumption that meaningfully violent videogames can come of age in the present reporting climate; or crass in its belief that no press is bad press). It is, however, fair to frame questions. A few that come to my mind include:

Would an alternative approach effectively “establish the depth of evil and the cold-bloodedness of a rogue Russian villain” and “add to the urgency of the player's mission to stop them.” What if the scene, for example, cast the players as a counter-terrorist who monitors the massacre while en route to the airport where he will engage the enemy? And what, if anything, will the answer tell us about the differences in reading a novel narrated from a monster's point of view, and in acting monstrously in a videogame where the player presumably has other options?

What happens when the player turns and attacks the terrorists? Do they die, or does the game end then and there (since the story sustains only one outcome and the bad guys need to live in order to play their part in the escape scene at end of the level)? If the latter, must we comply with the terrorists to complete the mission and continue the story? I don't see why not when the character we play is destined to die.

Must we commit mass murder to appreciate the extent of its evil?

Is the scene's ending intended to serve as absolution not only for the character -- a CIA agent complicit in mass murder even should he never fire a shot -- but also for the player who presumably will want to “kill” the part of himself that played such a role?

The One and Only Right Review

Calculations conducted with data obtained from the user commentary sections of videogame review websites conclude that the following constitutes the optimal critique of every game ever released. Feel free to paste it where appropriate.

The One and Only Right Review

I'm the wrong writer for this review. I've given the game a score it doesn't deserve: too stingy because I'm biased against the platform it's supposed to sell; unduly generous because I hoped to hide my bias towards the competing console. I've been bribed to deny that the game sucks; bribed to say that it does indeed.

I'm an imbecile. My score doesn't match the aggregation site average which, to indulge one co-conspirator, I wanted to raise. Actually, I intended to reduce it in order to satisfy the other.

My editors are morons. Instead of assigning this review to a fan of the genre who wouldn't have naively mistaken imitative mediocrity for innovation because he hadn't already played the eleven other games exactly like it, they gave it to me: a cynic who, having played and appreciated almost every game of the genre ever released, has unreasonably high expectations.

I evaluated a sim according to arcade standards, and I expected simulation in a goofy arcade game.

Had I played more than a mere 40 hours prior to collecting my $60 check (which may or may not arrive in three months) I'd have noticed that the game takes an irreversible turn for the worse on the third replay and redeems itself on the fourth.

I neglected to dedicate individual paragraphs to the trophies and achievements, the customization, the cutscenes, the voice-overs, the Havoc physics, the pause menu, the patented and groundbreaking player abilities bullet-pointed on the press release, and if not these then everything else that the discerning readers who choose to use the comment function on this site point out while proving that they are, in fact, far more qualified to have written this review.

Now the credibility I never had is as good as gone. This website and/or magazine was demonstrably better before its former writers and editors departed to become the despised new regimes at rival websites and magazines.