Call of Duty game video

I had actually purchased the Call of Duty game way back in the summer, but I forgot about it, and it sat in my trunk until Christmas day this year! Fortunately, it still worked.

This game was not meant to be set up in such a way that you got "x" points for shooting "X" amount of enemy soldiers. No, this game is meant to give the player a feel for what it was like to be in battle. In some respects, it does just that. For one, there's certain lessons learned from what weapons work best in a given situation. For instance, a rifle that shoots one bullet at a time and which you have to discharge the empty shell each time puts that soldier in a distinct disadvantage when the other guy has a machine gun.

I learned right away to rip off one of the German guns and use that instead. Also, sometimes a well placed hand grenade works better than a head-on assault. And just yesterday, I fired off an anti-aircraft gun and shot down Stukas. That was pretty cool.

But the lesson I came away with is that war is not glamorous. Rather, it's a lot of killing. I wish I could remember a quote from someone who fought in the war who said something along the lines that war is just butchery. You're just going out and killing to keep from being killed. Also, death for you can come from anywhere. There were times during the game that I was crawling along, and then I heard a bullet whizzing by. Even when I looked around, I couldn't see where it was coming from.

The one thing that Call to Duty didn't provide is what happens when you're injured. In a real battle, all it takes is one bullet to shatter your arm or leg bone, and you're severely handicapped in a battle that's still going on. But in the game, you aren't even slowed down - even with a lot of injuries - and you just grab a first aid kit to get your "life meter" back up. There is one instance in which you can experience "shell shock" in which your vision gets blurry and your movements are slowed down, but it's temporary. It's such costs that survivors of war experience, and for which the game lacks.

Of course, there's limits on what a game such as this can provide. And it's not like we would WANT to actually feel a bullet wound or the ongoing effects of "shell shock" - nowadays referred to as "post traumatic stress disorder" - but even so, in this game you come away with at least a taste of what combat in WWII was like.

The game did intrigue me enough that I might seek out the later editions of this game just to see what kinds of adjustments they made since the first one (it was from 2004). If I get the later editions, I'll let you know what kinds of adjustments they made.