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Here’s a show-stopper for a gloomy
November day… Out of the thousands of British people who
fought in World War One, there are now only twenty-seven left
alive.
Talk of ‘heroism’ in war is always
double-edged – from the celebrated ‘Dambusters’
raid in 1943 (1300 civilians were killed) to the current Private
Jessica Lynch-inspired attempt to sprinkle a little Hollywood
glitter on a depressing and ugly escapade.
After playing Call Of Duty for half an hour
or so, you will be left with the feeling that true heroism has
nothing to do with gung-ho chest-beating or needless martyrdom.
It’s about valuing your colleagues’ lives just as
much as you value your own. As the game’s tagline goes:
“In the war that changed the world, no-one fought alone”.
”This is the last time I
take a package deal with Somme Tours Inc.”.
Call Of Duty is a World War Two first-person
shooter and even if you’re not interested in World War Two
or you don’t like first-person shooters, you really ought
to get up out of that chair and go and buy it, immediately.
Well, if not immediately – when you get
the chance. Y’know.
We’re the TV generation. We know all about
the visual horrors of war – and Call Of Duty doesn’t
shirk on them (tumbling, shockwave-propelled bodies… a field
littered with dead cows which can be used as cover… bloody,
brutalised corpses…). But – Jesus, the sounds. The
yelps and screams of surprise and agony… the relentless
clanging, clattering, ricocheting, booming, pounding… When
the bombardment becomes too much, your character occasionally
suffers a terrifying bout of in-the-field, brain-scrambling ‘shell
shock’ – stumbling through a slow-motion soup with
muffled hearing until his senses finally re-sharpen.
There’s the tank section, the snow bit,
the occasional moment of stealth… but it’s much more
than just a crowd-pleasing WW2 fps. With its breathless set-pieces
and precise attention to detail, it’s trying to get you
– yes, you… with your cosy life and your nice, warm
room with your books and your CDs and your porn and your high-end
PC – to get some kind of emotional fix on what it’s
actually like to fight in a war.
It’s the way an officer’s hat wobbles
as he turns his head to face individual troops during a briefing…
the real and fluid sense of working as a team to make an intelligent
advance on an enemy position… the palpable, moral-vacuum
vibe of us-or-them.
”Well – looks pretty
calm round here. Can we go home now, sir?”
The mechanics of the missions are deliberately
set up to illustrate what foot-soldier warfare means in reality
– a protracted process of boredom, drudgery, dehumanisation,
chaos and fear – occasionally punctuated by brief and brutal
encounters with other human beings who want to kill you.
In between levels and deaths, the game settles
you back to reality with a pithy little quotation on the nature
of war. My favourite among these is: “’There are no
atheists in foxholes’ is not an argument against atheism.
It is an argument against foxholes” – James Morrow.
In the first few days after buying Call Of Duty,
I showed it to two friends who came over. The first thing that
both of them did upon leaving my house was to go to the nearest
shop and buy it for themselves. Do likewise.
RODENT CASH RATING -
Accept no 34.99 nonsense. You should be able to get it for 29.99,
at the most. And that is what it's worth.
 "Gun
that Hun!"
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here to comment on this review
The Imperial
War Museum is great. Go there.
The World
At War. Best. Documentary series. Ever.
Shellshock
in World War One
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