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May 8, 2008 - 10:40 AM |
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Call of Duty 4: The Prometheus Syndrome |
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Some time ago--probably two months by now--I purchased an Xbox 360, because my Wii and other gaming consoles were being hoarded by my mother. (To be more accurate, my mother and I were not on good terms after the events of last summer.) I played a friend's 360 fairly extensively before making the decision to buy one myself, so buying my own wasn't a completely blindfolded shot. Picking out games for the thing, though, was a bigger challenge for me. There were very few certain choices; maybe it wasn't a great idea to buy a 360 right now, I thought.
I had played Bioshock and Halo 3 on my friend's 360, and I knew that I wanted to buy my own copy of Bioshock. Halo 3 wasn't so spectacular to warrant purchasing for myself, although I only played the single-player campaign several times, the first of which was a depressing six-hour journey of brevity. About that time, I remembered that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was going to be released on Xbox Live Arcade, so I had another reason in that. Viva Piñata looked interesting as well, though I had very briefly watched my friend play it two months before, partially to my chagrin; I was regardlessly interested in playing my first Rare[ware] game since their departure from Nintendo six years ago. Viva Piñata only gained illustriousness when I looked at the price, because I managed to find a new copy for $15. Content in these somewhat haphazard choices, I decided to purchase an Xbox 360 Premium or pro--whatever the hell they're officially calling it--with those games, Bioshock, Viva Piñata, and Miserable Little Pile of Secrets.
A few weeks after making my purchase, I had again finished Bioshock on all three difficulties and nearly completed all I felt like initially completing in an Alucard file in Symphony of the Night. In a bout of partial boredom with the thing, I started to investigate what other games I might purchase for my new toy; I started downloading various demos through Xbox Live. Rez HD was probably the first of the demos I downloaded, and it was a definite purchase after playing a bit. Part of my impulsiveness at buying Rez undoubtedly lies in the dastardly trick the demo performs to induce a cliffhanger, ending gameplay with a sudden "buy it now!" message mid the first boss fight. Rez is a great game, so I never discredited it any for this typical marketing technique. Following my foray into the bowels of Xbox Live Arcade, I looked more toward the prospect of purchasing another few disc-based titles and found the same titles represented by most I asked for recommendations. Out of the myriad suggestions, I bought Devil May Cry 4 and Call of Duty 4. (How I ended up simultaneously purchasing the fourth game in these respective series is a question that has seldom been asked, although one of my friends somewhat childishly suggested that I would incur the wrath of an Aztec number god should I continue unintentionally buying the fourth title in a franchise.)
I don't have much to say about Devil May Cry 4, as I've not played it terribly much. I haven't even finished the poor thing! What I remember of it tells me that the combat is fun and fairly straightforward but that I loathe Nero, the game's stereotypical, sentimentally self-sacrificing, puerile, disingenuously aged protagonist. That's only a partially correct assessment of the character if only for the fact that Nero is one of two protagonists. The long-time series hero, Dante, returns to monotonously save the day later in the game, but I don't have any great affinity for him either if only because his character in Devil May Cry 4 seems to be just as bad but in an opposite direction. Maybe I'm dumping too much shit on a well-established series; I've never played any of the other three Devil May Cry games except for a brief attempt at the first game in the series. Maybe it's not meant to be enjoyed for its characters or its story. Truthfully, I only purchased it as a lark, because it wasn't so highly regarded by everyone I questioned.
Call of Duty 4, on the other hand, was recommended by every person I originally asked for suggestions. For many of those friends, it was the first suggestion they offered, so I eventually decided I'd get that as well. My decision to buy Call of Duty 4 was not a completely unchallenged one. I hadn't played much Call of Duty before COD4 either, but I knew I would be buying a first person shooter bereft of a health bar, something that kept me away from the series after shortly playing its first installment. When I brought this complaint up with one of my friends, they suggested that I must be an exemplary pussy to complain about an element so overlookable, but even after playing a good enough portion of Call of Duty 4, my protest still stands. The lack of a health bar of any sort requires that players rely on "audio and visual clues," in the words of both many a packaging feature list and 'professional' review, to determine when being a virtual bullet magnet isn't a desirable quality. This would be okay if implemented properly, but too often these audio and visual clues increment so quickly after single shots from enemies that it becomes hard to determine exactly how you're doing in the surviving-successive-bullets-to-the-torso department. Does your health completely restore if you stand still long enough? I hope so, but I have reason to believe otherwise; Call of Duty 4 seems to increment these clues to a severe level more quickly after "completely" recovering from damage. It is possible that I have simply been getting hit by more bullets, but knowing oh god you're a total nub stop playing this game you disgraceful miscreant hasn't ever made me desire repeating a particular section for the ten millionth time.
When COD4 was recommended to me by an onslaught of seven people, one suggested that I play the game on the highest difficulty, sheepishly called "veteran," with the justification that the game would be longer if I did so. I, being genuinely out of touch with console first-person shooter games, compromised with his somewhat dickish desire--his message to me read something like "haha, play COD4 on veteran [so I can gleefully record the tragedy of your suffering]  "--and decided to play the game on the slightly less frustrating difficulty, "hardened." I may be a terrible player, but to this day I have not completed the penultimate level of Call of Duty 4. The number of times I have died on "No Fighting in the War Room" is entirely innumerable at this point, though counting all my unfortunate deaths would be pretty useless toward the goal of completing the damn thing. Moving forward in this area at any pace seems to be like wading through a sea of spent nuclear fuel; you're going to be hurt, and there's not terribly much you can do about it. Call of Duty 4, unlike copious irradiated material, simultaneously adds hope and urgency, two additionally irksome elements, to the endeavor by the addition of a time limit. I believe you begin the level with eleven minutes to stop nuclear ICBMs from decimating the continental United States, but time begins to escape you as your repeated deaths blur the perception of whatever level of progress you might have already made into a war of attrition with the game. I found myself replaying a few sections of this level an innumerable number of times only to have the privelege of declaring that I had outlasted the game.
There is one section in particular that caused me to abandon my quest for glory against a stream of electricity flowing through a white box. FAQs tend to label this section one of the personally notorious "hallway" sections, in which you are challenged to get from one end of a hallway to the door on the other end without exhausting too much of your remaining time or, obviously, dying. The second of these sections, with scenery more akin to several locations in Metal Gear Solid than COD4, is by my account impossible. If an incalculable number of deaths have occurred throughout the entire level, this second hallway (rather,the enemies in it) has caused at least 80% of those deaths by this point. There inevitably seems to appear an enemy behind or in front me who can easily kill me in a matter of seconds, and I have tried an extensive number of approaches toward protecting myself from bullet rape. I have tossed grenades directly at enemies and seen their terribly unsatisfying deaths with the hope of clearing out one of the corridors only to find that another enemy has replaced the one I killed while I was recovering health. I have killed enemies fairly quickly and been instantly shot down when trying to move further. I have tossed flash bangs, prayed to both pagan and christian deities, professed my undying love for R. Lee Ermy and all things related to unending warfare and even considered providing my contact information to some division of the United States' armed forces in order that I might somehow be enlightened by military genius enough to learn how to better survive uncountable scraps of metal flying at my fragile human body. None of my attempts at changing my strategy have worked. Conceding that a war of attrition might not be the best way to finish this section, I restarted the level last night with the sure hope I'll get to the end of it eventually.
One of the chief unmentioned problems with the no-health-bar situation in this game is that it forces players to stand still long enough to recover their health unless they enjoy gaining new holes from which their bodily fluids can pour. This probably sounds like a great feature at first; "Hey, I can get to cover and be okay!" In practice, particularly in a timed area, this idea is absolutely horrific, because it forces players to waste further time by standing around in order to move on unless they're really seeking out a pithy quote from the military leaders of yesteryear. There's another problem with this section in a characteristic element of the game's AI. COD4 does a lot to ensure that people don't stand around and camp themselves in one spot for an entire level by way of spawning a seemingly limitless number of enemies if the player doesn't keep progressing. I suppose you might call this realistic at first glance, and in most levels, it does add a bit of excitement. In this second-last death-fest, though, it's little more than an annoyance.
SOMEDAY I'LL WIN................
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