Tag Archives: Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare

Blog: Like the Old Days – 01/22/20

1 Reply

Sometimes games strive to endear themselves to you through a healthy smattering of nostalgia, which usually yields mixed results at best.  But some games exist solely for the purpose of reigniting old flames you thought had died in you long ago.  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a prime example of the latter.

For context, the original Modern Warfare came out in 2007 when my friends and I had all graduated from high school.  It was the perfect time for a game like that to keep us all together and talking considering we wouldn’t be forced to be in the same place for five days a week.  It was a nightly ritual that involved us playing long into the night and talking to one another.  It isn’t a unique story by any means, but it’s one that I look back on fondly.

Fast forward to today where everyone is scattered about and doing their own thing.  I bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare out of some weird longing mixed with the general hype I’d heard since it released.  Within the first few minutes of playing it, I immediately was flooded with memories of those long nights we would spend together online, and how important that was to me.

Nowadays my gaming buddies and I have drastically different tastes in games, making it hard to sync up on a purchase we can all enjoy, so I knew this game wouldn’t appeal to them.  But I picked it up anyway, just for my own curiosity.  It’s still incredibly fun and chaotic just like I remembered it, except this time around I’m flying solo.  That sounds sadder than I intended it to, but it’s no less true.

There’s still something satisfying and endlessly replayable about the core mechanics and progression in the Call of Duty games that few other titles have matched.  While I may not have my friends in my ear, cracking jokes and complaining about how “cheap” the enemies tactics are, I still get that endorphin rush of just running laps around a map and blasting my enemies away getting killed constantly.

Yet for as much fun as I’m having playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, it still feels like half of an experience without friends to play with.  I know I’ll never get those late night game sessions back and quite frankly, I don’t think I really want them.  Hell, I can barely stay awake past 11 o’clock these days let alone play a game until 2 in the morning.  But there’s something about Call of Duty that makes me wish I could.  I guess that’s the power of a good nostalgia trip.

Blog: War Stories – 03/27/18

3 Replies

cost_01

There are some people in your life whose mere presence brings you back to a time and place you though you forgot.  I was lucky enough to have an old friend reach out to me recently.  They were such a presence in my early twenties and I’d basically forgotten how influential they were in my life.  It’s important not to dwell on the past, but taking a pit stop there can be a nice reminder of where you’ve been and how those experiences and people shape where you’re heading.

Just talking to my friend reminded me of how after long days of class or work, I could come home, fire up my Xbox 360 and be greeted by my friends who were always ready to play something.  In this case it was Battlefield 3.  It was almost a nightly tradition in our circle.  I remember piloting a helicopter and flying my friends around while they manned the turrets.  I’d get them in a great position and they’d just level the ground below us.  Scorched earth was definitely our policy and we were good at it.

Or maybe we weren’t.  For every successful run we had, I can remember several instances of me crashing our copter into some trees, or getting sniped in the face from what could only be described as a “murder ghost” who definitely existed and was invisible and cheating and I hated them.

The point I’m making here is that I can track certain times of my life via what games I was playing and with whom.  Nowadays you can see where I’m at by just watching us stream Overwatch or PUBG or whatever else, but it wasn’t always like that.  I played Battlefield with one group of friends, Call of Duty with another group who was different from my friends who I played Halo 2 with, who were definitely different from the people I played Star Wars Galaxies with.

I think of what games I used to play and immediately can remember who I was friends with at the time.  Being able to track my life in that way is something I uniquely share with games.  Sure I’ve seen movies or concerts with different people in my life, but those are just a few hours at a time.  Whereas I’ve played games with various people for dozens upon dozens of hours over long stretches of time.  That to me is special in its own right and is a feeling that isn’t easily replicated by anything else.

I guess that’s a big part of the emotional attachment I have to certain games and the gaming industry in general.  Like many people, I grew up with this stuff, formed bonds with people around them and even made some friendships that still persist to this day.  Hell, most of the people in our videos are people I’ve known for over a decade and I can tell you exactly which games we played together when we first started being friends, and that’s pretty darn cool if you ask me.