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Trademark Banter
0:00:06 World's Only Vegan Call of Duty Podcast?
0:00:30 Why So Defensive Fogg?
0:02:00 Ayn Rand Revisit: ITT, Xerox and GM
0:03:50 Lizard People
0:05:29 Fair and Balanced Facism
0:08:55 Idiocracy
Final Impressions - Demolition Man
0:11:23 4 Park Plaza, Irvine 92614
0:20:10 Dennis Leary and Rob Schneider
0:21:30 Demolition Man, the video game
0:23:50 Cryogenics is a Fraud
Final Impressions
0:24:54 Future Cop L.A.P.D, one of the first MOBAs
In Brief
0:28:46 Codemaster's OnRush and SEGA's Judgement and The Girl From Tomorrow
Final Impressions
0:33:05 Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019
0:41:35 Campaign Review
0:47:00 Difficulty Settings
0:48:25 Gather 'round Children, and Old Man Rates all the COD Games
0:53:25 Back to the Campaign Review
1:10:15 CONTROVERSY - Rock Texture Talk
1:17:30 Smattering of Friends
1:19:30 Plant Fidelity
1:22:45 Story Analysis
1:50:25 Score
Personal Computer Talk
1:51:45 HDD and Keyboards
Transcript
WEBVTT
Tom: Hello and welcome to episode of The Game Under Podcast, Australia and most likely the world's only vegan Call of Duty podcast.
Tom: I am your host Tom Towers, and I'm not actually a vegan, but I am joined by Phil Fogg, who is a vegan.
Phil: This is Phil Fogg.
Phil: Thank you for that wonderful introduction. It's wonderful to be speaking to you again after our podcast last week. But you say I'm a vegan. In Australia, as I said last episode, that's become a pseudonym for animal activist, which isn't always the case.
I mean, if you ask me how I feel...
Tom: How do you feel?
Phil: I'm really sore because I spent all day yesterday doing cattle work, which means branding them, giving them needles, other various type things.
Tom: It sounds like you might have accidentally branded and vaccinated yourself there, if you're that sore.
Phil: Well, I'm sore just from holding these calves in place while all this stuff's being done to them, you know.
Phil: And it's not to say that there's any animal cruelty involved, but, you know, it's all a part of meat production. And while I'm a vegan myself, that doesn't stop me from helping out family when we need to be doing such things. I just want to make sure people know I am a cattle rancher in addition to being a vegan.
Tom: What do you think would happen if they thought you were an animal rights activist vegan?
Phil: Who? The cattle?
Tom: No, the audience. If an audience for the show exists, there seems to be a great fear you have.
Phil: Well, I just don't want them to think I'm some sort of radical, you know...
Tom: I don't think that anyone who has listened to the show would ever think you were radical.
Phil: They don't call me Vanilla Fogg for nothing.
Phil: I don't know anyway, it doesn't really matter, but speaking of last week, was there anything that we left off the table in our Anne Rand? I've actually been watching some videos of her. There's a video of her with Phil Donahue.
What's hilarious about that one is she's saying that the corporations that are currently succeeding are because they're getting government aid and assistance.
We shouldn't worry about corporations going out of control because new corporations will come in and replace them and be great. This one lady stands up and says, Are you telling me that at some point GM, ITT and Xerox aren't going to be predominant in their independent businesses?
Phil: And of course Xerox is now gone.
Phil: ITT, I don't even remember what ITT used to do, let alone them being a presence. And of course the funny thing is GM actually did get a massive government bailout with Atlas Shrugged and is now back on the demise again.
So to me, it was really useful to see this person making an argument saying, oh, well, who is going to stand up to the powerful corporations like Xerox and ITT who will forever enslave us?
Phil: And you fast forward years and those companies are gone, and now new companies are our corporate overlords.
Tom: They are indeed.
Tom: A better argument might have been that it doesn't matter who your corporate overlord is, if you're against corporate overlords, but such a system may encourage corporate overlordship.
Phil: The old, meet the old boss same as the new boss.
Tom: Exactly.
Phil: Sort of thing.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: I don't know where that reference is from.
Phil: Do you know off the top of your head?
Tom: No, I don't.
Phil: Well, in any case, watching some of those videos with Anne Randt were more persuasive than her writing, and it is interesting, and I think I always like say, you know, I think the internet's a negative, but, you know, something like YouTube, which enables you to watch, you know, these videos, have access to these video libraries is pretty incredible.
Tom: It is, and she's more persuasive solely due to her charisma and not having to make an argument in the context of an interview, I would say.
Phil: Yeah, well, she was in a Phil Donahue one.
Phil: She's actually taking questions from the audience.
Phil: And it was weirdly recorded at Madison Square Gardens, which is a massive coliseum in New York.
Tom: Anyone taking questions from an audience, though, that is at all a public figure is going to have by far the upper hand.
Phil: Oh, definitely.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Hey, but one thing that's weird that we didn't, I don't think we got into her drug use.
Phil: One of the first TV interviews she does with Mike Wallace, which is a great, great interviewer and journalist, is her eyes, man.
Phil: She's like bugging out big time.
Phil: Like she looked, and I'm not going to say she looked like a lizard person, but she looked like a lizard who happened to be a person.
Phil: Her eyes, man, were just wild.
Phil: I don't know if you've seen that one, the Mike Wallace interview with Anne Rand?
Tom: I'm not sure, but I have seen her in such a state.
Phil: She's hept up on Benzos, you said?
Tom: Yes.
Phil: Alright, well, was there anything that we left off the table that you wanted to...
Tom: I just wanted for the sake of, I believe it's popular among at least mainstream political coverage to have balance, so you've got to have a statement from each side, and I believe I described something as fascism, which isn't allowed on the internet these days because apparently the word has been overused, which it may or may not have been, but it does mean you aren't allowed to call anything fascist, which removes a word from the dictionary that is quite useful for describing some things.
Tom: But I should add, just in the interest of balance, by the same token, public education, for instance, is indeed a communist idea.
Tom: So if one was to call someone who was arguing for public education a communist, they would be factually correct.
Phil: Yeah, that's right.
Tom: The one thing I should add, the one other thing I should add, again relevant to current coverage of politics, because it's very popular to claim your opponent is being dishonest or not arguing in good faith.
Tom: And I believe I accused Ayn Rand of doing that in her nonfiction.
Tom: And it's a statement I stand by and it's actually a complimentary statement because there are two options in a lot of her nonfiction writing.
Tom: And it's either she's arguing in bad faith or she is just completely unbelievably stupid.
Tom: Because, for instance, in her final book, her philosophy, what is it for, something like that, and if you read that, the only conclusion, at least the conclusion I reached, was that philosophy was completely pointless and should be thrown in the dustbin of history.
Tom: But in that book, for instance, she reviews a book by, I think, John Rawls, or a contemporary philosopher, who had differing ideas to hers, and in the classic attack on postmodernism, she just said, it's all fairy language that doesn't really make any sense, and all the people who have read it, again, I think a humorous statement we made against Atlas Shrugged, all the supposed fans probably haven't read the book, and they're just saying they like it because it makes them sound cool that they've read this hard to read, difficult book.
Tom: Incidentally, she did have to add in a following review of another book that she hadn't read the book she was reviewing, but was nevertheless commenting on it.
Tom: Now, that is either an instance of bad faith arguing where you are proceeding a rhetorical trick there, which is criticizing something you haven't read by accusing your opponent of precisely this failing, or she's a moron.
Tom: So you can pick between the two, but it's a fair statement, I think, to accuse her of being in bad faith or her being an idiot.
Tom: Either way.
Phil: At least she admitted to reviewing something she hadn't read or seen, which is certainly something we'd never do here on The Game Under Podcast.
Phil: So what else has been up?
Phil: What have you been up to since the last time we talked?
Tom: Well, speaking of things that we have seen, have you seen the film Idiocracy?
Tom: I think it's called.
Phil: Probably, but I don't remember it right off the top of my head.
Tom: Well, it's a very forgettable film, but people like to bring it up in relation to modern politics because it essentially describes a United States run by a professional wrestler after the population grew progressively stupider and stupider and elected progressively stupider and stupider presidents.
Phil: No, I missed that one.
Phil: I see here it's a Matt Judge film.
Tom: Yes, and I think it's not a particularly interesting satire at all.
Tom: It has a few amusing moments, but as far as its satirical statements, it's just a generic general, the population is stupid, therefore, if they get even stupider progressively as they are, because humanity is always getting progressively stupider, democracy will lead to increasingly stupider rulers.
Phil: So that film was from
Phil: Jesse Ventura, who was a professional wrestler, became governor of Minnesota from to
Phil: So, you know, I mean, it has happened.
Tom: It has happened, but...
Phil: Jesse Ventura was also an esteemed actor.
Phil: I think he's in many fine films.
Tom: But you will note that the film followed real world events, much more prophetic and a much more layered and interesting commentary on the American political climate.
Tom: At the time, and some may say today, is the film Demolition Man from
Tom: And I say prophetic because in it, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected the president of the United States.
Tom: So they aimed a little too high there.
Tom: But calling prophetic might also be over the top because we shouldn't forget that Ronald Reagan was an actor before he was a president.
Phil: Well, I think that was the joke.
Phil: You know that Jesse Ventura is actually in Demolition Man as well, just so you know.
Phil: But yeah, there was that joke in Demolition Man.
Phil: I was actually watched it this week.
Phil: It's on Netflix.
Tom: What a coincidence.
Phil: In rewatching it because in watching it, I didn't realize that I must have watched it back in a day.
Phil: But right up until the Wesley Snipes character confronts the dude from Yes Minister.
Tom: And the madness of King George, I believe as well.
Phil: No, no, it's not.
Phil: It's still Stallone threatens that dude.
Phil: Most of the film takes place right around the corner from where I used to work, with the address of which was Four Park Plaza in Irvine.
Phil: And so all that early part of the film is shot in Orange County just around the corner from where I used to work.
Tom: So you recognized a lot of it?
Phil: Yeah, I recognized a lot of it because a lot of these corporate parks, they're of course abandoned on the weekend.
Phil: So they're actually quite nice places to go.
Phil: And you can do some good photography and stuff because it's usually some interesting architecture.
Phil: And of course, they didn't change a thing in the movie at all.
Tom: Including with the population, I imagine.
Phil: Yeah, exactly.
Phil: Now, why were you drawn to a Demolition Man?
Tom: Well, I had also seen it back in the day.
Tom: I believe it must have been soon after its release because my main memory of it was that when Wesley Snipes escaped, that scene was quite impressive and even a little bit frightening.
Tom: So I assume I must have seen it close to
Tom: But I bring it up just because it's, I think, a film made for the internet today, and certainly a film that should have been a cult film.
Tom: But because of, I think, it starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes and being in and of itself a relatively competent action film, its satirical elements were potentially lost.
Phil: Yeah, I was quite struck by it.
Phil: Of course, it's got Sandra or Sandy Bullock in it as well.
Phil: She's got an interesting face.
Tom: She does indeed.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: I don't know if you can look up when Speed came out, the film with Keanu in it and Sandra Bullock as well.
Phil: But there are so many references in this film.
Phil: Like the film starts out with Wesley Snipes, a quote maniac, who's hijacked a bus with people on it.
Phil: So I don't know if that was a reference to Speed, if Speed came out before or after
Phil: And then...
Tom:
Phil: Okay, so it was a precursor.
Phil: Of course, Sandy Bullock is...
Tom: This film is more prophetic than we imagined.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: Well, the film starts off in and then jumps forward to
Phil: And basically, Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes being the bad guy, Sylvester Stallone being the good guy, are both cryogenically frozen for crimes they've committed.
Phil: And while they've been frozen, they've been subject to conditioning.
Tom: Conditioning, yes.
Tom: Brainwashing, if you prefer.
Phil: To make them better people, Wesley Snipes apparently escapes from cryogenesis years later.
Phil: And so they figure out that since they now live in a peaceful utopia and the cops aren't real cops anymore because there is no crime, they defrost Sylvester Stallone's character, John Spartan.
Phil: So I think that's a Halo reference to basically go after the Wesley Snipes character, who apparently is great at cracking computers and a weapons master and all this sort of thing.
Phil: I forget what I was saying, but oh yeah, Sandy Bullock is actually, she's a fan of the s.
Phil: So there's sort of crossovers with Back to the Future there as well, but she's a big fan of the s, so she's got like a Lethal Weapon movie poster up in her office and other s memorabilia.
Tom: She's a th century history buff.
Phil: Yeah, and there's a, back to the references though, there's a, obviously it's not a spoiler to say that there's a romantic encounter between Sylvester Stallone and Sandy Bullock.
Phil: It ends in a way with a scene that's straight out of, I think it's a film called It Happened One Night, and the very next scene is The Next Morning, and in my head I'm looking at that and going, wow, that's just like It Happened, whatever I just said, and the first line that Sylvester Stallone says to her is, I'm sorry about last night, or I'm sorry about, you know, and that's the sort of Hollywood writing I like where if you are familiar with enough stuff, you can see the writers filling up the script with in-jokes, and they may not be just in-jokes, they might also be nods to people who, you know, follow cinema and things like that.
Phil: Yeah, It Happened One Night is actually still a very good film.
Tom: Around that scene, there's also one of the most gratuitous news scenes in cinema history where he gets a wrong number video phone call by a naked woman for seemingly no reason whatsoever.
Tom: Was that a reference to some film I haven't seen?
Phil: I think that's just to bump up its rating because at that time...
Tom: Because they couldn't do a bodily fluid exchange sex scene.
Phil: No.
Tom: So they had to get some greater nudity than the very short shot of some breasts in that scene in there.
Phil: It's got an M rating which it probably could have gotten for violence, but back in the day, around this period, even with The Goonies, a film that we've talked about, there's often a gratuitous shit thrown in there or a gratuitous naked breast so that it would automatically click up into a different rating because no one wanted to have a G film.
Phil: And then there was like PG-or something like that.
Phil: So by saying the S word or by having bare female breasts, it was automatically kicking your film up into a different demographic, which demonstrably showed that it would have better sales.
Phil: So, but I wish, yeah, Demolition Man, I mean, it's got tablets, it's got Skype, it's got a bunch of stuff that actually would happen in the future.
Phil: And I thought it was actually, it held up well for a movie that's years old.
Phil: I mean, it came out in so do the math yourself.
Tom: It's also one of the better-looking s films.
Tom: It takes the drab concrete aesthetic and combines it with some comical Middle Eastern slash Amish-inspired costumes, as well as a variety of old European clothing types, and adds a bit of colour to the architecture with a lot of the futuristic screens and so forth as well.
Phil: It looks good.
Phil: The film, to me, though, fell apart with about minutes left to go, and this was something that happened in a lot of films.
Phil: I don't know if it still happens in a lot of films, but I was actually following in it and engaged and interested in what was happening.
Phil: But then there was this thing that happened in action films at the time where they hit, they're trying to reach a crescendo, so they start about to minutes before the end of the movie and then just keep ramping up and ramping up and ramping up the action.
Phil: And it really, to me, lost its tone at that point.
Phil: Now, it comes back with a nice ending, but there was about to minutes there where it just seemed to be, oh, and then they let the stuntmen take over the film and the effects guys take over the film, you know.
Tom: I think it's also a narrative issue because you have Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes as the two antagonists, both of whom are excellent in the film and this is one of Wesley Snipes' best performances.
Tom: And Wesley Snipes is talking to, interacting with the Madness of King George dude.
Tom: When they introduce the civil disobedience living in the underground, it's a stand-up comedian.
Phil: Dennis Leary.
Tom: And he just tanks compared to the rest of the cast.
Tom: And his character and story is also of no interest as well because you've got a wonderful parody of quote, political correctness, end quote, and Christian sensibilities.
Tom: And then you introduce this lame libertarian character to save the day.
Phil: Yeah, and also, I don't know if you also noticed in there, there was another comedian chewing up the scenery.
Phil: Rob Schneider.
Phil: Had a very distracting role.
Phil: And it wasn't just because he's Deuce Bigelow, but just because he's such a bad actor, because he's a comedian.
Phil: And Dennis Leary and Rob Schneider, I think were both...
Tom: At least they gave Deuce Bigelow some amusing lines, whereas poor Dennis Leary only had his stand-up comedy to work with.
Phil: I still watch Deuce Bigelow at least every other year.
Phil: I stand by that film.
Tom: It's wonderful.
Tom: And while Deuce Bigelow, Rob Schneider, may not be able to act, when he appears on screen, you notice him.
Phil: Oh, yeah.
Phil: Yes.
Phil: I don't know why there wasn't a game made of Deuce Bigelow, but in any case, I tell you, Demolition Man did get a video game release.
Phil: It came out for the Super Nintendo, the Sega Mega Drive slash Genesis and the Sega CD, and the DO.
Phil: And I don't have the game, I'm sad to say, but it was innovative in that it was not only a platformer, but it also had D fighter elements and also a top-down shooting type thing, which for licensed films at the time was pretty typical.
Phil: You could do one of three things very poorly and basically sell it on the basis of its license.
Phil: Yeah, but overall, I think, yeah, it's a good...
Phil: It's worth watching.
Phil: I was just shocked at how well it stood up.
Phil: Like, you know, in terms of just being a piece of entertainment.
Tom: And Wesley Snipes, that has to be one of his best performances.
Phil: I've got to say, I thought he could have been a lot badder.
Phil: I'm thinking RoboCop came out in...
Phil: No, I mean like a bad guy.
Tom: Oh, I see.
Phil: He needed to be doing something like in RoboCop.
Tom: I think the tone of the whole film is very comical.
Tom: I think if he was pushing it, it wouldn't have worked so well.
Tom: And you get the...
Tom: It's one of the few moments, few times where you get a comical Sylvester Stallone with a great foil to work against him and with him rather.
Phil: Oh, look, I can't say enough good things about Sylvester Stallone.
Phil: I think he's a wonderful contributor to entertainment.
Phil: I thought Wesley Snipes actually did do quite well.
Phil: And we won't spoil it here, but there's a piece of information that's revealed in the film that is, I think, quite...
Phil: You know, it makes you think about the character in a completely different way.
Phil: Even though ultimately he gets his superhero demise, I thought at some point there, there was a redemption story.
Phil: But, you know, I'm talking about the remediation that he received while he was under cryogenesis.
Phil: Yeah, or cryogenic, genetic, or whatever it is.
Phil: I don't care.
Phil: You know that's all a fraud, right?
Phil: A what?
Phil: A fraud.
Tom: Oh, yes, a fraud, yes.
Tom: If people didn't realize, what happens if you freeze, you die.
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: What happens if you freeze a corpse?
Tom: Well, if the corpse was alive, it would die, but it isn't alive, so it just remains dead.
Phil: Yeah, and microwaving isn't going to help.
Tom: Well, it depends on what you're trying to achieve there, because microwaving frozen corpses, I believe, is pretty popular.
Phil: We'll talk about that later, but this, This American Life has a show about the people who are doing cryogenics.
Phil: You say the word for me.
Tom: Freezing people who want to be immortal.
Phil: Yes, they were doing it in California, and the podcast is absolutely disgusting, but the whole thing is a fraud, and it's a shame.
Phil: I thought your interest in Demolition Man may have come from the Playstation game Future Cop LAPD.
Tom: That is clearly very inspired by it.
Phil: Yeah, but it came out in so five years later, and I was disappointed.
Phil: I've got a copy of it in my hand.
Phil: You'd be very jealous to know.
Phil: I was disappointed to find out that it doesn't put a year on it, you know, like or or something like that.
Phil: It just sticks with in the st century.
Phil: In the st century, gangs have taken over LA hit the streets with your standard issue hovercraft, walker and all purpose justice dispenser.
Phil: It's like playing good cop, bad cop, only without the good cop.
Phil: And it's credited.
Phil: You've talked about it in our shows before.
Phil: You love this game.
Tom: Yeah, it is a highly underrated title in the Mecha canon.
Phil: Yeah, so basically, it's credited as being one of the first MOBAs.
Phil: So Herzog We, for the Genesis, is like the original MOBA.
Phil: And of course, these aren't online, so they're more, you know, they can't be massively online battle arena.
Phil: Yeah, but were you surprised by my statement just there?
Phil: It is actually held up as one of the early MOBAs.
Tom: That actually rings a bell that it started to begin to receive coverage for positive reasons.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: Because I can recall it potentially making lists for two reasons, one being a good cop game and one being terrible.
Phil: Well, remember, they've gotten rid of the good cop, so it's a bad cop game.
Phil: I've played it expecting it to be something quite different.
Phil: And on a podcast with you, I said it was a terrible game.
Phil: But playing it with another person would definitely change that.
Phil: And then also recognising that it's a MOBA and not just like a shooter.
Tom: It's not meant to be like Macquarie.
Phil: Yeah, exactly.
Phil: So would you do a review of that for the site?
Phil: Are you able to do a review of that for the site?
Tom: Well, I am physically capable and mentally capable of writing, but I doubt I would choose to write a review of it.
Tom: I would also probably need to replay it to do that.
Phil: Yeah, well, I've got a copy if you want to borrow it.
Phil: I was interested to see that it was published by Electronic Arts.
Phil: Like, it's not like...
Phil: And that's the thing, EA used to do this.
Phil: EA used to do just these games like this, when games used to be a lot less expensive to make, I'm presuming.
Phil: But anyway, was there anything else you wanted to say about Demolition Man?
Tom: I think we pretty much covered it.
Tom: Basically, it's worth watching for Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone among much of the cast and as an action film, but the satire in it is hugely underrated, and how it has not become a cult film is mind-boggling.
Phil: I thought it had, but...
Tom: Maybe it has and I'm wrong.
Phil: Yeah, but if you want to see some good acting, watch Sylvester Stallone's face and mannerisms when Sandra Bullock is telling him that the exchange of bodily fluids has now been made illegal.
Phil: I don't think he...
Phil: He is a good actor, but in that scene, I don't think he's acting.
Phil: I think he's just thinking back through his life of all the other times where he can tell that there will not be, even though we went out for a dinner date, there will not be exchange of bodily fluids tonight.
Phil: It is hilarious if you can just watch that one scene.
Tom: As is his knitting.
Phil: Hey, I did want to say, I finally got in the mail my copy of Onrush, the day one edition.
Phil: Excellent.
Phil: This is a game from Codemasters, which is a revolutionary new arcade racing game.
Phil: It is predominantly supposed to be played online, but it does have an offline single player mode.
Phil: And I was interested in that because of my review of foxkids.com Micromaniacs, which you'll see on gameunder.net.
Phil: But yeah, I'm really excited to play that, but the only other thing I've been playing really is Judgment.
Phil: I'm just wrapping that up and getting ready to write a review for it.
Tom: So it's worthy of a written review.
Phil: It's worthy of a proper written review, not just like three screenshots intercepted by one paragraph comments, which, you know, frankly, a lot of these older games is pretty much all they deserve at this point.
Phil: But yeah, I'm going to do a proper Phil Fogg review.
Phil: And yeah, I think it's certainly going to be one that I recommend that you play.
Tom: Excellent.
Tom: And I think that can bring us into Call of Duty if I did not have to take us back to a previous topic that we had just moved on from.
Tom: But one thing I just remembered that I have to add about Demolition Man is we've spoken on the podcast and we brought up in this about this weird concrete s aesthetic and typified and parodied to perfection by Monkeys.
Tom: But you've offered no potential origin of this aesthetic other than just cost cutting measures perhaps.
Tom: But I realized watching Demolition Man, because it is early on in this weird concrete aesthetic, and it is incredibly similar to an Australian children's show from The Girl From Tomorrow.
Tom: Now, being an Australian film, of course, the future shown in the film is essentially the goal.
Tom: That's where the girl from tomorrow is from, who has to live in the dystopian economic crashed s Australia.
Tom: And the future, the costumes are very similar.
Tom: It's more high technology than in Demolition Man.
Tom: But the combination of real world s and slightly hippie future world is very, very much like Demolition Man.
Tom: And in later seasons, where they go to a world where you haven't reached the preferred future, it is a mad maxi thing.
Tom: So it has basically all the aesthetic elements of Demolition Man in it.
Phil: So I've just read the description.
Phil: It's a sci-fi kids show.
Phil: One season, episodes, awesome.
Phil: And it's about a girl from the year who gets kidnapped and brought back to
Phil: This sounds like gold.
Tom: It is.
Phil: The only thing wrong with it is it doesn't star Nicole Kidman.
Phil: How could this not star Nicole Kidman?
Phil: Who, of course, was by the time came around.
Phil: But I see John Howard's star is in the film.
Tom: Yes, as an absolutely brilliant villain, Silver Thorn.
Phil: Our first Prime Minister of like years, apparently had time to...
Phil: I think he was Prime Minister during the...
Tom: And this was, I think...
Tom: I think it's...
Tom: No, he wasn't Prime Minister then.
Tom: He became Prime Minister after the show, I think the character of Silver Thorn was his preparation for his role as Prime Minister.
Phil: Okay, well, I'm glad you mentioned that in the show, because now I'm going to have to look that up, the whole Girl From Tomorrow thing.
Phil: I, of course, knew the political...
Phil: John Howard got his start in this, just like Ronald Reagan got his start in movies as well.
Phil: So that's really, really great.
Phil: So, alright.
Phil: Hey, yeah, so let's get into Call of Duty Modern Warfare as I call it.
Phil: You've, I understand, now finished the game.
Tom: I have completed the campaign, and I have played three online matches.
Tom: And I think in the previous episode, we talked about how similar the basic mechanics were to Killzone.
Tom: We compared it to a few other games, but Killzone is probably the closest with the movement speed and the weight of the weapons.
Tom: It's still more lightweight than Killzone but it is very similar.
Tom: And the interesting thing about the online is the level design, and bear in mind, the only Call of Duty I've played online was one of the Black Ops when it was free on Steam.
Tom: The level design as well is a lot more complex than it was in the Black Ops game I played.
Tom: It's a lot more open, and there are less obvious routes through the level.
Tom: In Black Ops, it's basically a train simulator as a first-person shooter, where you're running through these different tracks, and whoever sees the other player first shoots them.
Tom: I mean, kills them, and that's that.
Tom: So it's all about just running in a straight line as fast as possible, so that if anyone shoots you from behind, you're about to turn a corner, so that you can then spin around and face them face to face, so you've got a -chance of killing them.
Tom: And that's probably how a complete noob plays Call of Duty, but it was relatively effective in Black Ops.
Tom: This strategy is not effective in Modern Warfare, which doesn't have such obvious train tracks for you to follow through the levels.
Tom: So it is a completely different beast, but unfortunately, unlike Killzone the amount that is required to kill other players is extremely tiny.
Tom: So if you are a complete Call of Duty noob like I am, and the gameplay due to the very low health is still partially based on finding tracks, as far as I could tell from watching the kill cams of the people who killed me, it's just that the tracks are less obvious.
Tom: Your, or at least I was, are merely getting killed a lot.
Tom: I think I managed to kill one person in two matches.
Tom: So I can't really give proper commentary on that, but there is a co-op mode which I contributed to competently.
Tom: And that is quite interesting because it's again in large open areas combined with moving through buildings.
Tom: It's like some of the areas in Stalker that combine the two, the base of the last faction you interact with, if I remember correctly, was quite similar to that in the level I played.
Phil: So, the co-op mode is called Special Ops, is that right?
Phil: Yep.
Tom: But not the line, just Spec Ops.
Phil: Just Spec Ops.
Tom: Yes.
Phil: And so you were able to perform competently in that.
Phil: I was going to say, you're playing this online.
Phil: Obviously on the PC, you don't have to have PSN or Xbox Live.
Phil: You own the game so you can play it online for free, right?
Tom: Correct.
Tom: You just need to make a Blizzard account.
Phil: A battle net or specifically like a Blizzard?
Tom: A battle net.
Phil: Okay.
Tom: So it is free to play on the PC, other than the price of the game.
Phil: Yeah, other than the rest of the game.
Tom: But so that's quite an interesting co-op thing, because it's like the better levels in the campaign.
Tom: The enemy spawning and so forth is obviously more like just an onrush of endless streams of enemies, though they are in different scenarios where you're meant to be doing things like hacking something or defending an area and that sort of thing.
Tom: So the design of those levels in terms of the enemies that you're fighting isn't as interesting as in the best campaign levels.
Tom: But in terms of the level design, the level I played, and there are only four, so presumably the rest are of a similar sort of quality, is up there with the better missions in the game.
Tom: So that is actually quite an interesting and viable multiplayer mode.
Tom: Unlike the Spec Ops missions in Killzone which basically just used smaller, more limited versions of the maps, and therefore basically the multiplayer maps, and therefore basically no one played them.
Phil: Do they have any...
Phil: I mean, the level design in the Spec Ops mode or the Co-op mode, is it very much different from the other multiplayer modes?
Tom: Yes, well the multiplayer modes elsewhere in the matches I played are your standard deathmatch or team deathmatch and mission mode.
Tom: So the team deathmatch match I played, you basically spawn on one side of the map, the other team spawned on the other side of the map and there were a variety of different buildings.
Tom: It was quite compact, but it was basically there were two warehouse sorts of buildings and some corresponding offices and that sort of thing, as well as some truck trailers and stuff like that.
Tom: And you basically just went around that looking for people to shoot while avoiding being shot or in my case simply being shot.
Tom: In the multiplayer mission I played, for instance, it began in an area of flats and offices in a slightly ruralish area.
Tom: And you had to first get to the building, then go through the building to find a specific enemy to kill to take their hard drive of their terrorist information, I presume, or potentially just their pornography stash.
Tom: It wasn't really clear.
Tom: Then you had to motor over on ATVs to a nearby stadium, and at this stadium you were walking around the concourse of the stadium and the freeway area hacking servers that were there for a reason that wasn't explained, and then destroying the servers after you had hacked them.
Tom: So, obviously a very different design style to fit the sort of game that was being played.
Tom: In the team, the match that was basically capture the flag or control an area, not dissimilar to a map in Killzone where there's a bridge in the middle.
Tom: Again, players spawned on either side of the map in the middle, and you had one area to control that was halfway between you and the bridge in the middle of the map, and the bridge in the middle of the map also had an area to control, so basically the match was decided by whoever was able to control the bridge for long enough as it was relatively close.
Phil: So, is there, in terms of other modes, I just have two questions, is there a Battle Royale mode and is there a Zombies mode?
Tom: I'm not sure about either of those questions.
Tom: I think they may have removed the Zombie mode this time, and have there been Battle Royale modes in previous CODs, or were you wondering if they would include that just because that is all the rage?
Phil: Well, there was a Battle Royale mode in last year's Black Ops game that was released, and obviously Black Ops is usually where there's a Zombies mode.
Phil: They don't usually carry it over if I'm right, because obviously I don't play a lot of these games online.
Phil: But yeah, there was a Battle Royale mode in last year's game, I think, called Blackout, which was critically well received.
Phil: But if it's not in this one, that makes sense, because this is the other team that's...
Phil: Infinity Ward that's doing the game as opposed to...
Tom: Treyarch or Sledgehammer?
Phil: Yeah, Treyarch, yeah.
Tom: But speaking of Sledgehammer, and we're now going to get into the campaign, just to compare what the level design was like, I think I'm now about halfway through Call of Duty World War II, and that is very similar to the original Call of Duty IV in terms of its design.
Tom: It's built on the same base, so I think it's probably safe to say that the...
Tom: the magnificent leap forward in terms of level design and ballistics as well and gunplay is indeed new and hasn't been building up over the series because World War II essentially plays identically to Call of Duty II and Call of Duty IV before it in terms of its gunplay.
Tom: And the level design is very much based on the same style of...
Tom: There are basically three scenarios.
Tom: One is you are walking down corridors and it doesn't necessarily need to be little corridors, it can be trenches and that sort of thing, and enemies will pop out and shoot at you.
Tom: The other one is you're in a stationary environment and it's safe for you to sit in cover and pick off the enemies as they pop up.
Tom: The most difficult scenario they present you with is, again, a static arrangement of enemies, but in an area where you have to actually move from cover to cover and get deeper and deeper into the area that they're guarding to kill them all.
Tom: Those are the basic three designs in it so far.
Tom: They've also added stuff like stealth sections and other interesting things in terms of pacing and QTEs, but as far as the meat of the game in terms of its shooting is concerned, it's the standard Call of Duty method that has been in the series since Call of Duty the first.
Phil: Do you think that perhaps, though, that is more to do with the setting and yeah, more to do with the setting, that they might take World War II back to that kind of level design?
Tom: Well, you've played other Call of Duties, but it is suggestive to me that they are doing the same thing rather than moving backwards in terms of the level design, because the World War II Call of Duty games that I played anyway are Call of Duty II and possibly the original, did not feature stuff like stealth and the other pacing levels in this one.
Tom: It's very much like a combination of Uncharted and the original Call of Duties, but it's interesting that Uncharted gets all the credit for a lot of the pacing stuff it did when Call of Duty IV was before it, wasn't it?
Tom: And Call of Duty IV basically did the same sort of model and better than any Uncharted except for
Phil: The only reason I bring it up is because Sledgehammer did Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, which I thought that is where the level design really went up to a different level.
Phil: Now with World War II, I thought the game was competent and certainly enjoyable, but I wouldn't put it on the same level as their prior work, Advanced Warfare, in terms of level design.
Tom: Would you say it is a different style of level design in Advanced Warfare, or are they doing it a lot better?
Tom: Because, for instance, Call of Duty IV does this style of level design significantly better than World War II is doing it.
Phil: Yes, I would agree.
Phil: I thought that with World War II, they were perhaps just being too respectful for the setting, and maybe even going back to the Call of Duty II type era to see how they could recreate something.
Phil: Because Advanced Warfare was pretty hardly criticized because they had taken it too far into the future.
Phil: And so the obvious reaction is in Warfare, you fight your last battle, so they went back and overreacted.
Phil: So it sounds like to me with Modern Warfare, which is a soft reboot, they've got it just right, and probably taken all of the things that they've learned, which is encouraging.
Tom: So that is interesting.
Tom: So that remains yet to be definitively decided upon until one of us plays the other game in question.
Phil: Yeah, and I'd say it's probably gonna be easier for you to get a copy of Advanced Warfare for the PC, as opposed to me to get a copy of this game and play it in a hurry, again, because of the whole bandwidth thing.
Phil: Look, trust me, if there was no bandwidth in the world, I'd pay bucks tonight just to play Call of Duty Modern Warfare, you know?
Phil: But it's all about the silly delivery systems that we have, so.
Tom: Indeed, and before we move on from World War II, one thing throughout the history of game under impressions that you have complained about often is me playing games on the hardest difficulty setting and suggesting that in games, particularly like Call of Duty, that it's not designed to be played on such a hard setting and that the design doesn't really fit it.
Tom: And this is an interesting question because I began World War II on the hardest difficulty setting and I played the Call of Duty which is a much better game than World War II on the hardest difficulty setting as well.
Tom: And to some degree, you have a point because when you are basically doing those three things over and over again, it doesn't really add much to the experience that it is more difficult.
Tom: But lowering the difficulty while saving you from frustration doesn't make it more fun either.
Tom: It just makes it shorter.
Phil: Yeah, I think my argument may change now too because with different skill levels and different ways people play, normal might not be what it used to be.
Phil: I'd be more open to playing a game on hard out of the get out, out of the box than I was certainly like four years ago.
Tom: Due to games getting easier over the past four years.
Phil: Yeah, exactly.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: And different audiences changing and all that sort of thing.
Phil: But Call of Duty World War II, I just looked up what I gave it as a score, and this is just internally.
Phil: I played it back to back.
Phil: So I played Call of Duty World War II, and then I played Call of Duty Infinite Warfare.
Phil: I gave World War II a nine, and I gave Infinite Warfare an eight.
Tom: So it's a Bioshock all over again.
Phil: Yeah, probably.
Phil: The lowest scored game that year was Life is Strange Before the Storm, which got a six.
Tom: It's probably better than both of them.
Phil: Yeah, I haven't played a single Call of Duty game this year, so again, that's a...
Phil: For the record Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, I played in and it got an eight as well.
Phil: So, this is really a bio-shock all over again.
Phil: It'd be interesting to see what the highest rated Call of Duty game is that I've played.
Phil: Interesting, of course, to everyone, not just myself.
Tom: I would hope it's Call of Duty or or
Phil: Oh, here's an interesting...
Tom: Maybe it's World War
Phil: Call of Duty Modern Warfare I gave a four to.
Phil: I played it in and that was the only Call of Duty I played that year.
Phil: But talk amongst yourselves, I'm...
Tom: So that was probably the best one.
Phil: Call of Duty Modern Warfare I gave a .
Phil: It's possible with this system I could go back to see what I gave the original Call of Duty Modern Warfare.
Phil: Spec Ops the line, of course, I gave a
Tom: Well, if you're giving Call of Duty World War a that's then a fair score.
Phil: I gave Army of an
Phil: That was years ago.
Phil: Call of Duty here you go.
Phil: You ready?
Tom: Yep.
Phil:
Tom: That's also the same score that I gave Call of Duty a
Tom: But that means vastly different things.
Phil: Did you play Stranglehold?
Phil: John Woo Presents?
Tom: I played the demo of it.
Phil: Yeah, I gave that an .
Phil: And I gave Scarface a
Phil: And No More Heroes a
Phil: That was in
Phil: And this all ends, because I only keep records back to
Tom: Back to the year Call of Duty was released, coincidentally.
Phil: Yeah, but back then I didn't actually rate games.
Phil: But I did play Cent Blood in the Sand that year.
Phil: And gave it an .
Phil: So there's a trip down memory lane for everyone.
Phil: So apparently, Call of Duty World War is the best Call of Duty game I've ever played.
Phil: Even though today, I say it's worse than Infinite Warfare.
Phil: And certainly worse than Advanced Warfare.
Tom: Well, as someone who gave World War a out of and just on the hard thing, the one other thing I was going to add, and this might be why I enjoy adventure games and think the puzzle-solving of them is vastly underrated, the advantage of playing games on harder and difficulty settings is there were two sections that were, for whatever reason, I found to be very difficult.
Tom: One was in a level where you're trying to get to a train before it leaves the train station, just before you get to the postmaster's office, and where you are in the previous mission or a bit earlier, where you were defending an area while you're waiting for some air strikes or something to that effect, and you have a flamethrower.
Tom: Both those sections were quite difficult for me, and while beating them on a very high difficulty level was not interesting in terms of what you were doing in terms of gameplay, because the base gameplay is very limited, the fact that it was so difficult leaves both of those events sticking in my mind and will be something that I will take away from the game to remember, whereas much of its intended content won't be memorable.
Tom: So, successfully completing something that is difficult is satisfying in and of itself, whether what you're doing is interesting itself.
Tom: And you don't get that if you play on lower difficulties.
Phil: Was it the boss battle in Call of Killzone where you're going after the big bad guy in a cathedral type setting?
Tom: Killzone
Phil: That was Killzone ?
Phil: Like, obviously for me, I remember that because it was frustrating.
Phil: Because it took forever.
Phil: I'm not wrong, am I?
Tom: No, you are % correct.
Phil: Yeah, but for example, I can't remember how Killzone ended other than the bad cutscene, but I don't remember the last boss battle in Killzone
Tom: Exactly.
Tom: So, I may have a point here.
Phil: You definitely have a point.
Tom: Excellent.
Tom: So, I think we can finally now return to the thing we've all been waiting for, which is the campaign of Call of Duty, because this time the campaign was more interesting than the multiplayer, or more well received at least, because the reaction to the slightly more complicated, less trained, tracky multiplayer level design and more strategic bonuses and items in the levels to use has been one of mass outrage that I've seen, whereas the campaign has been relatively well received for a Call of Duty campaign, by which I mean it's generally been liked and people have talked about it.
Tom: But, I mentioned most of the gameplay related stuff in the previous episode, but there are a couple more things that are worth mentioning.
Tom: There are a couple of moments where basically the level design in it, other than the parts where you are involved in combat in tight spaces, is like a weird compilation of some of the best level design in recent first-person shooters.
Tom: So for your average moments, or third-person shooters as well, for your average moments in the better levels, they're basically like Killzone style cover shooting, where it is cover shooting, but you have to be more proactive, because if you're just sitting behind something trying to shoot people, you are not going to be able to see enough enemies, but unlike in Call of Duty, where they require you to be more proactive, you have to strategize a bit more, because of the complexity of where the enemies are, and that sort of thing.
Tom: So you can't just make a note of where everyone is, and then just figure out a way to quickly kill them, or shoot the person in the cover next to you, then move to that and so on and so forth.
Tom: You have to actually think about what you're doing, to be able to move through the area.
Tom: So, Killzone level of complexity in basic level design isn't exceptional, but it is a massive step up from standard Call of Duty level design.
Tom: Now, where things get more interesting is, we talked about the closer areas in the previous game, is where they're copying much more explicitly other shooters.
Tom: One of the best levels in the game is, you are, it's both stealth and shooting.
Tom: You are attempting to infiltrate a Russian estate, and it's like a combination of Rainbow Six and SWAT and Metro
Tom: It's a, being an estate, a, there's central mansion surrounding that, are barns and other auxiliary houses for the staff and entertainment areas and a swimming pool and all that sort of thing.
Tom: So you've got patrols moving through the outer areas as well as in the inner areas, and things like lighting effects, whether you can be seen.
Tom: So you are having to think about both the environment, the movement of enemies, and if you do get noticed, you can kill the people who noticed you and run off and hide, and they eventually give up looking for you and go back to their patrols, and it all culminates in...
Phil: Wait, wait, wait.
Phil: If you kill someone, the other party then comes and search for you, and then eventually they just give up and go back to their patrols?
Tom: If you run away and hide.
Tom: It's a stealth game.
Phil: You just killed someone.
Tom: Yeah, but you kill them, then you go and hide and they can't find you, so they have to return to the patrol.
Tom: No, not that same person, no.
Tom: Another person.
Phil: That stretches credibility.
Phil: I mean, no one's going to go, oh, well, John, I've got killed.
Phil: Oh, let's go find the guy.
Phil: Oh, can't find him.
Phil: Oh, well, back to the job.
Tom: Yes, but that's the standard way of doing stealth, isn't it?
Phil: Well, I would just think that in the st century, we would have come up with something a bit better than that.
Tom: We haven't, and you're not going to find Call of Duty coming up with much new.
Phil: The point is gone.
Phil: Well, before you go on to your point, is there an amusement park scene in this game?
Tom: No.
Phil: In Russia?
Phil: Because the Call of Duty, that was the first time in a Call of Duty game, there was an amusement park scene in a Call of Duty, and our listeners will know.
Tom: Are you referring to the Chernobyl scene?
Phil: Yeah, yeah, I am.
Tom: So in the Ukraine, then?
Phil: Is that in the original Call of Duty?
Tom: That's in Call of Duty
Phil: okay.
Phil: Because I thought that scene was the break.
Phil: You were saying, oh, well, you can't just say, oh, that guy's there and that guy's there and that guy's there, and I'll go out and figure out how to do it.
Phil: In that particular scene or level, that was the first time in Call of Duty where I actually had that same experience, where I was like, oh, these guys are actually hunting me and can see, you know...
Tom: Yep, that's one of the few moments where the AI actually aggressively moves towards you.
Phil: Right, and that was in Call of Duty
Phil: So is that repeated in this game?
Tom: Yeah, that's now standard in all the levels.
Tom: So rather than it being where they want that to be there to achieve a certain effect, that's the basic gameplay.
Phil: It's great.
Tom: It is.
Tom: And just on this self level again, so previously you're going around the auxiliary buildings around the mansion, and so it's relatively open.
Tom: So you can move with relative ease through the areas.
Tom: Then you get to the mansion, and it's lit up by numerous spotlights, as well as all the lights in the building itself being on.
Tom: So immediately you are completely screwed compared to what you were doing beforehand.
Tom: And I just attempted basic infiltration of the thing multiple occasions and got to various areas in the mansion, but couldn't get higher than the second floor, and you'd need to get to the third, if I remember correctly.
Tom: So at this point I decided to try something else, and in a Call of Duty game, there's usually not an option to try something else.
Tom: But I had the idea that, well, the issue is that with all this illumination, I can easily be seen.
Tom: So I went back to creeping around outside and discovered not only were there many, many entry points to the building that were not immediately apparent from the game initial area where you would obviously enter the mansion from, though you could do the previous sections in different orders.
Tom: So I'm not sure if you would actually end up in that spot every time depending on how you played.
Tom: But not only were there very many entry points into the mansion, you could actually find all the spotlights that were shining on the mansion from the outside and stealthily shoot them out.
Tom: Which was an important strategy in Metro.
Tom: And it was again something that you can discover yourself in Metro without any prodding.
Tom: And so from after doing that, I was able to successfully infiltrate the mansion.
Tom: That's not the sort of thing you would expect to find in a Call of Duty game.
Tom: And other than not expecting to find in a Call of Duty game, it's also executed really well.
Tom: As well as keeping up the quality of Call of Duty pacing, but doing it in what feels much more dynamic, where you were going through the easier auxiliary buildings and then you end up with this brightly lit up building that you have to figure out how to get into.
Phil: So all these years where I've been talking about playing these Call of Duty games and you've just sat there, ho-hum, whatever Vanilla Fogg is talking about.
Phil: Now you sound like you're a convert.
Tom: Well, I'm a convert to this one at least.
Tom: Whether they will keep it up is another question entirely.
Phil: Well, and then also iterating on what is widely seen to be one of the most revolutionary first person shooters, right or wrong, obviously gives you a leg up.
Phil: You're kind of standing on the shoulders of giants.
Phil: But I think the kinds of things that you're talking about in terms of level design and AI is something that is perhaps even just beyond that.
Phil: But yeah, so very, very favorable impressions.
Tom: Definitely.
Tom: To Call of Duty 's credit, as we said, in terms of its pacing, it was indeed rightly called revolutionary.
Tom: It's just that the rest of the design was essentially identical to the original Call of Duty, which in and of itself was copying earlier Medal of Honor games, albeit copying it with the same developers having moved to Infinity Ward, if that's what it was called at the time.
Phil: And certainly, you know, with the loss of the co-founders of the studio going over to respawn, changes in console generations, and also the success of Call of Duty they rested on their laurels quite obviously for some amount of time.
Phil: So it's not to say that from Call of Duty Call of Duty went from strength to strength to strength, and this is the combination of that.
Phil: But it is exciting that at the end of a console cycle, that a massive company like Activision has people working within their company that are passionate and talented to get this sort of game across the line.
Phil: And you were a big Killzone fan, but Killzone was made by, at first, not a massive studio, but what ended up being a massive studio funded by a large company like Sony.
Phil: So you're not averse to the charms of a product of a medium manufacturer.
Tom: They were also one of the best Call of Duty developers as well.
Phil: Yeah, absolutely.
Phil: But the thing is this, what does Treyarch do in response to this?
Phil: Do they build on it?
Phil: Because Black Ops last year released without a campaign mode, and I think they're kind of in a slump at this point.
Tom: Well, this is what will be interesting, because the formula of Call of Duty is, at least mediocally, easily replicable, because you just need to understand how the structure is, and you've then got very basic gameplay moments to design, and you just put them in the correct order.
Tom: That might be a bit of a simplification, but there is certainly some truth to that.
Tom: The interesting thing about this is, and it is still primarily, the flow of the game is definitely still based on pacing, but rather than going for pacing the game slowly through the narrative order of events, and basic versions in terms of the expression of this in gameplay of what you're meant to be doing, like a really rudimentary stealth section.
Tom: This is basically doing a similar sort of pacing structure, but where they have a stealth section, for instance, it has to be of a...
Tom: They're still copying, but they're copying something that is really good at this, and they're copying it well.
Tom: They're not just doing a basic $shop version of it, as you did in previous Call of Duty.
Tom: So it will be interesting whether the other studios are able to replicate it.
Phil: Yeah, well, I certainly hope so.
Phil: I mean, with new consoles launching next year, you'd expect a setback.
Tom: Yep.
Phil: With the rise of Fortnite and games of that nature, you'd expect some sort of disruption.
Phil: But for the most part, people who marginally like Call of Duty or don't like Call of Duty at all is giving this game high praise.
Tom: And hopefully it is as influential as Call of Duty was because if the next generation of Uncharted and the like have to actually complement their pacing with well-designed gameplay, both in terms of mechanics and level design and AI, the gaming landscape will be radically different to how it has been the past two generations.
Phil: Yeah, I think this game is going to be influential, definitely.
Phil: It's got a lot of attention.
Phil: And isn't it funny to think of games like Uncharted now?
Phil: They kind of start to look, well, very much look like Jak and Daxter, games that just don't get it.
Phil: They're just, yeah, you know, they're just old games at this point, in terms of the, you know, dynamic nature or lack thereof.
Tom: Just the final thing on the gameplay, I think it's worth mentioning, because we have been shitting on Naughty Dog here, and deservedly so, but one thing that is amusing is one of the levels where you are navigating a hospital, in terms of its level design with how you're going through the different wars is straight out of the hospital scene in The Last of Us, and every bit as good, but without the narrative pacing that made that just an exceptional experience, but in terms of the design of the movement through the level and the AI's movement through the level, it is as good as that, but more aggressive because that isn't one of the stealth sections in the game.
Tom: And it does include random Call of Duty style gimmick stuff, such as in one of the levels you are mid-fight scene controlling drones that are suicide bomb drones, essentially.
Tom: And another level is a sniper mission where the travel of your bullets are affected by the wind and gravity.
Tom: And very funny, the level doesn't end at that point.
Tom: It ends with a close battle.
Tom: And the moment you switch to weapons other than a sniper rifle, suddenly bullets go exactly where you shoot them, including at the distance you were shooting at with the sniper rifle.
Phil: That's an old thing, though, at this point, isn't it?
Phil: The whole wind affecting your...
Phil: I mean, that was back in Call of Duty World at War.
Phil: That's like ten years ago at this point.
Tom: But only in basic levels.
Tom: Some first-person shooters do that as their basic ballistics, and gravity affects your guns in Stalker, for instance.
Phil: Yeah, but you wouldn't want that in a basic level with normal guns, because you're just going to assume that the game's broken, that, hey, I aimed there, why didn't a bullet go there?
Tom: I think it could potentially work with the high-level design in Call of Duty now, but you don't miss it, but it's just funny the contrast where in the same level, you switch weapons and suddenly the physics of the world have changed utterly.
Phil: Well, I think as long as you tip it off to the player, then you can do that, certainly, but you ordinarily, a player's not going to understand that unless you explain it to them.
Phil: As you do with the sniper rifle levels, but keeping in mind that normal gamers and players have no idea as to how ballistics actually work, this is obviously still just a video game.
Tom: That's enough of that, though.
Tom: It's time to get to the moment I think we've all been waiting for.
Tom: I'm sure you've noticed that the campaign has been very controversial.
Phil: Because of the, I guess, spoilers, right?
Tom: Oh, yes, there will also be spoilers, but it is a Call of Duty story, and there may actually not be spoilers.
Tom: We'll find out.
Phil: I think it's all faux controversy, really.
Phil: I mean, the only thing that I've heard is controversial is the waterboarding minigame.
Tom: Well, no, that's not what I was talking about.
Tom: I was talking about the rock textures and geometry.
Phil: Oh, God.
Tom: Yes.
Phil: They got that wrong?
Tom: No, they got it right.
Tom: And this is the most recent game I have played, and comparing it to Call of Duty World War II, which I think came out only a year or two ago, is mind-blowing, not even taking into account the ray-traced shadows.
Tom: With the exception of a couple of areas, particularly the last mission comes to mind where you are approaching the chemical factory, that would be a spoiler, but it is of course about finding those ever elusive chemical weapons.
Phil: Weapons of mass destruction.
Tom: So you can imagine that it will end in such an area, and they were in Russia all along as we discover.
Phil: Damn it, I knew it, I knew it.
Phil: It's always the last place you look.
Tom: The problem is the Republicans were in power at the time, so they thought it was in Iraq or China.
Tom: If the Democrats were in power, it would have been in Russia, so the problem would have been solved.
Phil: Since when has the party on the left of the politics had this intent hatred for Russia and the people on the right backing Russia?
Phil: I don't know.
Tom: I think that since Russia went from being a communist kleptocracy to a capitalist kleptocracy, I believe.
Phil: Yeah, fair enough.
Phil: They're kind of the up-and-coming capitalist kleptocracy, really.
Phil: I think probably the Republicans look over there and go, damn it, we can't beat them.
Phil: They just openly steal.
Phil: They're cheating, you know, like the Russians do in the Olympics.
Phil: Steroids.
Tom: Cheating, I believe, with the current president of the United States.
Tom: And you may know more about this subject than me, but as far as I'm aware, and this I knew before the election, his wealth is based primarily on laundering money for the Russians.
Phil: That's absurd.
Phil: His wealth is based predominantly on what NBC played him for years to host The Apprentice.
Tom: No, that's the reason he's not bankrupt, but that's not where his money is.
Phil: Okay, alright.
Phil: Bob Woodward, get back on the case.
Phil: What are you doing in a video game podcast?
Phil: You've got all these revelations.
Phil: Be careful you aren't subpoenaed.
Phil: Anyway, politics aside, not that we entered politics, I don't think we made any comments there.
Tom: We're still talking about rock textures.
Phil: We're still teetering on the...
Phil: Now, what's your issue?
Phil: You're famously against the rock textures.
Phil: You said that Grand Theft Auto IV was an absolute failure.
Tom: No, no, no.
Tom: I'm pretty sure I'm famous for commenting on how good the rock textures were in Grand Theft Auto V, but how bad the geometry was.
Tom: So the surface of the rock looked amazing, but the shape of them was atrocious.
Phil: Well, that's obviously a big oversight.
Phil: A lot of these companies use speed tree for their organic material.
Phil: Maybe you and I should start speed rock.
Tom: Well, we'll get to trees in a moment, but the incredibly impressive thing about this is we had not only really good rock textures, but the geometry of rocks and the geometry of bricks and corners and all that sort of thing was up to the standards of the textures.
Tom: And this was the biggest sore thumb sticking out that had started to look as good as character models and important items in levels and that sort of thing.
Tom: So with the advent of high quality rock geometry and combined with high quality rock textures, we've now ended up with a level of fidelity that achieves a really nice stylized version of reality that doesn't have stuff sticking out except for one area.
Tom: And there have been two, one game that did it just brilliantly.
Tom: I'll go with three.
Tom: There have been three games that handled this well.
Tom: One of them is unmatched by the other two.
Tom: In terms of its stylistic management of this aesthetic problem faced by video game rendering.
Tom: One of them handled it technically, arguably better than anyone, even though it is now over years old.
Tom: And the other one was kind of between the two.
Tom: Can you guess what the issue I'm talking about is and what those three games are?
Phil: Wow, I've been really good with my prediction slightly, but no, I'm afraid I can't.
Tom: What if I mention the games?
Tom: One is Stalker, one is Crisis, and one is The Witcher
Phil: Well, Stalker would indicate lighting, Crisis would indicate physics, Witcher ..
Tom: Well, it's neither of those.
Tom: It is...
Tom: though physics is sometimes a part of it, though usually a looped physics that is not based on any real-time actions in the world.
Tom: That would be the plant life in the level.
Tom: In the case of Stalker, whenever you go back to that, the first thing that stands out is the quantity of leaves and the detail on trunks and the amount of movement in blades of grass and the leaves and so on and so forth.
Tom: The thing that in Stalker was handled completely differently due to the brilliant wind effects and slightly surreal nature of the game, they managed to get the lower fidelity than the rest of the game plant life to fit in really well.
Tom: To be fair to them as well, it was slightly earlier, so textures weren't as good as they were in Crisis and in The Witcher so there's less of a difference in fidelity between the plants, textures and the rest of the world.
Phil: Just a pro tip, don't do a web search for Stalker Leaves.
Phil: Stalker Leaves page note under Teen's Pillow.
Phil: Co Stalker Leaves Court.
Phil: Stalker Leaves another creepy gift.
Phil: Gimpy Stalker Leaves woman too scared to leave house.
Phil: Stalker Leaves Cake.
Tom: While we're reading out things from the internet, I came across this today.
Tom: In the fetid, druggie summer of Charles Manson, a hippie messiah who claimed to be the spawn of Christ, Satan and Hitler combined, dispatched his besotted apostles on killing sprees throughout Los Angeles.
Tom: For starters, they obscenely butchered Sharon Tate, then pregnant with Roman Polanski's child and a smattering of her friends.
Tom: The next night, the gang slaughtered a suburban grocer and his wife, leaving a devilish-looking pitchfork stuck in the man's chest.
Phil: I get some problems there.
Phil: First of all, fetid.
Phil: Like, I know what that word means, obviously, but I think that's a misuse of the word fetid.
Phil: And then it said the other...
Phil: the smattering of his friends.
Tom: The smattering of her friends.
Phil: Yeah, so just read that full sentence again.
Tom: For starters, they obscenely butchered Sharon Tate, then pregnant with Roman Polanski's child, and a smattering of her friends.
Phil: So she was pregnant with Roman Polanski's child and a smattering of his friends.
Tom: Well, I think the subject of the last part of that sentence is still the obscene butchering that they did for starters.
Tom: But to avoid confusion there, they should have put then pregnant with Roman Polanski's child in M dashes.
Phil: Yeah, yeah, that's just bad.
Phil: Who's writing is that, by the way?
Tom: No idea.
Tom: Someone reviewing a book on this.
Tom: You can look into this as well as Donald Trump's money laundering affairs.
Phil: Yeah.
Tom: We have Charles Manson's links to CIA training.
Phil: Okay.
Phil: Well, Tarantino just brought out a Manson film.
Phil: I haven't probably seen it.
Tom: Does the CIA feature in it?
Phil: I would have to.
Tom: I hope so.
Tom: I have to.
Tom: But the point is we've now reached a moment in games where for what effect they're attempting to achieve, whether it's a stylistic version of reality or in the case of Outer Worlds, a pure cartoon look, the only thing that is not of the same level of fidelity as other aspects of the graphics is the plant life, whereas since basically the PSera, there have always been disparate elements in terms of fidelity in the games, in the graphics, and there have been attempts to sort of squash them together, but usually some parts look significantly better than others.
Tom: The first step and the two that usually were given the least thought were things like rocks and plants, and now we're down solely to plants.
Tom: So I'm hoping that in the next generation of games, plants finally get the attention they deserve, because even in something like The Outer Worlds, they don't look as good as the rest of the game.
Tom: In terms of their sharpness, they do, but the difficulty with plants is the animation, because you know that they should be moving, yet it's the only game that has ever got that right is Stalker, and it's because it is a surreal effect.
Tom: The Witcher when you're moving, it looks great.
Tom: You stop and all of a sudden you're just thinking, why is there a constant wind that blows every two seconds in the same direction?
Phil: I think Red Dead Redemption Rockstar, actually did a pretty good job with their tree and organic matter.
Phil: When often watching a tree blowing, I think of like coral, you know, it actually looks like coral under the sea, which is a good thing to take away as well, but you know, a lot of people are saying with the capabilities of the next generation, companies like Speed Tree are in big trouble, but I don't think that these kind of microservices will ever go out of fashion because obviously when you're making a game, the last thing you want to worry about is a tree, but then as you said, it ends up with all games having this generic tree content, which is why people tune in to listen to The Game Under Podcast.
Tom: Well, you need to cut corners in budgets as well in some places so the poor plants and trees suffer, but I think in games where people want to put in the effort, like most games aren't going to be putting in the amount of geometry effort that has been put into the rocks in a Call of Duty game, for instance, but for games where they do, if you can now achieve that level of evenness in fidelity, the next step for people obsessed with detail is going to be plants, so I think if you now have enough power to, by default, be covering rocks as well, plants may, by developers who want to spend the effort and money on it, get the attention they deserve at last.
Phil: Finally.
Tom: But we can now move on to what will be a disappointing subject after that, which is politics.
Tom: As we can tell from my knowledge of Donald Trump's business affairs, you will have to correct me on this because I'm not more knowledgeable about Syria than I am about Donald Trump's finances.
Tom: But my understanding of the Syrian Civil War is essentially that the Syrian political power has been attempting to deal with rebels through a variety of mean systems of oppression as well as dealing with potential annexation of its parts by Russia, who is also attempting to protect itself from ISIS who as well as the internal dissidents in Syria, ISIS also has been successfully and unsuccessfully also attempting to annex parts of Syria.
Tom: Simultaneously to all of this, America has been supporting one of the dissident groups, the Kurds, I think it is there, as well as some of the Islamic extremists there as well, probably partially as an action against Russia.
Tom: You can correct me on any of these points, but is that at all accurate to anything that's going on there?
Phil: I don't want to get into the politics of it, but I'd say that none of that is accurate.
Tom: Just in general detail, what would you say it is then?
Phil: Well, basically, the leader of Syria is an ophthalmologist who is only leading the country because his brother died in a car crash.
Phil: He's a very mellow and meek person who's apparently been made out to be this horrible person.
Phil: And basically, Russia and the United States are both trying to claim hold on Syria because of the pipelines and its logistical position on the globe.
Tom: So, that sounds precisely what I said.
Tom: You're just referring to the motivations of the actions.
Phil: Yeah, but what I'm saying is the uprising and all the rest of it, that's all been fabricated by one side or the other.
Phil: The so-called rebels and ISIS and all that stuff, it's all been fabricated, for the most part, so that we could have this, what do they call it, a pseudo war?
Tom: I think it's called a proxy war.
Phil: Proxy war, exactly.
Phil: So it's a proxy war about pipelines.
Tom: I would say that still doesn't necessarily disagree with anything I've said.
Phil: Okay, good, we're in agreement.
Tom: Yes, but so taking that into account of what you've said, here I believe is Call of Duty's understanding of the situation.
Tom: Essentially, I believe Bashir, or as he's called in the game, Barkov or Barakov, or something like that, is-
Tom: Yep, is actually a Russian, not just a Russian proxy, but a Russian working for the Russian military because there is no political power in Syria other than Russia.
Tom: Al Qatala, who I assume is meant to be ISIS, but they sound like Al Qaeda, and regardless of the two, their depiction is rather strange because in either case, it isn't really accurate, but Al Qatala is essentially not, they're not Muslim fundamentalists or attempting to unite the Arab world or attempting to run a lot of drugs, but they are in fact a death cult obsessed with anarchy who wants to destroy all political powers.
Tom: And then there are the Americans who are helping all of the Syrians attempting to fight off the Russian power that is controlling their country and the death cult that is attempting to take over.
Tom: And on top of that, the Russians are responsible for America's war crimes in both Iraq wars as well as waterboarding, which is particularly funny because I don't know if you recall this, but as the waterboarding stuff started to, pardon the pun, leak out, one of the important points was that the CIA, which has previously, even in their rogue days where they had nothing to do with the government at all, of course, were never involved in torture.
Tom: So for the Americans to implement a torture program, they had to actually base all their tactics on the torture methods used in the Gulag in the Soviet Union that they discovered during their spying exploits during the Cold War.
Tom: So I don't know if that's a deep comical reference to that, or if it's a just restating the same comical concept.
Phil: I'd be appreciative of either one of those, actually.
Tom: But to me, this is just a completely fascinating depiction of the events, because one, doesn't really make any sense at all.
Tom: But two, as a propaganda statement, one can essentially take no message from it in terms of the context of Syria and what one should be supporting in Syria.
Tom: The only message from the game is essentially the tremendous evil of Russia, and it is done in an incredibly explicit and graphic manner.
Tom: I think back to Call of Duty which came about at the winding down of Iraq, the Iraq war in and pivoting towards Russia, and the depiction of Russia in that Russia was obviously the bad guys, but they were nevertheless a serious military opponent that one could grow to have fond feelings of battle against, which is an interesting idea that is usually not shared, at least during the war, by most soldiers.
Tom: But you then get to today where you compare the depictions of the Nazis in the first half of World War II and the Nazis and the Russians in Modern Warfare
Tom: And the Russians are significantly worse.
Tom: In World War II, we're getting statements by the characters on the wonderful scientific and cultural achievements of the Germans and how not all Germans are bad.
Tom: You're interacting with not just Germans who are helping the French resistance, but literal Nazis who are helping the French resistance.
Tom: In this, the closest you get to that is a German criminal who wants to restore the name of his Russia.
Tom: And it's really quite bizarre.
Tom: It's more reminiscent of something like which pre-torture was all about the virtues of torturing people for information and the horrors and evil of Middle Easterners.
Tom: So it's on that sort of level.
Tom: And unlike Aidan Rand, I have seen some episodes of
Tom: And the series ran for a long time, but my memories of the early show was that it was really really completely fucked up and maybe my memories are wrong, but it's worth remembering that came out before the Twin Tower attack.
Tom: So one was not automatically predisposed in theory to be on the side of people going around, torturing people just because they may know something.
Phil: Look, I'd have to say that even though did start after the Twin Tower attacks, it was less than a month after.
Phil: And so obviously, the show was well into development prior to the attack, but obviously it was very well influenced in the years to come.
Phil: It was a very successful and popular series.
Phil: And I think there was a lot of schadenfreude on the part of foreign audiences watching it.
Phil: And for the part of the American audience that were watching it provided some therapy really, in that they got to see the bad guys get tortured and all the rest of it.
Phil: I think I've never watched the show.
Phil: I think it's reprehensible in concept.
Phil: And that's why I never watched the show, which is silly because you need to be able to take in these kinds of things to have a take.
Tom: You don't want to be Ayn Rand sheltering yourself from everything you're frightened of.
Phil: But yeah, point taken.
Tom: There's more reason not to watch it, which is that it's a show starring Kiefer Sutherland as the main lead.
Phil: That's the main reason not to watch it.
Phil: And yeah, this game obviously also, spoiler, features a Highway of Death scene, which is from the first war waged by the US in Iraq.
Phil: Again, that was a coomp.
Phil: I don't want to get into it.
Phil: And they blame that on the Russians also, don't they?
Tom: Yes, they do.
Tom: And not only that, but there is also reference to the massacre in the Second Iraq War.
Tom: And I forgot the name of it.
Tom: It's something like Qadhafa or something along those lines.
Tom: Where I think Marines in retaliation for a supposed IED attack.
Tom: No doubt there was an IED attack.
Tom: But in their retaliation, they just killed whatever civilians were at hand.
Tom: And that also is referenced in the game by its name as one of the bad things Russia has done in the fictionalized version of Syria.
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
Phil: And again, we can't stand from our podcast studios, you know, in criticism of people doing this, that or the other.
Phil: War in general sucks and bad things will happen on both sides.
Phil: So, but killing civilians obviously is beyond the pale, but it's become a norm.
Tom: Well, it's always been a norm of war.
Tom: You can't really fight a war without killing civilians.
Tom: And it becomes increasingly difficult to not kill civilians as the power of artillery goes up.
Tom: An interesting statistic that is included in The Better Angels of Our Nature, which unlike other statistics that aren't suitable to the argument, is a book by Steven Pinker, which aren't included in the book or by reasonable statistical means, but questionable historical means, excluded such as the Second World War doesn't count because it's such a statistical outlier for the th century.
Tom: But one basic...
Phil: Hey, that one time I raped that girl doesn't count.
Tom: That's an outlier.
Tom: I only did it once.
Phil: That's an outlier.
Phil: Doesn't count.
Tom: But what is included, if I remember correctly, is the fact that as war technology has improved, the number of civilians killed per war has also increased.
Tom: Now, that's also arguably a questionable statistic because as war technology has improved and the skill level required for being a soldier and so forth has improved, drafting people has gone down as well.
Tom: So there are less soldiers involved in war today than there were in the past.
Tom: So overall, the number of people being killed are still less.
Tom: But you would assume, though, given that it's an entirely utilitarian book, morality is important that it will be morally worse nevertheless to be fighting wars where more civilians are killed than in the past.
Tom: But again, it's a utilitarian book, so morality is irrelevant.
Phil: Yeah, and I could go on and on and on, but we should probably just close out the final thoughts on Call of Duty Modern Warfare and its campaign mode.
Tom: Yes, well, it is fascinating that you don't find this in either propaganda or export.
Tom: You can either interpret the story of Call of Duty as being propaganda or exploitation, and given the history of the series, it is probably a combination of the two varying degrees.
Tom: But, again, video games do this more interestingly than other mediums.
Tom: I mentioned American Sniper, which was just a pity party.
Tom: Look at how hard it is for this poor person who went to Iraq to kill people and came back very sad about the affair, which was completely inaccurate to the actual person.
Tom: But notwithstanding that, it's just a wine fest of completely boring, boring nonsense that is in no way entertaining or interesting from a dramatic perspective.
Tom: This, you get literally name drop American war crimes being applied to the Russians.
Tom: That's amazing.
Tom: Two other examples, which are much more on the exploitation level of Modern Warfare, so a better comparison also aesthetically because Call of Duty is really copying the style of those films in terms of its cut scenes.
Tom: Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker.
Tom: The Hurt Locker, a lot of that again is pity and then the cliché of war is a drug, but it's so austere and boring and it's like Bourne Identity as a television show because they suck all the, except for the sniper scene, they suck all the kinetic energy and action out of it because it's got to be gritty and realistic.
Tom: So you just get a shit television knockoff of that featuring a supposedly edgy take on the nature of war and how difficult it was to see anything in Iraq and so on and so forth.
Tom: Simultaneously, and you do, I'm sure in The Hurt Locker, there was a scene featuring the monumental information gathering techniques of America preceding battles where all the civilians in theory had to go and have their retinas scanned.
Tom: Have you seen The Hurt Locker?
Phil: No, I haven't.
Tom: Okay, because I'm trying to think whether that was featured in the film, which would be a, because it is in one similar American film that I've seen, but I'm not sure if it's in The Hurt Locker or I'm thinking of a different film, but that would be a similarly funny thing to what is occurring in a game that is essentially thematically about how bad Russia is and they're bad because they commit American war crimes, where a film showing how difficult it was for Americans in Iraq to know what was going on and be able to figure out who's an enemy and who's a civilian, featuring one of the greatest information gathering on a occupied population in the history of war.
Tom: So that would be a Call of Duty level comic moment, but I can't confirm that that's in there because I'm not sure if I'm thinking of the same film.
Tom: And you also compare that to Zero Dark Thirty, which was essentially a pure propaganda celebration of an assassination.
Tom: And that has one scene in it that has as much energy as the sniper scene in The Hurt Locker, but it's much simpler, and yes, it's got a lot of fast cutting in it.
Tom: But if you really break that scene down, the main reason it feels so fast and energetic and explosive is because it's two minutes of action after two hours of a bunch of boring little talking to each other and engaging in shitty office rivalry.
Tom: If it was not preceded by such slow, boring shit, then it would be complete crap.
Tom: You compare that to the action that's on offer in Call of Duty, Piccadilly, a scene where you've got dudes with suicide vests running at you in Piccadilly in London, and that's not even one of the best scenes in terms of gameplay.
Tom: It's no comparison.
Tom: So, again, games in terms of their narrative content, and that is narrative content, due to people not being willing to either be criticized for making a narrative argument that games can be better than something else just because games writing scripts are silly, another missed opportunity for games critics that are now supposedly committed for games for art.
Tom: All we can talk about is the controversy, and it's certainly worth talking about the controversy because it's so hilarious, but it's another moment where here's a game narratively and dramatically superior to its direct competition in cinema, and it's not even a close battle.
Tom: The one thing that can possibly come to it is the sniper scene in the Hurt Locker, and maybe the hilarity of what may not even be in the film.
Phil: And while critics may not express that it's superior to those films, they are responding in a positive way, possibly because they are picking up that it is better than those films, even if they're not putting two and two together and expressing it.
Tom: Absolutely, and a lot of it would just be a lack of literary skill to understand that narrative does not mean plot and script.
Tom: And that sort of thing is discouraged throughout games criticism because the people who do want to stand up for stories and stuff like that want to focus on things that you don't get in other mediums, so generally just commentary on games themselves, like in Braid or What's the Undertale.
Tom: And if anyone does try to claim that a game story is better than a story in another medium that is directly competing with it, there's five million videos on why a script in a game is bad.
Tom: Well, if you really want to play that game, a script in the film that you think is good writing is going to be complete shit compared to a play or a novel.
Tom: That's not how writing works.
Tom: Writing is not defined by the technical achievement of one aspect of it.
Tom: That's just ridiculous.
Phil: That's a very important point to make, because the one thing that I have a criticism of is that we'll often come on here and say, oh, the writing was bad.
Phil: These people are bad writers.
Phil: And it's not really just about the writing or the dialogue or the story.
Phil: It's about the whole thing, the whole narrative thing.
Phil: We talked about Demolition Man.
Phil: We're not going to go back there and go, oh, the writing was so good.
Phil: But you put all the pieces together, and you can still produce something that's outstanding and worthwhile.
Tom: And the writing from the matter of...
Tom: Start that again.
Tom: The writing in terms of its subject matter is good.
Tom: The script may be...
Tom: If you're comparing the script of Demolition Man to something that does that really well, that is reference dialogue, you compare that to pulp fiction, and it's terrible.
Tom: But if you compare the thematic content of Demolition Man to most of Tarantino's films, not all of them, but most of them, the two aren't even comparable.
Phil: No, not at all.
Tom: But, unfortunately, games criticism moves continuously in the direction of this pseudo-scientific analysis of things, which results in...
Tom: That is a valid thing and can be useful, particularly as part of a general analysis, and it can be useful and interesting in and of itself, but it leaves the games criticism completely incapable of articulating why anything outside of a specific mechanic works and is good.
Tom: And when you want to approach something that is doing something interesting and new or differently to something else, for instance, the way the story in Call of Duty works compared to its film competition, then you can't say anything at all, and that applies to games as well.
Tom: And it also allows games like Bastion and games following Bastion to get away with being completely mediocre, because if you look at the mechanics in Supergiant's games, the mechanics themselves are fine, but they do absolutely nothing interesting with the mechanics.
Tom: So you can't really criticize them following the same technique either.
Phil: I've got to say, to his credit, Giant Bombs' Jeff Gershman was talking about this game a couple of weeks ago, and people were saying, a story this, story that, and American Sniper came up, and he said, yeah, but you know, American Sniper has two hours to tell its story, you know, and when you're making a game like this, you know, it has to be played out over to hour, you know, it's different storytelling.
Phil: And he, and this is where you disagree with him, and I disagree with him also, was basically making excuses, saying, oh, well, video games, you know, over to hour period can't have the same impact of a film that's only two hours.
Tom: That's a big problem with books as well.
Tom: They're too long.
Tom: They can't affect you at all.
Phil: Well, that's, yeah, that's a brilliant point, right?
Phil: Because you can read a book might take hours to read, but no one's going to say that, you know, as a result, the storytelling medium of books, you know, suffers.
Phil: So, yeah, it's an interesting point.
Tom: And if they read a book, they're also not going to say that the pros in it can't be a part of the aesthetic and story, whereas in games, the gameplay isn't part of the story or aesthetic at all.
Phil: And I'd say Russian writing, albeit in English, really does well with the aesthetic contribution.
Phil: Not one that I particularly enjoy, but that's where it's most pronounced.
Phil: So in reading writings of Russian writers, you know, they'll often have all these names and this and that, and they'll go back into the backstory endlessly.
Phil: And you're like, why are they doing this?
Phil: But it does contribute to the overall storytelling in terms of the style contributing to the story.
Phil: And I think even though it's not a Russian author, Moby Dick is one of those things where it's just like, you know, you're reading it, you go, okay, enough already.
Phil: I get it.
Phil: I see where you're going here.
Phil: But they keep going and going and going.
Phil: And that is actually a part, and the video game part of the book, where they're creating this world that you're actually participating in.
Phil: And that obviously is a criticism of, a common criticism of Red Dead Redemption with its boring, unrelenting pace.
Phil: Well, that's part of the aesthetic, and it's part of the storytelling.
Tom: It makes perfect sense, except that what you were describing was a Victorian novel, rather than a Russian novel.
Phil: Well, that's, yeah, and I said that, but I think in many ways, there is a big part of that in Victorian literature, of which you are a scholar.
Phil: But in any case, back to Modern Warfare.
Tom: I think that brought us to the end of Modern Warfare, I believe.
Phil: Well, wouldn't it be wonderful?
Phil: Wouldn't it be nice if that was the end of Modern Warfare?
Phil: If we could just end it like that.
Tom: Well, it won't be then.
Tom: I have to add one thing.
Tom: There's the infamous scene where you are conducting a raid on the house, safe house of some terrorists, and there is a baby which you can accidentally shoot.
Tom: And if you accidentally shoot the baby several times, the game leaves you with a message scolding you for doing this.
Tom: I knew none of this at the time, but I successfully shot the mother who you can easily accidentally shoot.
Tom: I heard the baby was crying.
Tom: So, of course, the first thing I did was walk up to the cot that the baby was in and try and shoot the baby.
Tom: And I couldn't shoot the fucking baby.
Tom: I aimed at it.
Tom: I pressed fire and nothing happened.
Tom: So that's one area where the exploitation fails utterly, is you're allowed to shoot the baby when the mother is running past carrying it, but you're not allowed to shoot the baby when it's lying in its cot crying.
Phil: So, on a scale of to then as a result, what would you give this game as a score?
Tom: Well, it's meant to be controversial, it's meant to be shocking.
Tom: You're conducting a raid on a terrorist stronghold after they just performed a terrorist attack in Piccadilly, and you can't even kill the fucking baby deliberately.
Tom: How do I know that there's not a bomb on the baby, or that it's not hiding a bomb in its nappy?
Tom: That's just complete bullshit.
Tom: So, I would have to give it a...
Tom: What was your lowest Call of Duty score?
Tom: I think it was a out of wasn't it?
Phil: I think I gave the original Call of Duty Modern Warfare a out of
Tom: No, you gave Modern Warfare a
Tom: I think it was...
Tom: Modern Warfare you gave a
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: So, I've got to go significantly lower than that.
Tom: I'm going to have to give it a out of
Tom: It deserves the because it is possible to shoot the baby accidentally.
Tom: It could have been a if you were able to shoot the baby while it's in its cot, but you weren't, so it's only deserving of
Phil: Fair enough.
Tom: That's its official score.
Tom: I'm sad about it.
Phil: And to be clear, that's the voice of Tom Towers.
Tom: And even with that in mind, my Call of Duty scores will make more sense than yours do.
Phil: That's true.
Phil: That's true.
Phil: Okay everyone, well thank you for listening to episode of The Game Under Podcast, the official podcast of gameunder.net.
Phil: Please visit our site, check out what we're doing over there.
Phil: Even though it is only an adjunct to this podcast, it still has some reviews from time to time.
Phil: And I'm hoping soon to soon see some photos of your new PC.
Tom: Which reminds me, is now slightly louder than it was beforehand, because it features a working hard drive in it.
Phil: Even the solid state drive?
Tom: No, the solid state drive is silent.
Tom: It now features a working hard drive.
Phil: Ah, so you're getting all the uh uh uh uh.
Tom: No, just the basic vibrations of when it is spinning.
Tom: Correct.
Tom: So that's, it's inaudible if I am about to centimetres away from the case.
Tom: But if I'm closer than that, it is audible.
Tom: So I will have to attempt suspending it at some point, as given that the vibrations are significantly amplified by it rattling around in the case as it is attached to the case.
Tom: Suspending it, which should be possible because it has a second -inch drive bay up the top, will hopefully render it a silent computer once again.
Tom: Are you familiar with suspending hard drives?
Tom: Well, basically you suspend the hard drive from a larger disk drive bay using elastic.
Phil: Really?
Tom: Yes.
Phil: Elastic what, like rubber bands?
Tom: Strong elastic.
Tom: No, elastic, not rubber bands.
Tom: Rubber bands will perish eventually.
Phil: Well, duh, but so will elastic.
Tom: Stronger elastic will not perish very quickly at all and should have no issue holding up a light inch disk drive.
Phil: I should point out that when I used to play streetball, that's basketball, my moniker was E-Man, which was Elastic Man, because my abilities were such that, well, you can connect one and one and two and two.
Tom: Sounds like a strange version of basketball, the way you said that.
Phil: I think if anyone knows about Elastic, it's E-Man.
Phil: Now, so MSY came through for you with the delivery of the...
Tom: Yes, they did.
Tom: So that was successfully resolved.
Tom: And one other recent part that broke is my keyboard of many, many years old.
Tom: And I don't know if you're familiar with Microsoft keyboards, but...
Phil: Yeah, that's kind of a joke, obviously.
Phil: I know all about Microsoft keyboards.
Tom: Well, in my experience, not necessarily in terms of the build quality of the keyboard itself, but in terms of the design in a couple of their models, I generally find them to be significantly superior to Logitech and brands that often have superior build quality.
Tom: And the best keyboard I had ever used was one of the additions of the Microsoft Comfort Curve series, which is a semi-ergonomic keyboard, where ergonomic keyboards generally split the keys in two, which if you want to type fast is a terrible, terrible design, because to be able to type as fast as possible, you need to be able to reach both ends of the keyboard with both hands for certain situations.
Tom: And this is coming from someone who at some point was typing near world record speed, so I know what I'm talking about.
Tom: But it is true that a flat keyboard isn't the best shape for your hands, because your hands being...
Tom: your elbows generally being further apart than the edges of the keyboard mean that your hands are diagonally pointing inwards.
Tom: So having a slight curve, but not having the keys separated and only having a slight curve so that the keyboard isn't forcing you to reach up and down and isn't too wide is by far the fastest typing design keyboard that I've used.
Tom: And is as comfortable as either comfortable normal keyboards or comfortable normal ergonomic keyboards.
Tom: And the other advantage with it was it did not have a massive lip at the end of it.
Tom: So after...
Tom: Yep.
Phil: So after...
Phil: Have you got a or or...
Tom: I've now got a
Phil: Oh, okay.
Tom: Yep, which has now got a large lip at the end of it, unfortunately.
Tom: But it is not as bad as I was expecting because the lip is so long that the size of the keyboard has been significantly reduced.
Tom: The overall dimensions are the same, but the area that the keys take up is significantly smaller.
Tom: So it probably would still be too long for your hands, but for my hands, my hands, the palm of them, can essentially completely rest on the entirety of the lip, and it's not significantly at a steeper incline than the keys are.
Tom: So it's not too dissimilar in effect to having a shorter lip because you aren't reaching over the lip from the desk or over the first set of keys to get the ones at the end.
Tom: So it overall ends up being equally effective as the earlier versions that did not have the massive lip, which was one of the wonderful design features that set them apart.
Tom: And it still sets it apart from most ergonomic keyboards because most ergonomic keyboards usually have a pretty big key spread on them as well.
Phil: Which is ridiculous and stupid.
Tom: Yep.
Phil: You know, I bought like IBM keyboards.
Phil: They were PSs, which before PlayStation
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
Phil: So and then I killed my last PSIBM keyboard by washing it in a kitchen sink because I thought, oh, you know, I could do that, which I obviously can't.
Tom: I have seen people on the internet suggesting that.
Tom: But but I always assumed that they would have just meant taking the keys off and placing the keys themselves in the sink, not the keyboard.
Phil: My the current keyboard.
Phil: Well, the best keyboards you can get right now are from the company that bought out IBM, which is Lenovo.
Phil: Like they have some amazing keyboards, which I'm a big fan of.
Phil: But the keyboard I currently have, as you'd know, is the one that I took off a Korean, which is a Dell keyboard.
Phil: This thing weighs a ton.
Phil: It's beautiful.
Phil: It's a great, great keyboard.
Phil: You know the story about how I got this keyboard, right?
Tom: It sounds familiar.
Phil: Well, I went into the computer shop looking for a good keyboard, because as you will recall, from having seen my typing, I once had a really bad keyboard.
Phil: You know how bad my typing was.
Tom: Yes, I do.
Tom: But are you saying something has changed recently?
Phil: Well, no.
Phil: This is years ago.
Phil: Now, I went into this store.
Phil: I went through the whole store, and I'm talking to the guy, and I said, I want a keyboard.
Phil: He's got a keyboard.
Phil: Keyboard, he shows me all the keyboards he has.
Phil: Now, this is like a place where they have old computers.
Phil: And I noticed that the keyboard that he's using at his point of sale is this really good Dell keyboard.
Phil: And he said, well, I'm sorry, we couldn't find anything for you.
Phil: And I said, well, what about that?
Phil: He said, well, that's my keyboard.
Phil: I said, yeah, he's Korean.
Phil: That's my keyboard.
Phil: I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Phil: I know it's your keyboard, but how much do you want for it?
Phil: He's all $
Phil: I'm like, yeah, okay, I'll take it.
Phil: So I took this keyboard out of the hands of a Korean shopkeep.
Phil: And it's an amazing keyboard.
Phil: Now I still have problems with it, as you know.
Phil: But at work, I use a Lenovo keyboard.
Phil: They're absolutely great.
Phil: But seeing your -I'd probably want to go with a Microsoft Curve, like because I'm still put off by the amount of frontage that the -has.
Tom: and are peak comfort curves.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: And for the listeners at home, please look these up because Microsoft's first ergonomic keyboard was a split keyboard, which I had, which was absolute garbage.
Tom: I've also tried that and it was horrific.
Phil: Yeah.
Phil: All right.
Phil: Well, we're going long.
Phil: So with that, we'll close out episode of The Game Under Podcast.
Phil: I have been and remain Phil Fogg.
Tom: And I was never Tom Towers.