We Are Not Amused

Just because I haven't visited this subject for a while . . . and, yes, I am a 46 year old man who plays video games. Deal with it.

Dear Treyarch:

Please allow me to congratulate you on your new game, Call of Duty: World at War. It looks absolutely fabulous, even if you did decide to try and milk some more mileage out of the Second World War.

Couple of things, though. The Germans didn't have King Tigers at Stalingrad. Really. But that's just a minor quibble. What just completely frosts my ass is Multiplayer.

Frankly, it sucks.

Oh, it could have been good. Fantastic, even. The potential is definitely there. The problem would be that, while it seems you went out of your way to hire a military adviser to show you authentic period weapons, you also apparently didn't bother to ask him anything else.

Now, I'm pretty sure that the fanboys of the game are going to raise their hackles at that. How could I possibly say that about one of the most realistic games about war out there?

Well . . . because it's not all that realistic.

Please allow me to explain to you the concept of "centre mass." Soldiers are taught to aim at the largest part of the body, the torso . . . also known as centre mass. When you have a sight picture that is nothing but the other guy's body, and you pull the trigger, chances are you're not going to miss. And the bad guy is going to go down.

Ah, but not in your game. A miss, as they say, is as good as a mile, even though with your enemy filling the sight you couldn't miss even if you were blind. And the way players can absorb multiple .30-calibre rounds and shake them off like rain? Sheer brilliance. Doesn't ever work that way in the real world, of course, but, hey, you're striving for authenticity, right?

But, wait, it gets even better, doesn't it? Really, now, when you empty a hundred-round belt from a Browning .30-calibre machinegun into a guy charging straight at you across an open field, he dies. What he doesn't do is bayonet you while you're changing belts. Of course, the same would apply when you hose some guy down with an MG-42, but I suppose what's good for the goose is good for the gander, too.

Let's not forget my favourite, grenades. At least you don't have them bouncing around like superballs as so many other games do. But, really, no one can throw a grenade a hundred yards or more. Really. And while they're not grenades, you also can't reliably hit anything with a pistol at anything over 50 yards. Nor does it take all seven shots in the magazine of a Colt M1911A1 to kill someone. One or two really is all you need.

Can we talk about weapon recoil? You know, one or two shots, for example, from an M1 Garand do not turn it into an anti-aircraft gun. I mean, you do have a point that if all you do is hold down the trigger of a submachine gun and empty the magazine as fast as possible, God Himself has no idea of just where all the bullets are going to go. But, trust me, otherwise soldiers are taught how to compensate for weapon recoil and weapon climb. Which would bring us right back to sight pictures and centre mass, but why belabour the obvious?

We can, however, talk a little bit about the concepts of cover and concealment. They are not the same thing. Concealment means that the enemy can not see you; he can still shoot you, but he's going to be guessing as to where you are. Cover means that not only can the enemy not see you, he can't shoot you, either. A big bunch of bushes, a field of growing crops, and a gulley would be examples of concealment. A bunker or a solid wall would be an example of cover. See the difference?

Well, apparently you don't. You have no cover at all in the game and, leaving aside the bullets that magically go around corners, rounds penetrate everything. Where in the world you got the idea that bullets - pistol, rifle, SMG or MG, doesn't matter - can penetrate solid stone or four feet of reinforced concrete and kill someone, I don't know, but I sure wish you'd share that technology with real soldiers. They need it.

Oh, and the spawn system. I tell you, after being killed from a half-mile away by some clown wielding a .357 magnum, nothing is more enjoyable than being repeatedly spawned right on top of an enemy, so that you can be killed again and again and again without being able to do anything about it. I mean, was it really that hard to come up with a system that spawned players some place where the bad guys weren't?

Last but not least, I have to pat you all on the back for the wonderful scoring system you came up with. Really, now, nothing says "good times" like seeing your shots put enemies down, and then not having the game record those kills in your score. Absolute genius.

Oh, wait, I almost forgot to ask. How is it, exactly, that a 'scope makes a weapon less accurate? Or, for that matter, how is it that you can get three shots out of a double-barrel shotgun? Enquiring minds want to know.

So, really, aside from that, multiplayer is just great, I assure you. But please remind me: where, exactly, is the fun in having to fight the game in addition to the other players? Because I just can't figure that out.