Call From Duty? Tell Them I'll Get Back To Them.

So, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (or MW3 to most) came out a couple days ago. I would not have known this if it weren't for a conversation I had with a customer at work. He mentioned he had purchased the game 30 minutes previous and was on his way home to play it, stopping by for energy drinks to keep him going. Now, I work overnight and this was 12:30 am. So, it came as a surprise to me that gaming stores actually had midnight openings for newly released games like that. I mean, I knew cinemas did this for some of its biggest releases and when the later Harry Potter books came out, people flocked out in droves to get their hands on a copy (though I didn't have any trouble getting my copy of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows).

To be honest, a part of this surprise is due to the fact that I've never closely followed the Call Of Duty series. Hell, if you asked me how many games the series had, I'd shrug my shoulders and say "Uh... five?" Yeah... turns out, including expansions and such, there are at least eighteen. So, I would be way off-base. Though even if I were to exclude the titles that are spin-offs or portable versions and stick with the main series, I'd still be off by a few.

I've only played one game in the franchise, and I think it was the first Modern Warfare. The graphics were superb, the atmosphere engaging and the voices for the soldiers didn't distract from the experience and made it authentic. I got into the game and found it to be a really impressive first person shooter, which isn't easy, considering how it appears to be the predominant game type these days. That, or general sandbox games (personally, I'm hoping to see a resurgence in the survival horror genre in a big way).

But I can't help but wonder why the franchise has grown as large as it has. My theory is it comes down to the realism. Besides the obvious game mechanic of respawning (I mean if anyone bought a game where you died once and your game could never be played again, that would be the single dumbest thing you could ever do in a game. Well, besides doing a crossover with Echo The Dolphin), just about everything else simulates a war-like experience, right in the comfort of your own home. You're in the trenches, fighting with your buddies, defending the world against the enemy. Immersion is key to many a good game and COD seems to have gotten that down to a science.

But the relative realism might not always be the best thing for a game. Sometimes, we look to entertainment as the gateway to another world, a world that's sometimes not quite the same as ours or to other worlds and dimensions. Granted, we may get realism in movies (or as close as we can) when they lack sci-fi or fantastical elements, but the big difference is that we're watching characters grow and develop. In video games, YOU are the protagonist. And there's nothing you really need to develop, because once the game ends, that's it.
What I'm saying is, sometimes we like the idea of strange lands, of worlds beyond the stars. Or possible futures with technology we can only dream of. Whether it's exploring space with Samus Aran, killing monsters with Simon Belmont, fighting robots with Mega Man, trekking through Silent Hill or climbing the ranks through Mortal Kombat, we're less concerned with realism and more about what we can discover from these strange and foreign lands. Lands like Hyrule and the Mushroom Kingdom.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with realism in a game, it all depends on the game itself. Obviously, I can't expect Halo to adhere to the same rules as Haze and vice versa. But realistic games also suffer from that fact that there aren't many surprises in store, because if they were to break away from that realism, people would assume it was a gimmick. Unless it was a game that was essentially labeled as "like our world, but..." very much like the Resistance series has the label of "like our world in the past, but with aliens".

All in all, I've got nothing against the COD series, though like I said, I've only played the one game. But I've got to admit, I'm perplexed at what makes this franchise so popular. Is it the settings? The feeling of taking out bad guys and using it as a release from the stress of the world?
And, more to the point, is it really that good that it makes you want to wait at midnight for the latest game?

Eventually, I will get these games and see if I can recapture that same feeling from when I first played. But I don't think I'll be waiting at midnight for the next game. I didn't even do that for Arkham City and I've been looking forward to that game all year (and it's glorious, too).

So, I put it to anyone reading this blog: have you ever waited outside a store for a midnight opening for a brand new game? Or movie? Or even a book? Hell, has there been anything you've waited for, late at night, camped out, in a long line?