Our great cities are torn apart with tall towers toppling like Troy's. The very texture of MW3 gameplay seems to revel in ruin, lovingly defacing and tearing down the structures of modernity with every jerk of the trigger. American first-person shooters have always offered a rush of combat transcendence, as described by Ernst Junger in his World War I memoir, Storm of Steel: Rather, they are appropriating and internalizing the transcendental promise of a badder enemy other.īut there is a suggestively deeper level too. Today's gamers are not simply dressing up in cool fighting fashion. This is no different than Late Romans putting off their fabled lorica segmentata and putting down old gladius and scutum, and putting on Gothic trouser and spangenhelm and picking up long sword and round shield-Latin homage to Barbaricum. It represents an acknowledgement-as it has since ancient times-that the enemy are now top warriors and own the future of war. In MW3, we see the same sort of adoption of enemy fashion and battle style. But when France was defeated by Germany in 1871, the US Army threw away its képis and put on the Prussian pickelhaube. When North and South made war in 1861, they raised scores of Zouave regiments that paid homage to the oriental-garbed Muslim units of French colonial Algeria. The big loser is stripped of its claim on military fashion. The surface story of what happens in defeat is easy. What we feel in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the result of that transformation, what Wolfgang Schivelbusch calls The Culture of Defeat. The wreckage of battle filled those eyes each day. Its battles soon were shown to be impure, and its warriors lost innocence in the eyes of the world. The new war was fought not by the people but by the state alone. So many soldiers I knew then played Halo religiously. The story was the same in the early war on terror too, and it echoed in the reigning film of the day, Lord of the Rings. The fight was for not just a nation but for all of mankind, just as it was in World War 2. The enemy was inhuman, and thus good and evil were etched purely and plainly.
In Halo, American space marines, "the armies of the West," fought for the fate of Earth. Just a handful of years ago, great game franchises had a far different function. infantry tactics and combined-arms doctrine. Yet Faceoff merely extends the overriding motif for all combat in Call of Duty MW3: War itself is back to the face-to-face of warrior-to-warrior. The weapons are as sacred as any ancient named blade, and the duel's winner (hero?) has chosen perhaps the most iconic American changeling for the sword: the barrel-ribbed, big-frame revolver. The reflector shades from the early stages of our adventure have been tossed away for the goalkeeper's mask of Jason. Their faces are covered as an act of intimidation and a sign of divine righteousness. They are adopting enemy fashion and battle style. These are our All-American version of Ghazi warriors-in Arabic, "the makers of war." They are the imagined spiritual brothers of our presumed enemies, across the mountains and deserts and cities of the Dar al-Islam. These are not American soldiers as we know them today, nor are they even like legionnaires of old. This is not combat but rather the warrior test of the duel. One wears a gas mask, the other a hockey goalkeeper's mask. Their heavy gear is all medieval man-at-arms: pauldrons, cuisses, and greaves.
Two men face off in full battle-harness where only digicam is standard issue. Hesco gabions are stacked so close that it's as if you could reach out and touch the wire mesh. If interested in more Call of Duty: Warzone Videos on my channel and the U.S.A camera pans across a hilltop firebase as music plays that could be right out of an Ennio Morricone film. I hope you enjoy watching these videos as much as I did playing them.Ĭall of Duty: Warzone :
This is the first "Battle Royal" style game I've played on my channel and will be starting a new Series where Army Veterans including myself with be playing CoD: WZ.