Blue Sun Games – Call of Duty Black Ops: That’s Entertainment?

It’s in the nature of games to veer on the ridiculous or hyper-realistic, there’s very little about games that we can say is just like it is in real life. Look at Hideki Kamiya’s Bayonetta or the macho-fest that is CliffyB’s Gears of War series. That exaggerated, almost caricature-like nature of the characters exist to distance the player away from reality and into whatever setting that the game takes place in. In much the same way as films do games can be escapist entertainment.

Here is where the Call of Duty games falter. They haven’t (in my mind) reconciled the exaggeration we see in games with realism, in fact the effect they give off is somewhat grisly and immature despite the adult tones it wishes to project.