Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s eighth mission, Death From Above, casts you as the gunner in an AC-130 Spectre, a US aircraft designed for close air support at night. The scene opens with a fetishistic accounting of your firepower, as if a pre-awakening Tony Stark were demonstrating the military might of a new superweapon. The camera swoops around a 3D render of the aircraft, slowing to circle the cannons that hang phallically from the ship’s exterior; 83.2 inches long, ten inches wide, 4,200 rounds per minute. It’s a gratuitous display typical of shooters of the time, and particularly those out of Infinity Ward, a studio whose admiration for soldiers and their equipment was clear. But what follows, in this case, makes you afraid to fire those weapons at all.

Call of Duty has always played with perspective. Originally it was a conceit that simply allowed you to see the breadth of the European Theatre of World War 2, through the eyes of a US paratrooper, an SAS saboteur, and a Russian volunteer raising the victory banner over the Reichstag. By the time Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (opens in new tab) released in 2007, however, Infinity Ward was using perspective for highly specific emotional goals. One of the game’s first scenes traps you inside the body of a deposed president as you are flung into the back of a car, snarled at by your captors and driven to your execution, robbed completely of control.

In the build-up to Death From Above, you’ve been John MacTavish, member of an SAS squad shot down over western Russia while exfiltrating an informant. These are men you’ve seen close-up by now, and know by their schoolyard names: Soap, Price, and Gaz. Now, suddenly, they’re reduced to white specks on your thermal imaging equipment. Friendlies are tagged with flares that see them sparkle like ocean waves in the sun, but beyond that there’s little to distinguish them from the ultranationalists swarming on their position. It’s disconcerting to know that you are down there – and to not be absolutely sure which of the white dots is named Soap MacTavish.

Emotional disconnect 

While you’re personally connected to the people on the ground, everything else about the mission conspires to disconnect you from it. Have you ever got back home so late that familiar shapes become hard to recognise, recast in the artificial half-light of street lamps? There’s something of that in the thermal cam of the AC-130. “You are not authorised to level the church,” warns your navigator. But which one’s the church? While preferable to pitch darkness, the black and white glow is difficult to read, like an x-ray.

The distance in itself is dehumanising – not only because you’re spared the blood dispersed by your explosions below, but the screams too. You hear the clack of your cannons firing, but not the boom when they hit, removing you from the consequences. Instead, the entire mission is accompanied by the malevolent bass note of your plane’s engine – a flat drone unmoved by the chaos on-screen.

Your only feedback comes from your fellow crew. “Woah,” yells the TV operator after a direct hit. “Hot damn!” Occasionally, the fire control officer chuckles in approval. “Nice. Good kill. I see lots of little pieces down there.”

Watching together through the screens, they come across like a twisted Gogglebox family, commenting on the unfolding mission as if it’s post-watershed entertainment. At one stage, Price and his squad commandeer a civilian vehicle on the highway to aid their escape. “I bet that guy’s pissed, that’s a nice truck,” says the TV operator. “Nah,” replies the FCO with a laugh. “He’s scared shitless.”

Caught in conflict

At the mission’s midpoint, there’s a lot of back and forth as the crew attempt to find the right village to bomb, exchanging details about the curvature of roads and the identifying features of buildings. Is it the u-shaped one we need to demolish, killing everyone inside? Today, the sequence is unsettlingly reminiscent of the report from an accidental US bombing (opens in new tab) – one that killed 42 people in a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

As a real-life AC-130 crew attempt to clarify whether or not the target in their sights is, in fact, a Taliban command centre, the transcript devolves into a very familiar and human case of workplace miscommunication, with terrible consequences. “I feel like – let’s get on the same page for what target of opportunity means to you, and what target of opportunity means to me,” says a confused navigator. “I mean, when I’m hearing target of opportunity like that, I’m thinking [REDACTED] – you’re going out, you find bad things and you shoot them,” replies the FCO.

It’s this same lack of clarity, with life-or-death results, that makes Death From Above such a frightening and potent mission more than a decade on. It’s emblematic of Modern Warfare’s power in playing with perspectives, putting you in a position where you can actually kill one of your protagonists if you’re not careful.

The new Infinity Ward in charge of the Modern Warfare (opens in new tab) reboot has expressed an interest in dialling back the spectacle – rewinding all the nukes and invasions of the original trilogy so that Call of Duty can land close to home again. The developer could do worse than look to the muted unease of Death From Above, a disturbing unreality that captures the ambiguity at the heart of contemporary conflict.

Learn why Gunfight is a challenging celebration of the changes coming to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (opens in new tab), in our hands-on preview of the upcoming multiplayer mode. 

The post Modern Warfares Death From Above mission is still the model for quiet unease in Call of Duty appeared first on Game News.

Starting with the original Call of Duty, this is a game that’s been putting us in the boots of larger-than-life soldiers in some of the most intense combat moments you could imagine for a long time. Let’s reflect on some of the most memorable moments that have defined the series.

SPOILERS AHEAD, read at your own risk!

15. Menendez’s bloody rampage | Time and Fate | Call of Duty Black Ops II

Very rarely do you get to know the exact motivations behind a psychopathic villain, but in Call of Duty: Black Ops II, you get to witness Raul Menendez’s plight from his own eyes–bloodshot, rage-filled eyes. In a CIA raid to capture Menendez, his sister Josefina is taken from him, sending the antagonist into a murderous frenzy. With nothing but a shotgun, machete, and blind rage, you rampage through the nearby town, slaughtering every soldier that stands in your way. Bullets can’t hurt you, you shrug off grenades, and you attack your victims like a man possessed. What a rush.

14. Saving the ‘President’ | Atlas | Advanced Warfare

Mission 2 of Advanced Warfare is a bit of whirlwind. One minute you’re meeting your slain best friend’s father at a funeral, the next you’re rescuing the Commander-in-Chief from a hostage situation at Camp David. What’s going on? When your shiny new prosthetic arm malfunctions and a colleague shoots the POTUS in the head, it suddenly becomes clear – this overblown, oh-so-CoD mission is just a VR simulation. It’s a miniature twist, and a nice introduction to AW’s future-tech. Also, Kevin Spacey’s all over it, which is always fun.

13. The United States getting nuked from space | Ghost Stories | Call of Duty: Ghosts

To kick off the new setting for Call of Duty: Ghosts, Infinity Ward brought out the biggest guns they could get: a weaponized space station orbiting right above the United States. As the astronaut Baker, you and your partner witness the Federation hijack the station, gun down its crew, and launch nuclear missiles towards southern California. But what you have to do gets even more insane. As in, get-blown-out-into-space, shoot-any-bad-guys-you-see, then commit-suicide-to-save-the-world kind of insane.

12. Deciding the fate of Alex Mason | Suffer With Me | Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Black Ops II did something that no other Call of Duty campaign had done before: it let you make choices. But one of those choices might’ve passed without you even knowing it happened. The young Mason and Woods have tracked down the murderous extremist, Raul Menendez, who was betrayed by his allies. With a blinding cloth draped over his head, Menendez is displayed in front of Woods, who has a sniper rifle in hand, ready to gun the madman down. You’re given control. You take the shot. But as you inspect the body, you discover that you shot Alex Mason instead! Dun dun dun. Guess you should’ve shot him in the leg, a subtle choice which gives you a completely different ending.

11. Back to WWII | Demon Within | Black Ops 3

CoD fans have spent years campaigning for a return to the battlefields of the past – in cheeky fashion, Black Ops 3 gave them what they wanted. Entering the mind of the dying Sarah Hall (don’t ask), you’re thrust into 1944’s Siege of Bastogne, taking down Nazi threats with tech a century ahead of theirs. Quickly, things get weird(er), as the world starts folding in on itself, Inception-style, gravity begins to turn off, and zombies and direwolves start popping up. It’s all very meaningful, I’m sure.

10. Hijacked plane sequence | Turbulence | Modern Warfare 3

And there we were thinking Modern Warfares breathless airplane-based bonus mission Mile High Club was pretty special. But then MW3s Turbulence comes along and takes in-flight combat to the next level – protecting the Russian president from hijackers in the claustrophobic space of a jet is high-stakes stuff on its own. Then, the engines stall out and the dive sends you into a sequence of zero gravity shooting and a crash landing that rips the aircraft fuselage in two. True action film fare.

9. De-Nazifying the woods | The Forest | Call of Duty 3

A wonderfully paced, rising crescendo of a level. At first requiring a softly-softly snipey-snipey approach, with the relative peacefulness of the forest creating an edgy atmosphere, the player never quite knowing where the next Nazis going to spring from. Then it kicks things up a notch, with the battle intensifying as it moves between tight burrow-like trenches and wide-open spaces. Finally and a complete contrast to the cautious way the mission starts youre given a mortar to play with, allowing you to merrily blow apart any of Hitlers helmeted hobgoblins unfortunate enough to still be lurking in the forest.

8. The Airport Massacre | No Russian | Modern Warfare

“Best” is perhaps not quite the right word for this entry, but it’s undoubtedly one of the series’ most effective, affecting missions. No Russian places you in the shoes of an undercover agent in a terrorist cell. Quickly, you understand just what that asks of you. You enter an airport and are told to mow down everyone you see, regardless of who they are. It’s a video game mission that’s sparked protest, academic study and genuine soul-searching. There’s very little else like it in the medium.

7. Beach landing | The Battle of Pointe du Hoc | Call of Duty 2

Starts with a fellow soldier in the landing craft having a fear-induced puke. BLEEUURGH. This is quickly followed by the sound of bullets whizzing through the air. Then clouds of red mist as those bullets thud into flesh. Soldiers fall to the ground. Spray from a near-miss explosion obscures your view. Then the ramp is down and youre running on to the beach. MORTAR BOOM. Down you go. Cue semi-deafened shell-shocked horror of war moment as you survey the scene around you. When you regain your senses the metaphorical implications of the vertical cliff face ahead of you become apparent. Your role to this point is one of spectator, but its still a breathless couple of minutes.

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The post 15 of the best Call of Duty moments in the history of the series appeared first on Game News.