I completed Call of Duty: Black Ops’ campaign the other day. It took me two days, on and off. I did it on normal, and I’m currently mentally preparing myself for Veteran mode. I say mentally preparing, I actually mean resigning myself to the fact that for the next week or so, when in the vicinity of my Xbox 360 I’m going to be angry, swearing a lot and generally not a nice person to be around.
So yeah, I’m going to be doing something that will frustrate me to no end. Some people are supernaturally good at videogames and maybe they can breeze through the hardest difficulty settings with blindfolds on and the controller upside down. I am not one of those people. Normal difficulty, or maybe sometimes hardened setting usually holds the right amount of challenge for me. The amount of times I get killed in Veteran will probably reach the hundreds by the time I reach the end and most of those deaths will be down to one stupid bit. That’s usually how it goes. I mean, it’s never plain sailing but for the majority of the game I can hold my own and then I get to one section where I die once, twice, and before I know it I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve restarted but I’m getting sick of hearing the same dialogue over and over, and I wish that they would stop barking orders at me to pick up that Stinger and could one of the other soldiers please do it instead? I mean, why are you shouting at me to do it? Private Nobody right there is standing next to the damned thing and won’t have to dodge a hail of bullets to reach it.
Yes, there’s always that bit in a Call of Duty game. That level in Call of Duty 4 when you have to plonk down the injured guy behind a Ferris wheel and shoot a seemingly endless stream of enemies before picking him back up and making a run for it took me 3 days to do. I remember that I was close to tears. I insisted that it just wasn’t possible. I got very close to doing it on the second day and spent too much time faffing and my helicopter flew off without me. I developed sort of a weird facial twitch after that so nobody talked to me again for the rest of the night.
So why do I do it? Sometimes, in those dark, dark moments I wonder myself. But the upside to the evil Ferris wheel level is that I did complete it. I remember clearly the moment that I started running for the helicopter. My heartbeat actually quickened and I heard a small astonished voice in my head saying, “I think I’m going to do it…”. I didn’t lose focus, because the last time I did that my helicopter flew off and I honestly don’t think it would have been safe for my health if that happened again. Bullets were flying around my head and I was heading at a snail’s pace for my goal. And I reached it. I think I might have hugged my TV and maybe everybody in the world after I boarded that chopper.
So in answer to my own question, playing on the hardest difficulty setting does give me a sense of accomplishment. It’s nice to know that I can do it. Although, I can tell that there are a few bits to come in Black Ops that are really going to test my sanity.
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