Best AV Upgrade I Ever Got

GlassesI’ve known that I’ve needed glasses for some time, ever since I found myself struggling to read the whiteboard in school about ten years ago, and as I’ve found it increasingly impossible to read football scores and news tickers on the TV, I finally took the plunge last week. It turns out that my eyesight didn’t even meet the DVLA standard, so if I was taking my driving test today I’d have failed it. Oops…

The first night I had them I watched Hot Fuzz on Blu-ray, which has been noted as being particularly handsome but failed to blow me away when I dipped in for a look, and the difference was night and day. What were once flat-looking skin textures were suddenly beautifully flawed and pitted, and I could see individual hairs or threads in clothing. Since then I’ve watched several HD films and played some of this generation’s most beautiful games, and I frankly can’t believe that it took me this long to get my eyes checked out.

Seriously, if you have any doubt about your eyesight, get an eye test. It might not be your TV that’s the weak link in your setup.

Of course, Freeview looks like compressed arse now, so it looks like Sky HD or Freesat is on the agenda again. You win some, you lose some.

Modern Warfare 2

I deliberately refrained from weighing in on the debate surround ‘that’ scene in Modern Warfare 2 until I’d actually played it – a shocking perspective, I know – and having just finished the game, I’m glad I did.

A lot of gamers will naturally jump to the defence of their hobby; how it’s an important step towards them becoming a respected and accepted narrative art form and blah blah blah. I actually disagree here. While Infinity Ward should have every right to put such scenes in its games and I applaud Tom Watson’s level-headed approach to treating adults like… well, adults, in playing it I felt that it was controversial for controvery’s sake. It could have been handled so much better – but I guess that wouldn’t have generated the column inches, which is the real crux.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

It’s totally unnecessary, and an extremely heavy-handed attempt to shock, and as far as being avant garde with this stuff goes, the revolution in the first Modern Warfare’s opening stages was far more effective, catching glimpses of dissidents being executed and such. There’s nothing clever or subtle about four men with machine guns opening up on people and shooting someone as he tries to drag his wounded friend to safety.

It feels tacky already, but coupled with the fact that the rest of the game feels like a Michael Bay film – the scene comes immediately after this ridiculous chase, for instance – it’s hard to see it as anything but exploitative. Sad, really, because it does stand out more than it should.

That aside, though, I loved the game. Putting aside the online mode, it’s a five-hour rollercoaster. Like the airport scene it’s not subtle, but this time I mean it in a good way, like The Rock and Con Air, which find themselves imitated repeatedly. I played through most of the game in a single sitting and it constantly kept me enthralled and keen to do it again at a higher difficulty.

Is that too short? As I’ve said before, I’d much rather have a top quality five hours of gameplay than the same content stretched out over ten, and it’s not like the campaign is all that Call of Duty games have to offer. I think that this game is good enough to warrant playing through more than once, and I’m still yet to touch the online/offline co-op Special Ops missions, which are apparently a highlight. So even if one scene is rather tasteless, and even if Activision is intensely disagreeable and it seems to be rubbing off on Infinity Ward, I can’t deny that this is a great game. I love this series, and this is right up there with the best of them, and will be a fixture of my Xbox 360’s disc drive for months.