Hush.
Hear that? That’s the sound of parents up and down the land whimpering as they enjoy this weekend’s last few precious hours of peace before World War Three is unleashed on Tuesday.
Two wars break out on that day. The first is the on-screen one, in the shape of the latest instalment in Activision’s homework/revision/Standard Grade-destroying Call of Duty franchise, Modern Warfare 3.
The second is the battle that begins in bedrooms all over the nation and lasts until CoD 4 is released, before which there is a day or two of peace.
It goes like this. Parent: “For God’s sake, can you turn that thing off now. It’s three o’clock in the morning.”
Teenager: “It isn’t in LA! I’m playing Jed.” (Who he? Some freak they have met via the headset? Ah the infernal headsets. How many parents think their son has a friend with him, only to discover he is seemingly talking to himself). Some fathers will obey what they see as their own parental “call of duty” on Monday night, joining the midnight queues in branches of Game to pretend their son is older than he is.
Some staff will be dressed in combat gear, all muffled voices behind gas masks, asking: “Would you like the Strategy Guide as well?”
Apart from yourself, of course, much of the queue are pale-faced, bedroom-bound, CoD anoraks, fanatical completists who must achieve at least three new Prestige levels before dawn breaks.
They are modern day trainspotters, only they list corpses, rather than numbers.
And yet, live with these games long enough, and a certain fondness grows. One learns not to notice the spray of blood on the screen from each kill as you pop your head around the door to say “Supper’s ready”; Nazi Zombies is very silly, but undeniably entertaining; and certain voices become tremendously familiar, like the man who cries “Our recon plane will find them!”
He sounds remarkably as if he is shouting: “Enrique’s played a blinder!”
There is some genuine history to be learnt from the franchise, and a little geography too. Also, is it so very different from board games like Risk in the 1970s, or playing with plastic soldiers in the 1960s or pretending to be cowboys and Indians in the 1950s?
At the end of the day, CoD is a sophisticated shoot’em up game – only trouble is, the day never does end.
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