Classic Call of Duty PC Games

 In the twilight years of old-school first-person shooters prior to the modern military shooter invasion, Call of Duty 1 (2003), Call of Duty: United Offensive (2004) and Call of Duty 2 (2005) emerged as among the finest FPS games and WW2 fiction the world could offer. In the days before as the flagship title of sexual abuse enabler Activision’s Call of Duty was a name praised with freshness and movie-like qualities, when this was still a considered a net positive. We will make a close inspection as to why the games still deserve the praise, and also discuss how the games differ from one another in subtle ways. Just in case, spoilers abound.

Call of Duty 1

When isolated from its dreadfully mundane and mundanely dreadful nature, war can be quite enjoyable. When it involves shooting Nazis, the fun increases by a hundred fold. It’s not surprising then this found its way to games as early as Castle Wolfenstein (1981). But for a long time, video games did not represent war as historical epics, opting for either the abstract representation of strategy games or in the almost entirely history-agnostic context of action games. In addition, the first attempts at 3D, epic WW2 games plainly lack the necessary graphical punch. CoD is a fateful  meeting of matured technology, evolved game design and the fresh language of the war movies of the era.

The result is a game that feels great to play. The night sky, the smoke on destroyed machines, apartment block ruins are all chillingly beautiful. The game is clearly made to look realistic, but today its color palette gives it a pastel-like vibe. Even the detail-lacking textures like faces and trees look tolerable, if not charming at times. The sound design is top notch as well. Guns each have their own identity with tiny visual details, the variety in heaviness, the fire spread, reload time, and most importantly, their sound. The footsteps, the random chatter between soldiers, somewhat comical death sounds, even grenades bouncing from the wall are so distinctly recognizable. To top it all off, the orchestral music by Michael Giacchino gracefully guides your mood throughout the game: Sometimes heroic, sometimes sneaky, sometimes intense, sometimes happy, but never too melodramatic.

Much of the good feel of the game comes from the level design. Levels have a nice sense of variety and identity. Even the day/night switches alone on the same map brings a unique feeling. More importantly, they all have a palpable sense of naturalism. War-torn towns don’t bend to my will, the car wreckage does not feel as if it’s there for me to use as a cover, the houses always have a couple more rooms and doors than strictly necessary, there are burning wreckage at seemingly random places that will hurt the player. This is a very linear game, but most of the time the player will be gently directed by natural obstacles, streets, walls, rubble and minefields. Only a few times does the game resort to bluntly placed invisible fences to keep the player inside the game’s bounds.

CoD 1’s breakout gameplay feature is to be able to fight as a team and it deserves every phase it got back in the day. Especially in closed corridors, the fights get chaotic in a way only normally possible in multiplayer games. People shout, hurl grenades, take cover, get injured and –- save for a sparse use of invincible NPCs --  die and you are just one of them. The game normally punishes friendly fire with a game over but in heated combat moments, will tolerate it to a small degree. You can kill or get killed by accident. No matter how skilled you might be as a soldier, in the end, you are still just a guy.

The game tries its hardest to hammer this point to home. Many moments in the game feel out of slightly exaggerated war stories: “This one time, me and the sergeant crossed into the German lines on a car but a tank started to follow us, we sneaked into the streets, then found some other car, and escaped from dozens of German soldiers!”, or “Our small squad captured a whole apartment block then defended it against an entire mechanized battalion for minutes!” They still feel entirely plausible though, especially when you know how truly ridiculous WW2 was at times, the battle that inspired the latter scenario in the game happened for an entire month for instance! [1] In the solo levels, I never feel quite like a superhuman FPS hero. Rather, these levels are actually quite terrifying. In particular, the level when you plant bombs to a warship feels cold, meandering and claustrophobic. Even a glaringly gamey mechanics like health bar adds to the naturalism. Being at low health means I have to be super careful and scramble to find any health pickup I can. It’s perfectly clear the player is just a lucky soldier, and that a stray bullet, an unheard grenade, a wrong step in the open field could end their life. Player won’t even get the most of the heroic moments. They won’t carry the injured soldier, they won’t drive cars in frantic escapes, they won’t destroy a tank by climbing on top of it and throwing a bomb inside, and they are not the one who hoists the Soviet flag at the Reichstag. Most importantly however, the player cannot open doors themselves.

Curiously, such moments are not presented in cutscenes. A couple of times, the game will immobilize the player with something like an explosion to focus their attention to a big scene, but the game never quits the first-person view and never completely takes away the player's control. Most of the time, we are free to look away from the action and even do a little sequence breaking. Like, in a level where you defend a French town, a tank blows up a wall and we are most likely expected to destroy it after it makes a small trip across the street while we escape its gunfire. But if we have an anti-tank weapon ready with us, we can just blow it up the moment it appears! From the same level, anticipating German assault, a soldier is sent to scout the street and gets killed in the first round of fire. But we can prevent his death by running outside and shooting that Nazi first! In the most ironic fashion for a series that gave linear games a bad reputation, the linearity in the original game never feels constricting.

This adds back to the game’s sense of naturalism. With one notable exception, this game lacks any kind of melodramatic excess. There is a moment where the player needs to cover for someone carrying an injured soldier, but despite being unkillable up until that point, the guy might just die. Despite clearly being an important character, there is no slowed-down Sad Moment, whether he lives or dies, the player continues all the same. In the level where we sneak into a ship with Captain Price, he doesn’t make it back. We don’t even see the moment of his death. We just return to our boat and the person waiting is like “Damn, he is dead!” and the level ends just like that. In the American campaign, you save this guy from a prison and for the entirety of the British campaign you go through many, many deadly ordeals together. And yet, he just dies alone in an enemy ship. The game maintains a consistently mundane, down-to-earth atmosphere. These days, most games would not miss the chance to give the player to sneak up and make an epic knife attack or reward them for playing in certain ways with scores, achievements and collectibles. It feels so nice to just play a game that’s a little indifferent to the player, especially when the indifference is actually crucial to the tone.

Call of Duty definitely wants to be a fun WW2 epic that makes the player feel heroic. But it also respects the subject matter a lot. It is not quite “War is hell!” on the whole but it makes sure to show that war is not fun for the people partake in it. The death screen shows player quotes from famous figures of the era, most of which have a clear anti-war streak, perhaps just as a way to remind us that in the real deal, we would have only had one shot.  On mission-loading screens we can see diaries of the protagonists. Even maps and typed-out dossiers have pen writings on them, about changed plans, things gone wrong, or a little quip about the situation.  Every soldier you fight alongside has a name and visible health status. The game’s earnest recognition of the everyday people who fought in the war is what makes its celebration of heroism meaningful.

This might sound like a minimum level of seriousness that the media needs to approach the topic of  wars, and perhaps it is. And yet so many WW2 video games absolutely miss the mark on that. They either have too much sob story about American soldiers, or too much one-man cool espionage, too much cartoonish action, too much self-congratulatory nonsense. CoD itself could not resist the temptation, as apparent with CoD: World at War (2008) and especially, newer Call of Duty WW2 (2017). A level of naturalism is clearly necessary for a graceful approach to WW2, and such a method can lend itself easily to so many more games. There are many theaters of war with little to no media depiction. But it seems like, any WW action game after a certain date was just destined to be a modern military shooter with an old timey skin.

This is also precisely one of the biggest strengths of the classic CoD. The games not only did depict the Eastern Front, the first game chose it as its cover image and devotes much of its cinematic attention onto it. Unfortunately, it is also the only area of the game deserving serious criticism. The developers could not help being Americans, there is at least one loading screen with a fake Cyrillic front, and the battle of Stalingrad in particular is filled with ahistorical  tropes [2][3][4][5], but even still, it captures the spirit of how terrible war is very well.  



I put the majority of the blame on the movie inspiration, Enemy at the Gates (2001). The game doesn’t seem to go hard on “Soviets bad 1984” attitude, because despite its shortcomings the Soviet campaign is truly the high-mark of the game. Even as a kid with no knowledge of history, it’s the Soviet levels that actually made me think of Nazis as the bad side. The player tries to live unarmed in true hell, has to fight in burned cities and the deepest winter and finally, tastes the glory of taking over Berlin. The game even ends with the Soviet protagonist writing to his mother about how he felt of the American soldiers as his brothers. American and British campaigns are bloody fine shooters, but the Soviet campaign is where the game gains its beating heart, its vulnerable soul, its trembling voice.

It’s a good thing then, the other two games do not repeat weird Americanisms.

Call of Duty: United Offensive

Unlike contemporary DLCs, old expansion packs were made with the assumption that they would be likely bought only by the fans of the original, which gave a lot of flexibility to the developers. For example, they could make the games as difficult as they want, discarding the usual design concerns. United Offensive absolutely relishes being difficult, it’s truly one of the toughest shooters around,  even the easiest setting is not a cakewalk. The challenge feels appropriate as it depicts the intense winter fights of Battle of the Bulge and the utmost brutal Battle of Kursk. In addition, the new levels are much longer compared to the originals, the player will find themselves running from one battle position to another. The game can be quite relentless, in a quite fitting way to the spirit of war. It does allow the player to catch a break in the British levels though, as an inversion of the original, they are much calmer compared to the American and the Soviet campaigns, including a level where you just shoot at German fighter planes as a bomber gunner.

Despite having nominally fewer levels, the levels feel much more varied both in style and the substance. There is more attention to the small details, even similar snow levels feel distinct and memorable. The game’s color palette is quite diverse: the bright whites of the French farms and forests, metallic grays and the medieval stones of a fortress in the beautiful sunset of a Sicilian town, the wet green and brown marshes of Ukraine giving way to the cities under the hellish red of ever-burning flames. The action always stays fresh, even with the longer levels, the game never plainly repeat the original’s nor its own scenarios, when the player is asked to conquer a town, they go through the whole deal; the initial approach, clearing enemy positions and then repelling a giant counterattack all in one level. The gameplay feels more meaty as a result. Small refinements add up as well; there are more guns to use, the player can sprint, the autosaves are more frequent and less buggy, and so on.  

In particular, it’s truly amazing how much the Soviet campaign improves compared to the original, which is already great despite its shortcomings. In the absence of excess dramatization,  the brutality of war comes out much more profoundly, we can even casually encounter flamethrower soldiers, in the classic, plain CoD style. Much more care is given to the dialogue of the Soviet soldiers, there is a real sense that the player character and his comrades care about each other. And the last level, the defense of the train station and eventual rescue can easily rival conquering the Reichstag in its ability to stir my heart.

Call of Duty: United Offense does not contend with being a worthy addition to the first game, it’s one of the best first person shooters period, just by itself.

Call of Duty 2

Everything that makes CoD good continues in full force in the sequel, this time in the streets of Moscow, the valleys of Tunisia and the beaches of Normandy, with crispier graphics. The breath is visible in cold air, the uniforms look busy, the ground is palpably wet in the rain, metals are more metallic, wooden textures shine brighter. There are some gameplay refinements: the player can use smoke bombs which adds tactical depth. Iron sights work slightly better and are more visible. Ally tanks have individual names so I get melancholic when they get blown up.  It is filled with so many great moments: Using a pipe to sneak past the enemy lines, chasing Nazis in an epic counterattack and then blowing up the building they hide, calling artillery strikes on whole tank divisions... On the whole it broadly hits the same notes as the first game, so if you enjoy it, you will also enjoy this one.

The departures from the first game are where things get interesting. The most notable one is the change of the health system. The sequel replaces the mundane,static healthy bar with self-regeneration: The modern system where waiting somewhere away from the line of fire for a few seconds heals the player. This fixes the theoretical problem of the player being stuck in an unfavorable position and forced to break the pacing of the game by searching for items. Now they can hop on between one firefight to another seamlessly and the game remains fair in each individual encounter. However, I don’t like this system all that much.

For one, the problem it solves is actually a positive for me most of the time. It’s not really more or less realistic but it does manage to instill a feeling of mortality. Instead of this, self-healing gives me short but semi-frequent spikes of fear, like getting jump-scared repeatedly.  Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad without the accompanying UI design. Gone is the simple health bar and the number, now when the player gets hurt, the whole screen progressively becomes engulfed in red, and eventually, a condescending “YOU ARE HURT, GET TO COVER!” text appears. It’s so annoying how CoD 2 popularized this understanding of “immersion”. Frankly it just gets in the way of playing the game, I literally can’t see the action when it’s most critical.

The health system brings up it’s own theoretical problem: the player might exploit it and render the game too easy. The devs “solved” this problem by having the enemies focus on the player more than AI allies. For example, in a building defense section, they will go past your teammates and straight to the player's spot. In the first game I could see some encounters end without my involvement at all or even hide in  places where the enemies never find me because they are busy fighting others. In the sequel this never happens. It is also followed by making the enemies spam indefinitely unless the player is at a specific place the game wants them to be and, similarly, appear only when they are at a certain place. In a North Africa level, Nazis have a machine gun position fortified with sandbags and barbed wires, supported by people on the balcony of the building near behind it. Try to clear the position from the front? Nope, the house will indefinitely spit new fascists out until I go around the street and hit them on the rear. In the very last level, when I turn around a corner I find a backyard surrounded by walls and then, see several soldiers materialize out of thin air, and rush to their defensive positions without caring about me right behind their backs, oops! I honestly find silly mistakes in games charming as long as they don’t obstruct me from playing the game, but it  creates a feeling that the player is at the center of everything, which goes against the spirit of the game. As if I have seen the magician’s trick, it’s hard to unsee once caught: The player starts the fights and they end the fights, it feels as if even the AI partners fight a little less effectively. Not having any solo levels makes this even more obvious. Perhaps the original used similar mechanics as well, but if it did, it was clearly far more delicate about it. Here, it definitely hurts the verisimilitude, it’s pestering rather than challenging and it started a trend where the shooters leaned towards micromanaging the player’s experience more and more. It’s not critically bad here, the game is still filled with many spontaneous, frantic, organic gunfights, it’s just unpleasant sometimes, like biting the bitter seeds when eating a delicious fruit.  

The second most notable thing is that the game is a lot more “modern” when it comes to music, i.e. it’s allergic to having music take over scenes. This means, unlike the original, what soundtrack there is is a lot less memorable. Maybe the game wants to prioritize the battle ambiance, which is far noisier and involved compared to the first game. Both your allies and enemies will constantly shout about stuff: Enemies locations, needing reload, demanding support, insulting the other side.  For the most part, it makes the fights feel more natural, but it becomes silly when the last remaining guy doesn’t cease to cry at the top of his lungs, like surely during an intense shootout sometimes combatants would get quiet too. The noise in the original is just fine, and I certainly appreciate having a real soundtrack over what we have in CoD 2, even the menu theme doesn’t want to get your attention at all.

The game is also notable for its lack of narrative structure. The levels are just a collection of WW2 theaters, there is little if any story progression: Each couple of levels you just switch years and place without a sense of resolution. In the original, the player survived in Stalingrad and marched to Berlin, the expansion focused on entire battles on operations stretched on a couple of really long levels. The sequel just ends with taking over a German town, it almost feels unfinished. It doesn’t help that, because series of levels take place in very similar places, they have a tendency to blend into one another, and yes the game’s better moments actually strengthen this feeling. It sits in an awkward spot between CoD 1 and UO,  it lingers on the same-looking scenery a lot, yet it is too short to conclude near anything it starts in a meaningful way. It is a series of amazing moments in between many fine ones.  

It also has a couple of minor annoyances. Pistols don’t have a dedicated slot, making them functionally useless. The ability to switch between semi-automatic and automatic modes in certain gun models is gone. The button for grenades throws them automatically,  leaving less window to decide where the grenade should go. When the player is near a loose grenade, the heads-up display informs them with a sign. This is more player friendly but it also conditions the player into following a marker over being aware of their surroundings. The dialog text is smaller, a harbinger of another annoying modern trend. The game auto-saves very frequently but you can’t manually save, view files in-game or start a level from the middle part. While it isn’t this game’s fault, the North Africa levels feels slightly off, years of modern military shooters gives it a bad vibe.  Mission briefing slideshows are replaced with official military documentaries, which have less personality. Finally, there are very few night levels. Not just because I like the night view but also it could certainly help to make the levels more memorable.

Overall, Call of Duty 2 is a consistently great experience that occasionally fails below its full potential. The fact that the original is one notch better is not really a point against this game.

Conclusion

Call of Duty 1, United Offense and Call of Duty 2 are excellent WW2 shooters that eschew the pulp for having one foot in reality. Anyone that craves good WW2 media or a simply enjoyable FPS game should try them out.

PSA: Don’t buy them though, not just because Activision-Blizzard is evil and doesn’t need your money, but they are also massive cheapskates and never properly discount their games. Paying above 1-2$ dollars for a 10+ year old game is a scam, regardless of the game’s quality.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlov's_House (They even modeled the house accurately!)

[2] Yes, a reddit post, but this subreddit is actually decent:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22t8dg/did_the_soviet_union_really_use_human_wave/

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31t5on/did_the_soviets_really_send_soldiers_into_ww2/

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ef0k1/how_realistic_is_the_depiction_of_soviet_soldiers/

[5]
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2r9az2/is_the_portrayal_of_the_battle_of_stalingrad_from/

This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons, namely: Effy, Laura Watson,  Makkovar, Morgan, Olympia, Otakundead, Sasha. Also thanks to Alex(@jyhadscientist on Twitter) for his perfect editing work

Relaxing Lamentations of Rouge Warrior

Rouge Warrior(2009) is a military shooter where the player follows Dick Marcinko on his many adventures. It's based on self-insert novels of Richard Marchinko, an US Navy veteran. The game is remarked as unremarkable shooter by the most, but it's notable for Dick's one-liners and the credits theme which uses said one-liners
Regardless of how good the game is, I find the song to be deeply enjoyable and meaningful. Let us look at it deeper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVoyGUcXepc

Fuckin ninja style
Im gonna bring it to em
Im gonna show em what time it is.
Its fun to bring the noise
AH
you morons'll love this
Hope you assholes like fireworks

Dick is a covert-op soldier, so stealth is the bread and butter of his job. However, although Dick is quite capable at it, he doesn't really like sneaking. From first lines, he makes the operations very personal as he is "gonna show what time it is" and "it is fun to bring the noise", despite having no connection to many faceless enemies he kills. Also notable is the "ninja style", a rather cheesy description from a professional soldier like him.

OOH
Fucking commies getting in my way
Well surprise mutherfuckers!
Happy fucking birthday
Thats right Nighty-night you sweet piece of shit
Enjoy the ride, cocksuckers Have a nice trip
Boom time baby
Trick or treat
Looks like a party,
C'mon I got places to go, people to meet.
Assholes are everywhere
Fuckers are out in force
Hi ho, hi ho This fuckers gonna blow.

Although it contrasts with his deadpan voice, he is clearly having fun or at least does not really take the combat seriously. For him, this is often a game, just like US Army advertises itself as, but just as often, simple chores. There are two equally plausible readings. Either Dick sincerely enjoys war or as his cold voice suggests, he is too desensitized to see any pain and pretends to be in action flick to not get bored. However, it is pretty clear he takes particular delight in explosions, not even in a chauvinistic, or even masculine way, but more like the same way children enjoy doing mischief: "Hi ho hi ho", the childish search for a joy stands with a rather chilling contrast with a grizzly hyper-masculine warrior.

Anytime Anywhere Anyplace
Kickin ass and taking names
Who's the hardest motherfuckers around
HAH
Rock and roll, motherfuckers Rock and roll

He is the tough action hero, and in cartoonish way, but looking beneath, it's rather troubling. Because Dick actually doesn't really have a higher motive, an ideology or even blind patriotism. He just fights, "anytime anywhere anyplace". "Kicking ass, takin' names", but over the course of game, he just kills many, many nameless people. He, deep down, wants to find some meaning; so he inflates the importance of his actions. Unfortunately for him, his skills are rather unmatched, there are really no "names" to be his rival. Dick Mackenzie, is the ultimate subversion of edgy alpha hero. He is forever bitter, empty and tries to have some pleasure in the persona of a cheesy character and shiny "fireworks". Just like a child, he needs to constantly prove that he is the "hardest motherfucker around", he needs to get that affirmation, "HAH". Pay attention to the way he brings together random insults, he swears just for profanity itself, just like an adolescent child would do. Yet he is not a child, he is a middle-aged man, he can't truly act like one, he has only mere glimpses of that age "rock and roll". Perhaps, he never did a proper childhood himself, perhaps this is why he came to the path of killing nameless people in unknown places...

OOH AHHH
Hide and seek, motherfuckers
Anybody home? Daddy's here c'mon, glad to see me fuckers? *bang bang bang*
Send me the bill Motherf*cking c*cksuckers
Im over here fuckface!! (gunshot)
<Theres gonna be fucking asses bleeding all over the place>
Sorry, assholes, but your quiet day at the office is about to get severely f*cked up

He feels so empty that he actively desires the rush of a physical injury, particularly blood. He yearns blood, but particularly his own, "Anybody home" is another cheesy line on surface, but it really reveals his search for a rival, someone who might bleed his own asshole. It is followed by a particularly striking line. "Your quite day at the office" is something he will never get. He has a heroic life many people will get jealous, he is held as a masculine icon, yet all he wants inside "a quite day". He has torn apart by this very conflict, his desire for "quite day" is so strong, yet he detest being quiet. This is why he hates stealth, constantly talks and is loud as possible. Explosions, gunshots, anyway to make him possibly get hurt are his way to keep the screams of "quite day"s at bay. This is a contradiction he can never get away, he hates silence, but also frequently finds himself in needlessly dangerous stunts, so he might can have some peace, the only "quite day" he can ever have.

Anytime Anywhere Anyplace
Kicking ass and taking names
Whos the hardest motherf*ckers around, HAH?...
Gimmie a goddamn break!
But, he can't get an eternal rest normal ways, if he goes down, it needs to be epic and manly, "he is the hardest motherfucker", so he will continue to "kick ass and take names"
Good place to blow some shit up.
AH OOH MM AH HNNNGH
What the fuck was I doing again? Oh, yeah. F*cking sh*t up. (bomb sound)

Yet, he is getting old. And it is are catching up to him more and more strongly. Each kill, each pointless operation crushes what remains of Dick Mackenzie. He requires stronger and stronger stimuli, just as one can require stronger painkillers if they are overly dependant on them. In every bomb he detonates, there is more explosions and less anything else inside Dick's heart. What could he do in any given moment? "F*ckin shit up". A true murder machine, the perfect soldier, but barely anything human...

Goddamn, cock breath commie motherfuckers!
You fucking asshole You fucking pig farmers!
Drop dead motherf*cker, you fucking amateurs
I own your fucking souls fucking commie bitch
Yeah, some capitalism for you, pussy shitty pig
Time to move
I got bad guys to send to Commie Heaven
...

As typical of Cold-War era, his worldview is shaped by anti-communist propaganda. However, as I mentioned, he really doesn't care. The politics are just one-liners to him, he might just as well fight against USA, Nazis, zombies or his own parents and his ferocity, his cold demeanor would not change. In a way, he represents the players of shooter games. The main appeal of the shooters is shooting after all, we often don't care who we shoot. As we see here, this aversion to ideology can be just as, if not more dangerous than outright propaganda. Reducing "capitalism" to power of your army and "commie" to just another insult is a more insidious indoctrination than maintaining an illusion that capitalism is benevolent. Remember that, fascism often is also marketed as to be above ideology and purposes glory as the human achievement. Fascism expects you to carry about a lot of really abstract concepts, but is that really different than a man whom nothing matters besides some explosions, some epic kills, some badassary. Dick Mackenzie, the broken man, is really the model citizen of the class society under capitalism. And a true Edgy Manly Hero like him is really different the Great Man of the fascist ideal" . Notice that one of the insults Dick uses is "pig farmers". Not only "pig farmer" is a type of quiet life he can never have, but one also he seems himself above. He has a man destined for Greatness after all. But as we clearly see, the glory is just more and more of the same, to the point even being a Great Man loses its meaning. Perhaps being a nobody does not bring glory, but it does bring "a quite day in the office". Fascism promises many things, but never peace. Capitalism is also the natural enemy of the simple life. You can't be "a pig farmer", where you just work enough to feed yourself and your community. No, you have to be more and more productive, you need to optimize yourself, grow and grow forever, until we run out of everything it all gets empty. "Time to move", we have work to do. More people to shoot, it's just gun and a bad guy to blow. Personalities, emotions, thoughts, faith are all mere caricatures; just make things blow, get another kill, send another one to "Heaven". The place you can never reach, a quiet, peaceful place. But you are really cool at least, right?
The tune of the song itself confirms the same feeling. Dick might be a broken man, even his inner struggles became mundane. Despite the storms raging inside him, from outside he really is no different looking from an ordinary man, having a quiet day at his office; as if he had lived none of this, as he if he is just a grandfather trying to impress his grandchildren by telling adventures from bygone era, half-truth, half-fiction. Above all else, the adventures are fun to listen, despite whatever pain they hide inside, just like this very song itself; story of a broken man in a chill tune by colorful lines from a middle-aged man who is on a lunch break...
And, that's to me, what this song feels like!

Emotions over Epicness : Bioshock 2

(This essay contains spoilers about Bioshock games.)
Among Bioshock games, Bioshock 2 is often seen as weakest. Bioshock is loved for its strong atmosphere and philosophical depth while Bioshock Infinite is held as fast, daring and glamorous. It is said Bioshock 2 has been found weak on both fronts. But for me, it is the best in the series. I agree that, indeed it is not epic or grand-scale as the other games, and that's precisely what makes it so good, it's purely a journey of sadness, melancholy and happiness.
The game starts with an extremely impactful intro. (take a look, content warning for violence and suicide) You see a glimpse of the Rapture before total collapse. It's just a glimpse, but it is enough to see the moral rot that made it collapse, you see the inhabitants who got addicted to ADAM were just as monstrous before they got lost all of their sanity. Then, after a violent but a cathartic rescue , you watch from your eyes, as the only person you care, the only person who cares about you, the entire reason of your existence is being taken away from you, You don't know anything about this person besides him being a Big Daddy, but it is still so heartbreaking. Especially the part where the Big Daddy tries to resist the suicide order, a brief moment where he tries to assert what's left of his will is always chilling to watch. Then, 10 years later, you wake up again, with one thought in your mind: Reaching to your daughter...

(source)

You start the game by a clear sense of purpose, a simple goal which has emotional stakes for the player as well. But it's not just about saving a person you care about, it is an entire journey of asserting your humanity. You are Subject Delta, a Big Daddy whose personality and humanity is not completely crushed. Throughout your journey, you come up with a group of choices you have to make? Are you a beast who crushes everything in your path, can show mercy and compassion despite all the hostility and pain you have been suffered or are you something in between? You can determine what kind of person left in you after your brainwashing.
Of course, you are not only shaping your personality but also your daughter Elenaor's. The reveal that she has been learning from your actions and the many endings that come after that is quite poignant. The endings are complex and include actual gray areas, (not stuff I complain about) An interesting example here is Dr. Gilbert Alexander, who was responsible in creation of Big Daddies and tuned into a deranged aquatic monster from taking massive amounts of ADAM during an experiment. His lucid self wants you to put out of his misery but the monster wants to be alive? Which is more merciful here? The game does not give an answer as either way it won't prevent you to get the most merciful ending. Merely writing about Eleanor and the endings does not make them justice, they are so terrifying, bittersweet and heartwarming. The game is indeed a wild emotional rollercoaster.
Amidst this drama, the Rapture takes a back seat. While the side characters are great and the voice recordings you get are quite well-done, you don't get a delightful villain as Sandor Cohen. But, the second game wouldn't benefitted to have such a villain either, not as much the first game at least. Because Bioshock 1 was about the Rapture itself as much as or arguably more than Jack's story. In the second game, it has merely become a dungeon to save your daughter just the Rapture has got rotten with time and water, lost its importance and glamour more and more. In this way, Bioshock 2 is an excellent sequel to Bioshock 1, Rapture fades away both in-story and literally.
Speaking of villains brings us to Sofia Lamb. Much has been said about her: She is a cheap mirror of Andrew Ryan, her stance on collectivism is hypocritical, "collectivism" is itself an incoherent mess that doesn't stand for anything in real world, she is just a power-hungry cult leader.  I agree mostly too except for maybe first part, because she is excellent as a villain. It is good that she has an inconsistent ideology, that's not what's important. What's important is she is an abusive biological mother who gives up her humanity in delusions of godhood. Which is a brilliant contrast to Subject Delta, whose humanity is stolen and works through to gain it back through the real bonds he made with his daughter. Bioshock 2 isn't ideologically empty, the game's main point is Subject Delta is the real parent, parental bonds aren't a product of blood but developed by actual caring and love. This is a theme that hits so hard for so many people, it's such a shame that it gets lost in the expectations people had about the game.
Dad stories have become a thing in video games for last couple of years. While they can be engaging, I can't personally connect to them very easily. They are very masculine stories --that's not bad thing in itself --  but they are (mostly) by men, for men and about men. When I played Bioshock games in summer 2016, I had not discovered my transness yet, but I was holding similar feelings about gender deep inside and yet, I was instantly able to see myself as Subject Delta. Perhaps, this is because his erased personhood, or because you don't see his actual face. More than anything else though, the game gives the feelings of a very primal parenthood, where Subject Delta isn't the central figure, as you can only directly witness the emotions of the Little Sisters and Eleanor.
And what emotions indeed! Did I say Bioshock 2 is heartwarming yet? Because it very much it is! While it still has (in some places, a lot) creepiness to it, the game just feels cozier than Bioshock 1. Even Little Sisters are remodeled to look less uncanny (Perhaps you are seeing them so as a Big Daddy?) and their dialogue is pure cuteness - and just a tad creepy. Especially in the parts of the game where you see the world in the eyes of a Little Sister, while a lot of it feels sad and creepy in hindsight, the parts where you see the statues of yourself is not. You are really a hero for them, their only source of light in the dark and cruel world they live and by your actions they can see the surface and escape their horrible fate.

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Bioshock 2 is about small heroisms. It's not about getting surrounded by constant horror or experiencing the fall of utopias. It's a clearly game from System Shock heritage but does not feel like one  It is a game people expect epicness and greatness, but it puts the that in the background and gives a very personal story instead. But I feel what made Bioshock really Bioshock is having a scary and crushing environment contrasting the optimism of the story, I liked Bioshock in its human moments the best and Bioshock 2 just makes these moments central to the game. Theses games compliment each other very well.
Even two years later, the feelings Bioshock 2 gave me are still very much alive. Some "defend the Little Sister" sections could  be a little shorter, but other than that the game is a constant stream of... well, I said emotions a lot in this essay am I? Perhaps I like the game so much because I am just a saccharine person who gets emotional easily. Still Bioshock 1 and Bioshock 2 are definitely deserve to be played, especially when their remastered versions are out.
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson and Spencer Gill.