But I find that when I shoot one of the guards, the other immediately spots me in the tall grass: Game Over. The sequence has the kind of logic that I imagine might appeal to a video game character.

Hadir wants me to call his cell phone to distract the soldiers, grab the revolver, ice them, and steal the truck. The gun is graciously signposted-it’s on top of a covered well in the center of the scene. Out of the mouths of relative babies, objectives are updated. Then, with composure befitting a tier one operator. At the edge of town, Hadir stops near a transport guarded by two soldiers: “If we run away, they’ll catch us.” As Farah, I stalked that soldier from cover and stabbed at him precisely three times, the fatal number for most video game bosses (Hadir, encouragingly after one thrust: “It’s working!”). They don’t flinch at the gunshots-in fact, they’ve already killed one soldier by then. Mind you, that doesn’t stop them from sneaking through the chlorine fog in gas masks, past troops firing perfunctory bullets into the dead or dying. But this is a flashback to what I’m to understand is their first brush with war, when occupying Russian forces gas their village and kill their father. I’m already familiar with these two as adults in the present, where they’re Hadir and Farah, ultracompetent freedom fighters for the nation of Urzikstan. He’s telling his sister (no older) to go kill a couple Russian soldiers and steal their truck.

What strikes me when playing the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is that the directives are coming from someone who’s 10 years old, tops. Game Details Developer: Activision and Infinity Ward

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