Your "I Really Hate My Birthday" Quizo Update

I get asked often why it is I dislike my birthday so much. It’s simple, really:

If every day is just another inexorable step towards our demise, birthdays are signposts along the way, reminding us that we are that much closer to the end of the road.

This year I took the first-ever step of getting a “birthday present for myself.” This is not something I have ever done on my birthday or Christmas – a “present to yourself” being not a present after all, but just another thing one spends money on – but after Chelsea’s unfortunate loss to Arsenal yesterday I was feeling especially morbid, so on a previously planned shopping trip to the Death Star I said, “you know what, the hell with it,” and got myself something for my birthday. My choice of self-present was Call of Duty: World at War (aka Call of Duty 5). Now I enjoy Call of Duty 4 as much as the next person, but CoD5 surpasses its predecessor in three very important ways.

Firstly, while CoD4’s story about fighting terrorism and rogue states and the fragility of the modern political order was very surprising for both its excellence and how depressing it was – one must give respect to a game where one of your characters gets quite literally nuked halfway through it and the other quietly bleeds out at the end – as far as wargames go there is little that compares to the visceral thrill of fighting Nazis. What can I say? I’m a sucker for the classics.

Secondly, CoD5 has the most uses of the word “fuck” in a video game since… well, ever, actually. I can’t think of one that comes even close, and looking back on it CoD4 would have been greatly improved if every time a grenade went off or one of your squadmates got shot or you looked at a bush someone shouted “FUCK!” or some variation thereto. It’s like someone took the screenplays for Saving Private Ryan and Scarface and mashed them together.

Thirdly, CoD5 points out that CoD4 suffers from a distinct lack of Kiefer Sutherland. I’m playing the first level yesterday and the first time your sergeant starts talking I went “OH MY GOD JACK BAUER!” and knew that the rest of the game could be awful (it is not) and I wouldn’t care and that because of the presence of Kiefer would love it forever. Kiefer Sutherland is like the butter of entertainment: he can make anything taste better.

JLK