the death of call of duty. a game where the player themself is fully subsumed, fed into a never-ending loop of simulated war. the only way out is to let go, stop playing. walk away. but if you choose to play, your psyche is trapped.

it's kind of the perfect answer to Spec Ops: the Line. Except not nearly as preachy about its messaging. Maybe because here the metatextual is even more incestiously about the very nature of the series itself. not neceassily video games but just Call of Duty; how it will never end and just keeping going on and on, from its roots as a WWII game, feeding the player a narrative about courage and and bravery all that bullshit. it views WWII as the original sin of the franchise, that inevitably cannibalises itself, twisting and transforming into a frankestein'd monster of various online game modes; zombies; stories about confusing US interventionism; future warfare about drones and robots. you're not even playing war any more. you've transcended beyond history and you're literally shooting AI bots. by Black Ops 4, you don't even need story. only multiplayer and zombies; endless war. the way the single player in this has a scorecard and stats not unlike the multiplayer further blurs the line between game and reality. you're just a clog in the machine.

fun game.