Call of Duty 2

Call of Duty 2 started well enough, with some brilliantly atmospheric music during installation, but as I started playing it I rapidly discovered a familiar game designer fuck–up. You’re going to need to play the game through a virtual PC emulator of some kind, because the silly idiots who wrote it have forgotten to implement save game. Again. They made this mistake last time round; I was willing to forgive them. But when someone repeats the same serious mistake, you begin to realise they’re stupid. Let me make this blatantly obvious: someone with power over the design of Call Of Duty 2 is stupid. I’ll accept this is fashionable stupidity; other games have exhibited the same flaw; but you’d think by now that someone would have noticed the real world doesn’t have an off switch. It doesn’t take much intelligence to spot this detail. But, evidently, it’s beyond them. They have to be seriously stupid to not notice. What’s particularly disappointing was that Call of Duty was such an excellent game, ignoring this mistake; I’m extremely disappointed that Call Of Duty 2 has has not corrected this ever so slightly obvious fuck up. I do find such idiocy so damned irritating. Bluntly, I wish they’d grow up.

I know why they make this mistake. They want to sell the game on consoles. Unfortunately, their approach is that if something can’t be supported on a toy, then it shouldn’t be implement on a computer. It’s rather like a train designer saying that a real locomotive should be restricted to the same power as a toy locomotive. For the stupid people who haven’t understood what I’m on about, such as the person who made the decision, let me explain. Imagine you’re in a fast car, on a bendy road, stuck behind a volvo towing a caravan. You want to get somewhere, fast, now. You can’t pass, because there’s traffic coming the other way. Now, imagine you could have taken the motorway. Fast, isn’t it. Much more satisfying to drive, isn’t it. So why the f*ck do you force a sports car driver to follow a caravan? Can you really not understand how frustrating your stupidity is? Can you not realise that just because you're stupid, not everyone else is? Or are you too stupid to even work that out? Yes, you’ve got it, this lack of save game is bloody frustrating and utterly unjustifiable. It’s stupid.

It’s a pity, because the atmosphere of the learning level was excellent, at least the part I played until the cat got her claws stuck in my dressing gown.

Until I get a virtual machine in place, with the ability to be suspended and saved at any moment, either Activision have to implement a facility to switch the real world off, or this game is unplayable.

Expect more here when I’ve got over my disappointment at the designers’ failure to correct their mistake.