The Importance of the High Score

[Note by Jake: This is my first step towards expanding A Capital Wasteland to multiple writers. Introducing Jordan Parker!]

What is better than the high score?

The pursuit of the high score.

Good, but I can do better.

I applaud anyone who has run through a Call of Duty campaign on the Veteran difficulty.  For the non-initiated, the tag-line for this extreme difficulty reads: You will not survive. The tag-line is 100% accurate, and almost to a fault. Anyone who has done a Veteran run in any Call of Duty game will tell you that there are certain areas that you end up dying, reading a famous quote and respawning, over and over again. 

My personal favorite from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:

“In war; truth is the first casualty”
-Aeschylus

This cycle of game overs and respawns continues as you push up through the hail of enemy gunfire to trigger the next checkpoint, only to be maimed again and again as you trudge through the endless corridor of combatants.  There is no style in a Veteran run in Call of Duty. There is no glory in a Veteran run of a COD game.  There is nothing about it that will make you replay that last level. The only thing you feel when “Checkpoint Reached.” appears is relief, and you are thankful that you will not have to do that again.

Finally...

If Call of Duty was a test, there would be no right answers, the teacher would merely ask you to fill in all the blanks and give you full credit for finishing. The only way to further your experience is to play through the game on a harder difficulty. A game like Call of Duty doesn't ask you to correct your wrong answers and get better at the game; it doesn't encourage you to discover strategies for getting past tricky parts  It just lets you respawn until you manage to trigger the next checkpoint. Here's the rub: after you've beaten the game on the hardest offering, what else can you do?