First-person shooters today aren’t very realistic. You might respond to such a statement by saying “well it’s just a video game, of course it’s not realistic” but it’s important to consider games like Call of Duty pride themselves on creating accurate and believable representations of the real world. That’s why the story mode is often considered so epic.
The entire point of an FPS game is to “transport” the player into the game’s fictional world. As cliche as it sounds, you can sometimes forget you are even playing a game and feel like you’re actually on the battlefield. In gaming terms, the fictional reality being portrayed by the game is called diegesis and the ability of the gamer to assume the role of his character in a natural way is called agency.
When there are obvious “game-like” mechanics added to the seemingly realistic universe, it can take you right out of the experience because you become aware the game world actually doesn’t function properly. Many times things are added in for the benefit of the player (who is outside of the game world) and make absolutely no sense from the perspective of inside the game’s world. Sometimes this is necessary to ensure the player has a fun and fair experience while playing. For example, using a heads-up display on the screen helps the player know the current state of his character. Games shouldn’t be ultra-realistic or else they wouldn’t be fun to play.
On the other hand, there are some areas where a game has no reason to change things from reality. Sometimes things become so unbelievable that it negatively affects the game when features are “passed off” as realistic when they aren’t. One great example of this listed below is how claymores function. Developers like Treyarch and Infinity Ward spend so much time ensuring the look, feel, and sound of guns are realistic so why should they let this effort go to waste by just making up how other things work?
Here are five things about the Call of Duty franchise in particular which are very unrealistic. This isn’t to say Call of Duty is bad, in fact the reason CoD games make for such good examples is because of how popular they are. It could be argued that Call of Duty sets the bar for other first-person shooters.
1) Hitmarkers
Whenever you hit an enemy in the Call of Duty franchise, your aiming reticle changes to a distinct “X” shape signifying a hit. What exactly is this supposed to represent in the real world? In older shooters, the only way you knew that you hit someone was that their body would jerk slightly, blood would spatter on the wall behind them, and you would hear an audible grunt if you were close enough (why isn’t there any blood in Call of Duty anyway? You should think spraying a guy with an Ak-47 at close range would paint the wall behind him).
Hitmarkers help people get kills when they fire at a wall randomly and see a hit marker. The player now knows someone is there although the soldier they are controlling should not. This leads to players continually shooting into walls for no other reason than because they see hit markers telling them they are getting hits. In role-playing games, using outside knowledge that your character should not be aware of is called metagaming.
2) Reloading
When you reload in many shooters today, Call of Duty included, there aren’t actually magazines of ammo. It’s just a number of total bullets you have. For example, say you are carrying two 30 round magazines. If you fire 10 rounds out of one magazine before reloading and then 20 rounds out of your next magazine before reloading, you’re somehow left with a full 30 round magazine. That doesn’t make sense. Where does this third magazine come from?
You should have one with 20 rounds left and one with 10 rounds left. Why would these extra rounds be combined into one extra mag? Again, this is a “game-like” mechanic catering to the player who should be outside of the game world. Within the frame of the game itself, it has no rational explanation. This takes away from the realism as players now reload after every single engagement. It makes things easier because players don’t have to worry about their ammunition at all until they completely run out of it. In the real world, ammunition left in the magazine is something you always have to keep in your mind. You wouldn’t want to reload too much because you would be wasting mags (but on the other hand you wouldn’t want to enter an engagement with a one that was nearly empty).
3) Claymores
In just about any Call of Duty game, claymores have these little red beams that act as motion sensors and know when an enemy is running by. This type of claymore mine doesn’t actually exist in real life. In reality, claymores are detonated one of two ways: the first, and by far the most common, is manually by hand using a small handheld remote called a “clacker.” The second way is by trip-wire. This is similar to the way they work in Call of Duty but don’t use motion sensors. It is literally just a wire that is drawn across a path connected between the claymore and another point. When an enemy (or a friendly for that matter) trips the wire, the mine goes off. It seems like there is no reason at all for changing them in the game. The game would be just as much fun (if not more so actually), if players had to manually detonate claymores instead of setting them and forgetting about them.
Another problem with claymores is that people can sometimes sprint through them without being killed. Considering an M18 claymore uses a small amount of C4 to propel the ball-bearings inside, this isn’t likely at all. Take a look at this video of a claymore blast. Do you think anybody standing near it would be able to survive the explosion simply because they were “behind” it when it exploded?
4) Aiming down the sights
In the first episode of GTTV’s new season, they introduced a segment called “Combat Facts.” Asking a military expert, they determined that most of the sights used in games like Call of Duty aren’t realistic. Using a red dot to hit targets from a distance (which happens all the time in CoD) would be extremely difficult. The ACOG, which looks like a crosshair in the game, is just completely made up. What they didn’t mention is that when you aim down the sights, your view is never restricted.
When a soldier aims down the sights of a gun, they typically close one eye to increase accuracy. In fact, the concept of ocular dominance explains why the target will seem to move depending on which eye you look through. People have a dominant eye that tells them the “real” information. To see what I’m talking about, put your finger out in front of you pointing up (pretending it is a sight) and aim it at an object. Now, close one eye and look at it. Then open that eye and close the other. You’ll see your finger “jump” to one side when looking through your weak eye. That’s why people look through sights with just one, to ensure accuracy (with the exception of holographic reflex sights which can be used with both eyes open and work well at close range such as clearing rooms with shotguns or submachine guns).
So why doesn’t your peripheral view “blacken” on one side of your screen when you aim down the sights? It looks more like you are bringing the gun up right in the middle of your face, in front of your nose rather than up to one eye. This isn’t very realistic at all.
5) Killstreaks
The problem here isn’t that killstreaks exist, they are a unique part of the game, it’s that many times they don’t act as they would in the real world. For example, why can the RC-XD in Black Ops go up stairs? If you try to do that with the car that came in your Prestige Edition, it obviously doesn’t work. Some modern RC cars today do have the ability to travel up stairs but Black Ops doesn’t take place today, it takes place years ago during the Cold War. There’s no way RC technology of that time could do this. On the same token, if you kill the soldier controlling an RC-XD, why doesn’t the car stop working? How could that person be controlling a remote controlled car from the grave?
Another type of killstreak that makes no sense are the ones in which the player controls an aircraft. What is the soldier who called in this air support supposedly doing this entire time? Hiding in a corner?
The problem here is that these killstreaks aren’t actually being controlled by the soldier in the game world, but by the player from outside of the game acting as some omnipotent force. This ruins the agency the developers worked so hard to achieve between the character and the player in the first place.
(This article was originally published on Examiner.com)