Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War- Part IV Review and Reflection, Wrapping Up Loose Ends

“You go in with the intel you have, not the intel you want.” –Jason Hudson

With the evidence Bell collects and solves following his assignments, Mason is sent out to take out two targets believed to be assets for Perseus. In Operation Chaos, Mason heads to a desolate stretch of highway near the Colorado-Mexico border, where they’ve spotted a convoy of Spetsnaz soldiers protecting Robert Aldrich, a former CIA agent began working for the KGB. After Mason and Woods fight through the Spetsnaz forces, they reach a motel where Aldrich is hiding and shoot him dead. Mason quickly photographs Aldrich’s corpse to confirm the kill before fighting their way back to the extraction zone. Later, Mason is sent to the frozen, snowy mountains of the Uzbek SSR to assassinate Major Vadim Rudnik, who has secretly been working to install sleeper agents in positions of power within Europe. Mason investigates a Soviet communications base to locate Rudnik before he escapes and manages to find him hiding inside a bunker. Mason summarily shoots Rudnik, confirms the kill with a photograph and then holds out against attacking Soviet forces before his ride arrives. Cold War‘s side missions act as an additional piece to the game in which exploration is encouraged: in order to successfully complete these side missions, one must locate the evidence within the main missions, and then solve a series of puzzles. This represents a novel chance of pace to Cold War: if memory serves, previous Call of Duty games only required steady aim and swift reflexes to solve, so the inclusion of puzzles in Cold War that test a player’s logic ended up being very enjoyable, speaking to how narrative and novel gameplay elements can be seamlessly incorporated into a genre whose success usually hinges on delivering consistent and satisfying gun-play.

In order to have the optimal experience with Operation Chaos, where Aldrich must be found and neutralised, players must first allow Qasim to live in Nowhere Left to Rin, which produces a code. Then, photographing a map in Red Light, Green Light will unlock a newspaper clipping, and finally, a numbers station broadcast found in Brick in the Wall will yield the final piece of the puzzle. With these three items, one can work out the passkey and passphrase using a numerical pattern in the coded message needed to get into the floppy disk: solving for the four-digit numerical code and the name of the city as the passphrase will allow one to properly take on Operation Chaos. For Operation Red Circus, players will need to find Franz Kraus’ ledger from Brick in the Wall, a cassette tape in Echoes of a Cold War and a wristwatch containing a list of dead drops in Desperate Measures. With this information, players can then work out, using invoice dates and their locations, the identities of three persons of interest, which makes Operation Red Circus possible. The patterns for both Chaos and Red Circus are easy to spot: the remaining code for the former can easily be derived by solving a mathematical series, and a little bit of lining dates up will enable one to work out their suspects. Having a physical piece of paper handy could make working out the answers a little faster, and in this moment, one does feel like a cryptographer trying to work out some pattern that could help them to achieve their goals. The puzzles themselves are easily solved (asking players to implement SHA-2 would, while being a more realistic experience, be completely outrageous), but it adds a newfound level of immersion into Cold War: the last time I had such an experience would’ve been with Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, where I similarly had fun putting my love for solving logic puzzles to use to unlock intel needed to hunt down the various Übercommanders. Cold War has, time and time again, proven to exceed expectations by incorporating elements that aren’t usually present in a first-person shooter, and in this way, demonstrates that there is plenty of opportunity for single-player campaigns to excite and challenge players in unexpectedly fun ways.

Screenshots and Commentary

• Operation Chaos opens with Mason and Woods touching down on a lonely desert highway in the middle of nowhere under a crescent moon. Mason starts this mission with the M60 (equipped with a Hawksman holographic sight) and the Hauer 77 (with a Milstop red dot sight). Call of Duty traditionally gives light machine guns poor handling traits – they’re ineffective in close quarters situations, but their higher damage and large ammunition capacity makes them better suited for handling larger groups enemies at moderate ranges.

• After reaching the gas station, I immediately swapped out the Hauer 77 for an XM4, a precursor to the M4 Carbine with strong all-around characteristics. Cold War fully captures the aesthetics of buildings in the Sonoran Desert, with their tacky designs and flimsy-looking constructions. No expense was spared for details, and the interior of this gas station convenience store looks well-stocked with the sorts of things one might expect to find at these roadside stations.

• Making my way through a trailer park, I engaged with multiple enemies concealed in the darkness. Previously, in Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, I had access to IRNV goggles and the AN/PEQ-2A laser module, which, in Price’s words, made things too easy. Since I’m striking on a moonlit night here, the lack of night vision becomes less of a challenge, and I stayed in cover, used the enemy’s muzzle flash to determine their position and returned fire accordingly.

• Motels are often the best choice for lengthy road trips, especially where one is less concerned with the quality of accommodations and simply need a place to kip for the night. When I was younger, motels were our choice of accommodations for road trips – despite their reputation, some motels are well-maintained and provide a clean and inexpensive place to settle down for the night, even offering some services to make things easier for guests: when I was travelling years earlier, I have particularly fond memories of a motel that offered a complementary continental breakfast, for instance.

• After reaching the motel Aldrich is hiding out at, I quickly identified him, aimed down the XM4’s sights and double-tapped him. Once Aldrich and his guards are down, the only thing left to do is verify Aldrich’s identity. I’m actually not too sure what happens in this mission if I fail to decrypt the floppy disk ahead of time – a cursory Google search doesn’t yield anything, and most results simply deal with how to decrypt the floppy drive so that this mission can be completed correctly. I’d hazard a guess that either Aldrich gets away, or one would encounter more difficulty in finding him.

• Once Aldrich is neutralised, the Soviet forces will shoot down one of the UH-1s intended to be the team’s exfil, and converge on the hotel. Fortunately, there’s a M79 handy for destroying the convoy of vehicles that show up: the grenades are very powerful and will turn the entire group of vehicles into smouldering husks on very short order. The M79 brings back memories of Far Cry 4‘s grenade launcher, which was classified as a sidearm and could be used to utterly devastate enemy vehicles.

• On the topic of Far Cry, I’m not too sure if I’ll pick up Far Cry 6 just yet: on one hand, the game looks very ambitious in its mechanics and world-building, which would be a great single-player story-based experience of the sort I’m looking for, but on the other, I’m never too sure how much time I have these days to sit down to a full-length campaign, and my computer might not be able to handle the game. For Far Cry 6, then, it looks like the logical thing to do is wait and see: once I’ve had a look at the gameplay, I’ll be able to make a clearer decision. On the other hand, Halo: Infinite is a no-brainer since I know precisely what to expect, and after seeing the E3 for Infinite, I can say with confidence I’m excited to see how this one turns out.

• Owing to their simple layouts, motels aren’t often featured in first person shooters, but Cold War does an excellent job of utilising the setting fully to create a fully-fleshed out, if somewhat shorter mission. Before heading back to the exfil, I grab another M60 and take a look at the motel’s swimming pool, which is rendered well, before heading back down the road into town, where the backup extraction point is located.

• I’ve never been particularly fond of deserts in video games or film and will make it a point to skip them where possible. The reason why deserts are a big deal in science fiction seems to stem from 1965’s Dune, and Star Wars really popularised it owing to the symbolism deserts supposedly have. I appreciate that deserts can be beautiful for their ecosystems, and Les Stroud’s desert survival episodes are always good, but as far as a setting for film or video games go, the overuse in Star Wars means I tend not to like them as much.

• After clearing enough of the trailer park out to secure a landing zone for the helicopter, I take one quick look back at the settlement before boarding to end the first of the side missions. The simplicity of the mission speaks to how Cold War is able to take a straightforward objective and adding enough of a build-up to really create the sense of urgency surrounding wet work.

• The second of the side missions, Operation Red Circus, is set in a location more befitting of the Cold War setting: for one, it’s set in the Soviet mountains under a fresh snowfall. Unlike Operation Chaos, Red Circus happens by day, and there’s a hard time limit on how long one has to actually locate Rudnik before he escapes. Mason starts the mission with the Pelington 703 bolt action rifle and the XM4. Neither weapons are suppressed, so the moment Mason fires that first shot, finding Rudnik means dealing with the armada of Soviet soldiers defending the base.

• Players must search for Rudnik inside the various buildings in this installation, and my familiarity with first-person shooters means that I had a gut feeling that the game would require I search all of the buildings before locating Rudnik himself. To prevent players from blazing through such missions, the game will spawn assets and trigger corresponding events in response to the players’ actions: in Bad Company 2‘s Sangre del Toro mission: players could visit the relays in any order of their choosing, but all three needed to be visited in order to set the stage for what’s next.

• Having the XM4 makes dealing with soldiers at closer ranges easier; the Pelington 703 isn’t suited for close quarters combat at all. However, with its VisionTech 2x sight, the XM4 in this mission is kitted out as more of an intermediate range weapon, suited for engagements between 20 and 50 metres. Having said this, the XM4 remains satisfactory in close quarters because it’s equipped with a laser sight. Laser sights are portrayed as increasing hipfire accuracy in most games: in reality, they project a beam onto a target to give a clearer picture of where one is aiming.

• Laser sights, being electronic equipment, have the downside that they require a power supply, reveal the shooter’s position and aren’t particularly useful at long ranges (or in bright conditions). This usually isn’t a concern in games, and the increased hipfire accuracy is a reflection of how having the laser speeds up target acquisition times by providing a shooter with a good indicator of where they’re aiming. One study in law enforcement also finds that laser sights act to intimidate targets: fiction is particularly fond of using this as an element, especially in high stakes hostage situations.

• Of course, much as I don’t expect fiction to line up with reality, I am okay with the application of different weapon attachments to alter gameplay mechanics. My general tendency to give fiction a high tolerance for realism comes from the fact that I experience stories to learn something, not to be a harsh critic on how realistic something is. This is, unfortunately, something that not everyone respects: today, the latest Super Cub episode aired, and while I had fun watching it (I’ll aim to get a review for the past two episodes for Friday), the thread at AnimeSuki has seen one “serenade_beta” consistently making sarcastic, patronising remarks about the show and its characters.

• With Super Cub‘s tenth and eleventh episodes, these remarks escalated to wishing death on Koguma. “serenade_beta”‘s behaviour is, quite frankly, disgraceful, and I’m hoping that reporting him will, at the very least, get those remarks stricken from the forum. While for now, no one’s agreed with him, allowing them to exist would set a bad precedence for what anime discussion entails. While people are permitted their opinions of anime, what “serenade_beta” has been doing is immature and callous, undeserving of consideration; one wishes that removing him from the conversation would be as straightforward as dealing with Rudnik and Aldrich.

• After clearing out all three of the structures, Mason will find no sign of Rudnik. I ended up switching over to an AK-47 off the XM4 for variety’s sake; in most Call of Duty games, the starting weapons for a given mission will be more than enough for the task, although this also means not being able to try out the different weapons, all of which have different traits and can be fun to use in their own right; this is one reason why I have plans to revisit Modern Warfare 2: Remastered at some point in the future, especially since the game allows one to dual-wield certain weapons, and I never tried this on my original play-through last month.

• As I did with Aldrich, after entering the room where Rudnik is hiding out, I blasted Rudnik with headshots to finish the assignment and then took a photograph of his corpse for the kill confirmation. It always did strike me as a little hasty that the photographs could be seen that quickly by Mason’s handlers, since this is before the age of digital cameras and the ability to transfer data wirelessly, but this is something I’m willing to live with since it accommodates the game’s progression.

• After Rudnik is six feet under, a horde of Soviet soldiers will converge on Mason’s position while he awaits for his ride. The Stoner 63 LMG joins me for this fight, along with another conveniently-placed Type 66: I ended up hunkering down on the roof of the bunker and fended off the soldiers using a combination of precision fire from the Type 66, which has become one of my favourite weapons of the Cold War campaign, and then using the Stoner 63 to lay down suppressing fire. While it’s only rocking the standard seventy-five round belt here, this is enough to work with.

• I realise I’ve been writing a great deal about Cold War over these past few weeks: I’ve been advancing through the game at a breakneck pace, certainly faster than I usually do, and I am aiming to finish up Cold War very soon so I can turn my attention to other things. Before then, I plan on writing about Super Cub before the week is out (and give a proper talk on things), but I have noticed that my talks on Super Cub are poorly received despite my effort to ensure a useful and comprehensive post for readers; if there’s any feedback on why my Super Cub talks are substandard, I wouldn’t mind hearing them. In the meantime, readers have my word that after today, there will only be one more post about Cold War‘s campaign.

Once the puzzles themselves are solved, the resulting missions players go on as Mason are run-of-the-mill vignettes, both of which entail a familiar pattern of entering the target area, neutralising the army protecting the HVT, and then beating a hasty exit before retaliation can follow. However, these side missions also allow players to shoot their way through new locations that are otherwise not seen anywhere else in the campaign; these locations are stunningly rendered and highly atmospheric. From the seedy desert motel in Colorado, to the frigid Soviet military installation, level design creates a very convincing backdrop for players that adds to the campaign experience. Overall, the inclusion of these smaller items in Cold War serve to encourage players to explore: previous Call of Duty games included things like intel or weapon parts that could be found in the campaigns, which, when unlocked, allowed for things from having more loadout options for the single-player modes, to even introducing cheats for creating a more exotic experience. Call of Duty games have long been derided for popularising the short campaign trend, but the reality is that the campaigns are designed to invite replay. For folks whose priority are the multiplayer modes, they’re unlikely to give too much thoughts on the story, but players who enjoy campaigns will find that they can be very well-crafted and convey a more meaningful set of ideas. In the case of Cold War, the game also encourages creative, lateral thinking, which is to the game’s credit and creates a much deeper, more immersive experience than the first-person shooter genre otherwise suggests.

Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War- Part III Review and Reflection, Behind Enemy Lines in Moscow and Cuba

“If I couldn’t put my life in the hands of vetted strangers, I’d be in a different line of work.” –Russell Adler

In order to infiltrate the Lubyanka Building, Alder and Bell count on help from KGB double-agent Dimitri Belikov: on the day of the operation, he attends a meeting to discuss the possibility of a mole within the KGB, and suggests that only General Charkov retains his bunker access key card. This change of events forces Belikov to improvise – he knocks out a security guard and disables the building’s CCTV cameras before bribing a guard with a Cuban cigar; the guard reluctantly allows Belikov access to the armoury, where he quickly reprograms a new key card for bunker access. After obtaining the key card, he lets Adler and Bell into the building. From here, Bell and Adler fight their way through the bunker and reach the vault where the list is being stored. Bell places a gas canister as a contingency measure, secures the documents and manages to rescue Belikov, who has been outed as the mole. The group manage to escape the building and return to West Berlin, learning that Cuban scientist Theodore Hastings is one of the sleeper agents they’d been seeking, and moreover, that Perseus likely intends to have Fidel Castro help him move one of the nuclear bombs in exchange for a favour. With this knowledge, Bell, Adler, Park and Azoulay head to Cuba, where they fight their way through the building where Hastings is held. Upon reaching Hastings, they learn that Perseus had ordered him and his team to reverse-engineer the detonation codes for all of the Greenlight devices, intending to frame the United States for the attack and create a new world order with the Soviet Union on top. Hastings was mortally wounded and dies shortly after, and the team takes off in pursuit of Perseus, who manages to escape. With their mission compromised, Bell and the team prepare to extract, but a Cuban soldier wounds Bell, Park and Azoulay with an RPG. Bell is forced to save Park, leaving Azoulay behind, along with a pile of questions that linger following their botched mission. Without alternatives, Adler authorises use of a cerebral injection to force Bell to give up any secrets he may still be holding onto.

In Cold War‘s third quarter, the gameplay really demonstrates what is possible with contemporary shooters as far as options go – Call of Duty games have traditionally been very linear in design and had a singular focus on shooting one’s way to victory. However, Cold War has players experience things from new perspectives, and this creates a much more compelling story, showing the moments that lead up to firefights, and how in espionage, social engineering and the human factor have a role to play, as well. In this regard, the mission Desperate Measures, which is seen from both Belikov and Bell’s perspectives, acts as a superb example of how big-budget games can allow players to impart their own approach towards problem solving, something that previously was thought to be limited to walking simulators, narrative-driven games that are driven by player choices. Pure walking simulators are often thought of as lacking in innovation, vapid and jejune, depriving players of agency. It is the case that most walking simulators are hopelessly dull and preachy, but there are definitely some insightful titles have a meaningful story to tell, as well. Cold War‘s exploration-driven segments are remarkably well-done because one’s choices as Belikov can dramatically alter how difficult it is to secure a bunker keycard. Cold War gives players several options to approach this, and for each option, sub-options become available. On first glance, killing Charkov is the easiest route, since he has a keycard. However, this is fraught with unknowns: stabbing him may blow Belikov’s cover if not timed correctly, and poisoning Charkov requires a sample of Nova 6, which is kept in a restricted area. Even if Belikov secures the Nova 6, the conversation with Charkov is a tightrope act; one could screw up the conversation and accidentally drink their own poisoned tea. Conversely, one could go for a much more clandestine route and gain access to the armoury. This route leaves Charkov alive, eliminating the risk that Belikov faces and assures him of a bunker key card: it takes a little more patience to make this one work, but the route is much more straightforward in the long run. While as Bell, the goal is simply to gather the document and eliminate all Soviet enemies, seeing Belikov’s actions leading up to the firefight is to provide players with an experience that demonstrates the level of decision-making needed to navigate a side of espionage that is desperately tricky, in turn augmenting the immersion in Cold War.

Screenshots and Commentary

• While exploring the building, I ended up finding a Cuban Cigar, and figured that the best possible route would be to try and cut my own keycard. This approach would result in the fewest deaths, and I certainly had no wish to poison Charkov. The choices players make will impact how easy it is to get the keycard needed to let Bell and Adler: some choices will result in Belikov being compromised or even killed. Throughout Cold War, the choices that players make will impact the game in meaningful ways: since I ended up sparing one of the informants in the East German mission, it became necessary to kill him.

• Cold War does not offer many details for players while they’re playing as Belikov, but providing a map helps one to make their choices. In the end, players will succeed regardless of what method they take, and while is possible to kill everyone in sight, I’ve always had a fondness for figuring things out in the most elegant manner possible in games because it’s fun to see what happens when I do things as closely as I would in real life. I thus secured the keycard and got through the first part of the mission without any difficulties.

• One part that caught me a little off guard was when Imran Zakhaev enters the elevator with Bell and Adler and strikes up a conversation with the two. While failing the conversation has no negative consequences, until the guns come out, I prefer talking my way through things: I ended up mentioning a General Sobol, having heard his name earlier, and Zakhaev therefore remains unaware that anything is off. Once the elevator reaches the bunker, it’s back to business: players gain the MP5 with a Sillix holographic sight and STANAG fifty-round drum magazine. The customisations in Cold War, while nothing jaw-dropping, are still fun, allowing one to change out weapons in a way that alters their handling.

• The modified MP5 Bell carries become a close-quarters hipfire LMG, and backing this up is the Gallo SA12 with a twelve round tube magazine. Modelled after the SPAS-12, the SA-12 is a semi-automatic shotgun with moderate stats, making it a solid contender in the campaign for close ranges. For the longest time, I used to wonder why games would portray the SPAS-12 with the distinct railing, and others would not. It turns out that the FIE Corp variant is seen here (which is also used in 007 Nightfire), with its stock folded up, whereas the other version (seen in The Division 2, Half-Life 2 and Agent Under Fire) is the American Arms Inc. fixed-stock version.

• The bunker underneath the KGB headquarters isn’t anything resembling a Bond-villain lair, but it’s still quite large and in some places, well-appointed, indicating that the bunker was designed to be utilised as a survival shelter of sorts in the event of an atomic attack on top of acting as a highly secure storage site for important documents. I imagine that the bunker seen in Cold War is likely a fictional one: the Soviets were supposed to have a secret underground system, Д-6, to act as a nuclear shelter, but beyond rumours, no one has ever found any concrete evidence for its existence.

• The top-secret nature of numerous Cold War projects is such that they create intrigue even today, and this is one of the reasons why I find the Cold War to be such a fascinating part of history. The extreme secrecy behind many projects and initiatives create wild speculation online in the modern era, with things like the nature of the UVB-75 broadcasts, or near constant UFO sightings in areas where the United States military were testing new aircraft commanding a certain pull towards folks seeking thrilling and mysterious stories.

• Here, Adler instructs Bell to place a device into the ventilation system that will release a toxic gas when activated. The pair are getting close to the vault itself now, and here, I will note that I am fairly impressed both with Cold War‘s performance on my eight-year-old machine, as well as my machine for being able to run such a game. While there are frame drops and artefacts, as well as the fact that my GPU can’t do the latest ray-tracing computations, the game runs smoothly enough at high settings at 1080p to confer an enjoyable experience. The true test for my machine will be whether or not it can handle Battlefield 2042 on at least high settings and still push 60 FPS, as well as Far Cry 6, which looks stunning.

• There are a lot of technologies my five-year-old GPU won’t have access to, but I’m frankly impressed that the card I have now has lasted as long as it did. The time is probably overdue for me to build a new desktop, but with chips remaining very pricey (assuming stock exists at all), I feel that, should I decide to go for any of Battlefield 2042 or Far Cry 6, if I can at least run the game with playable framerates, I’ll count that as a win. Here, the vault can be seen at the end of this large room: I’ve finished clearing it out before going for the screenshots. I tend to go for screenshots before or after firefights, since mid-firefight, taking damage turns the screen red, resulting in poor results.

• Inside the vault, a host of tape machines can be seen, and at the end, there’s a computer terminal Bell can use to pull the list of sleeper agents from. While tapes appear to be a very archaic way of storing data, especially with SSDs, tapes are more durable and have a much greater capacity compared to conventional hard drives. The reason why tapes are unpopular for modern computers is because tapes are good for sequential access, while computers require direct access. As such, while tapes are great for safely backing up large amounts of data for infrequent retrieval, conventional hard drives allow one to do read and writes more easily.

• During a lull in the fighting, where waves of soldiers will attack, I come across the Desert Eagle, referred to as the “Hand Cannon” in Cold War. With an integral green laser sight, the weapon is devastating and kills in a single shot. However, one only gets eight shots with it, and once it empties out, the weapon is useless since additional ammunition cannot be obtained. During the frenzied firefight, I used it to blast attacking soldiers, marvelling at how it throws enemies back: despite its small capacity, that the weapon is a one-shot kill means that it can be used to quickly deal with enemies in a pinch and potentially buy enough space to survive a difficult moment.

• When Bell and Adler begin gaining the upper hand, the Soviets cut the power to the bunker. The darkened underground setting brings back memories of the Metro series, and it is with a jolt that I realise that some eight years have passed since I first heard about Metro: when I built my current desktop, NVIDIA had been bundling copies of Metro: Last Light with their GPUs, and it proved to be a fantastic adventure. I have very fond memories of Metro: Last Light, whose sophisticated campaign and masterfully crafted setting immersed me into a franchise I’d previously never heard of.

• Striking a balance between combat and survival-horror, Metro: Last Light would lead me into the series, and two years ago, I finished Metro: Exodus, finding it a phenomenal experience. That Cold War brought back these memories speaks to the distinct nature of Soviet architecture. Here, I’m still hanging onto the Hand Cannon as I push through the darkened bunker, but once Adler realises Belikov has been burned, he orders Bell to activate the gas. This knocks out the Soviet soldiers, and Bell hastens to put a gas mask on Belikov. Once they reach the bunker’s elevator, the three equip heavy armour and prepare to blast their way out of the Lubyanka Building.

• In a moment reminiscent of Modern Warfare 3‘s final mission, players walk through the main hall of the Lubyanka Building with an RPD and blast everything that moves. This light machine gun is a staple weapon used by Soviet forces (and some Viet Cong soldiers): by default, it has a fifty-round drum magazine and is counted to have excellent handling traits. For this last segment of Desperate Measures, however, I’ve got an upgraded hundred-round drum instead, allowing me to make short work of the soldiers standing between Bell and the extraction without reloading as often.

• Desperate Measures turned out to be the perfect balance of exploration and action: previous Call of Duty games were purely about firefights, but Cold War marks the first time where player choices have an impact on subtle things in the game. By putting decision-making in players’ hands, players must play out a game knowing their actions have an impact down the line. Empowering players thus indicates that the power they attain also has an attendant responsibility, and that in real life, any choice one makes similarly have consequences individuals must take responsibility for. In Desperate Measures, for instance, my choice to spare the East German informant poses a risk to Adler’s operation, so now I must set things right.

• It turns out that, had I taken the time to read the informant’s file and then shot him earlier, I might’ve spared myself the trouble of having to do so in a building full of KGB and Soviet soldiers. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and since I have a preference for not leaving behind loose ends, I opted to eliminate him, knowing that this made my assignment a tad riskier. In the end, I got everything done, and here, before I leave the Lubyanka Building, I take one last look at the main hall before departing with Adler and Belikov. Even on my older machine, the interior looks amazing.

• The next mission, End of the Line, sees me fly over to Cuba with the goal of securing the sleeper agent. At this point, if players haven’t finished off the side missions, Operation Red Circus and Operation Chaos will become inaccessible after players accept End of the Line. On my play-through, I stopped after Desperate Measures, having found the evidence needed to decrypt a floppy disk for Red Circus, and chose to play through both side missions before continuing. I’ll recount my experiences with Cold War‘s side missions later and will only note now that they’re shorter missions that were quite fun to unlock and play through.

• End of the Line Starts players with the LW3 Tundra, this time, without the suppressor. In Cuba, it’s Fidel Castro’s forces Bell and his team fight against. While Castro is mentioned to be assisting Perseus in the briefings, he never shows up in-person like Black Ops, where players were tasked with assassinating Castro. Being the leader of Cuba from 1976 to 2008, Castro is a polarising figure; he is credited with improving the quality of life in Cuba by proponents, but counted by others as a dictator bent on controlling freedom of expression. Thus, when Black Ops sets players with assassinating Castro, Cuba responded with opposition.

• There are always both sides to a coin, and I personally have no strong opinions about Castro as a leader. In general, this is how I approach contemporary politics, as well, and it is therefore to my dismay that Western media is so quick to dæmonise anyone whose ideologies deviate even slightly from what is accepted here. I am not saying that people should acquiesce to a form of government that lack checks and balances, or lack accountability to the people, but instead, people should make an honest effort to, at the very least, understand how a foreign system works before passing judgement, as well as acknowledge that alternate perspectives typically exist.

• It is therefore a disheartening to watch the news over here wherever foreign events are covered; most outlets only run things from one perspective, and journalists have no qualms in labelling an entire people and their culture as evil, even fabricating claims to smear said people to turn public opinion against them if it suits said journalists’ goals. The end result is a misrepresentation (or outright untruthful) presentation of what happened with no room for discussion or consideration. For instance, with the release of an activist from prison overseas, our media has seen fit to cover the story as being highly relevant and push the same tired narrative even if the story matters little to the people here, on the sole virtue that said activist has a large Twitter following.

• I’ve seen it fit to pay such stories no mind; follower counts are irrelevant, and I doubt I’d get along with sycophants who revere people with half a million followers, so I’ll return the discussion back to Cold War, where I’ve swapped off my starting M1911 for an AK-47. The LW3 is a great weapon for picking off foes defending the building Hastings is in, but upon getting closer, it’s prudent to pick up a weapon better suited for close quarters combat: much of the level is set inside the building, and the LW3 won’t be of too much use in a confined space.

• The Milano 821 is modelled after the Italian Socimi Type 821 which was designed in 1983 and entered service in 1984. While outwardly a copy of the Uzi, the Type 821 is an improvement in every way, making it easier to handle, more accurate and even be fired one-handed while retaining satisfactory control. I imagine that the Cold War incarnation is named after the fact that SOCIMI is based in Milan, Italy. As a weapon, it’s certainly fun to use: here, I’m rocking a stock Milano 821 with the standard magazine and iron sights.

• While I’ve long felt iron sights to be ill-suited for my playstyle, of late, I’ve become much more comfortable running with iron sights in games. Before games like Call of Duty popularised aiming down sights, games tended to let players fire from the hip (Half-Life, Halo, Counterstrike). The inclusion of iron sights was intended to complement aiming down sights to increase accuracy and control at the expensive of mobility. This would slow down a firefight, forcing players to make use of positioning and cover, whereas games without these elements are more about movement.

• In games where aiming down sights and the associated accuracy increase is central, I’ve always opted to install a holographic or red dot sight to my weapons for easier target acquisition. Thus, when Battlefield 1 came out, I had trouble adjusting, since all of the modern sights and optics were unavailable. However, by Battlefield V, I managed to become more familiar with them, and at present, I’m not particularly bothered if my weapons have no sights available to them. Here, I come across a CCTV system that lets Bell and his team quickly work out where the scientist is being held.

• Because I otherwise won’t use shotguns often enough during my run of Cold War, I ended up swapping off the Milano 821 for the Hauer 77, which is based off the Ithaca 37, which was designed in 1933 and uses a bottom-loading mechanism that makes the weapon friendly for both left and right-handed operators. The Ithaca 37 itself is modelled on the Remington Model 17, and as the Hauer 77 in Cold War, is unparalleled in stopping power; it can one-shot any enemy in close quarters. Although I never did find it myself, I’ve heard there’s a Hauer 77 equipped with Dragon’s Breath rounds, which set enemies on fire when hit.

• After reaching the room where Hastings is, to Park and the others’ surprise, everyone’s already dead, and Hastings himself is in the verge of death, being critically wounded by Perseus himself. It becomes clear that Perseus has no loyalty to anyone other than himself, and more than likely, he saw the scientists as a means to an end. Insofar, Perseus has been a ghost, but as more of Cold War‘s story is presented, a face behind the evil is finally presented to players, giving them a tangible target to pursue. With Hastings dead, Bell and the squad turn their attention to capturing Perseus here and now.

• Cuba, for its sunshine and warmth, feels far too anti-climatic a place to capture Perseus; there’s no way to actually do so here, and Perseus will escape, leaving players to deal with Castro’s soldiers and beat a hasty exit of their own. Fighting on the balconies surrounding the courtyard means being exposed to long-range fire from enemies, but fortunately, there’s a Type 66 handy. With its optics, picking off more distant foes becomes much easier, although I did find myself adjusting to the weapon: since the Type 66 is classified as a tactical rifle rather than a sniper rifle, one can’t stabilise it like they would the Pelington 703, LW2 or M82.

• I ended up finding an MP5 amidst the chaotic firefight from the building’s hallways leading up to the roof. Looking back, Bell’s time in Cuba is short, and as Woods joked earlier in the Red Light, Green Light mission, it would’ve been nice to stick around and sightsee a little: the whole of the level is set in a derelict compound just south of Havana proper and was likely chosen because Perseus counted it a secure spot to finish off what he’d started.

• Upon reaching the roof, a veritable army of Cuban soldiers await Bell, Park and Azoulay. Fortunately, there’s also a stockpile of weapons up here, conveniently placed for the team to utilise. There’s another Type 66 and an M16A1, as well: because of the range that enemies will attack from, having an intermediate range weapon will be most helpful here. The Type 66 up here only has a red dot sight, so there’s wisdom in hanging onto the Type 66 with the scope from earlier.

• For players looking to deal a bit more damage and were feeling shafted about not finding an M79 earlier, End of the Line offers a chance to rectify this. This single-shot break-action grenade launcher was born of a project to create a weapon that had a greater range than rifle grenades and more portable than a mortar. While effective in its role, the M79 also limited a soldier from having a service rifle: the M203 under-barrel grenade launcher ended up being the answer to this, although the M79 remains in service to this day because it is more accurate and has a longer range than the M203.

• Ultimately, I ended up saving Park because reaching her was closer. The outcome of Bell’s choice brought back memories of Battlefield 4‘s ending, and on the topic of Battlefield, the gameplay trailer for Battlefield 2042 was released during the weekend. Together with the reveal trailer, it looks like the team at DICE has completely nailed the marketting piece for Battlefield 2042, selling it as a large-scale sandbox multiplayer modern military shooter, which is what every fan had been asking for since Battlefield 1. Unlike previous iterations, Battlefield 2042 will not have a single player campaign, but instead, will have bots as an option. While it’s still early to know whether or not Battlefield 2042 will join my library, the game looks very promising, and I’ll probably have a more concrete decision once I’ve had a go at the open beta.

Cold War‘s implementation of a choice-based narrative within a first-person shooter is therefore effective, because Belikov’s actions set the stage for something much larger. A compelling exploration-based narrative is one that combines both quiet moments where a players’ choices have an impact on the outcomes within the context of a larger story, and moments where skill and knowledge are necessary to advance the story. Cold War is able to achieve this very well, and thus, is able to convey an atmosphere of urgency by utilising both decision-based mechanics and traditional first-person shooter mechanics in every moment to underscore the importance of stopping Perseus. The combination of infiltrating the Lubyanka Building and shooting one’s way through a Cuban mansion to determine what Perseus is up to leads to one chilling revelation: a plot to falsely accuse the United States of destroying over half of Europe with neutron bombs. The potential loss of life is staggering, and with Bell being an integral piece of the puzzle, Adler guides players to journey inwards in the hopes of figuring out what Bell knows about Perseus and using this knowledge to save millions of lives from being extinguished. While the cards are laid bare for players to take in, and what’s at stake is now clear, this part of Cold War also ended up being a lot more conventional than expected. The promotional materials had suggested a much more insidious plot to undermine the world as we know it, but it turns out the catalyst to this is a staple of Cold War fiction, taking the form of nuclear devices. Of course, with Operation Greenlight’s scope, the penalties for failure are much higher, and entering the final act of Cold War, the desperation to stop Perseus becomes very tangible. Overall, the setup in Cold War is very much a classic video game experience, but the narrative is much deeper and more satisfying because it combines the best of both worlds – striking a balance between the two and taking a hybrid approach, as seen in Cold War, demonstrates how games that combine elements of exploration can connect players to what’s going on in the story without sacrificing the excitement and satisfaction of improvement over time, creating a superior experience.

Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War- Part II Review and Reflection, Behind the Iron Curtain, Returning to Yamantau and The Cicada’s Memories

“You knew Manual 34 was from Hinamizawa and didn’t tell us! What else are you hiding? Maybe I can knock the truth out of you!” –Frank Woods

Information from Volkov confirms that Perseus had been smuggling nuclear weapons as a part of an enigmatic Operation Greenlight. This leads Adler and his team to a Spetsnaz training facility in deep in the forests of the Ukraine’s Zakarpattia Oblast. Bell and Woods fight through the facility, discovering a mockup of the average American town’s main street and finding themselves amidst a live-fire drill. After reaching a control centre, Bell gains access into the computer systems and acquires a printout of Operation Greenlight, which had been a top-secret contingency President Eisenhower had approved in 1958. In the event of a Soviet invasion, Eisenhower ordered nuclear bombs placed in major European cities and would detonate them to cripple the Soviet advance as a last-ditch effort to stop them. By 1974, the nuclear bombs were exchanged for neutron bombs, which had a lower blast yield but emitted up to ten times the neutrons compared to a standard fission weapon, reducing their impact on infrastructure. Upon learning that Perseus has infiltrated the programme and Hudson had known about it, Woods confronts Hudson back in their West Berlin safehouse. However, with the threat that Perseus poses, there isn’t a moment for the team to bicker amongst themselves; Perseus is seeking information from Nikita Dragovich’s old facility at Mount Yamantau. Despite infiltrating the base and extracting the entire mainframe computer, it turns out that Perseus had wiped the mainframe’s memory banks clean of anything. With no other options left on the table, Adler enlists help from double agent Dimitri Belikov and prepares for an operation cladestinely enter the Lubyanka Building and retrieve the prize: a list of sleeper agents Perseus is interested in. I’m now roughly halfway through Cold War, and with more of the narrative unveiled, it becomes clear that Cold War is falling back the a familiar threat of nuclear weapons being used against their originators. However, unlike most stories, the stakes in Cold War are much higher owing to the single fact that instead of losing a single nuclear device or several, the whole of Europe could potentially be lost. This underlies the team’s determination to thwart Perseus before he has the chance to erase millions of lives.

The nature of Operation Greenlight is strictly fictional: while NATO had been concerned about a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe, and the Soviets did indeed create a simulation of what such an invasion would look like with something called Seven Days to the River Rhine, there is no evidence to suggest the United States ever would’ve considered placing nuclear weapons in European cities as a contingency precisely because the risk of such weapons being discovered, or even stolen, would’ve created a political nightmare for NATO. However, the audacity of plans during the Cold War have always appeared to come out of works of fiction, and while Operation Greenlight might not have  ever existed, it is named after the Green Light Teams, special forces which were trained in a top-secret programme to deploy low-yield tactical nuclear weapons behind enemy lines should the need arise. Cold War‘s missions at the halfway point therefore become some of the most enjoyable levels to play through. These vividly-designed maps striking a balance between gameplay and storytelling, creating a highly immersive experiences. Of note was the return to Mount Yamantau: Hudson originally visited in 1968 to locate NOVA 6, and fifteen years later, the facility largely remains intact. With Mason returning to the site along with Woods to secure the mainframe, Yamantau is presented in all of its glory, with the latest visual effects and textures of a game was made ten years since its predecessor. Despite the decade and a half that has passed, Mason still retains lingering memories of his past mission, especially after opening a weapons cache and spots a photograph of German scientist Friedrich Steiner. Ancient conspiracies are very much a part of Cold War, and this clever callback to the original Black Ops brought back a thought I had: when I first played through Black Ops in 2015, I was captivated by the setting and storyline, which I felt to hold an inexplicable connection with Higurashi: When They Cry. Both series, after all, shared in common the idea of evil rising where it was once buried. Much as how Black Ops created an unsettling portrayal of hidden plots in the Cold War, Higurashi‘s 2006-2007 anime series proved to be a compelling, gripping tale of a group of students in Hinamizawa racing to sort out their home village’s darkest secret. Both Black Ops and Higurashi ended decisively, but would return in a big way in 2020, with Cold War and GOU both picking up where their predecessors had left off. Both works began slowly, but over time, would come to act as a meaningful entry in their respective series by simultaneously exploring new directions with a renewed vision while at the same time, remaining respectful of the original’s aesthetics and themes.

Screenshots and Commentary

• The massive Spetsnaz facility is reminiscent of the sort of thing that one might see from Wolfenstein: Bell and Woods are tasked with infiltrating the structure and seeing what’s inside a building that is reluctant to give up its mysteries from reconnaissance photographs alone. Over the radio, Park suggests that Bell and Woods be efficient with their time, leading Woods to jokingly remark that he was hoping to perhaps sightsee a little and check out the gulag. While Cold War might be all business, it’s got its moments of humour, too, and this works in the game’s favour.

• After clearing out guards at the entrance with the suppressed Norinco Type 63, a battle rifle with solid accuracy and stopping power, I enter the facility’s grounds under the light of a full moon. I imagine that most operations of this nature would be timed with a moonless night where possible to increase stealth, but given the fact that stopping Perseus is time-sensitive, Bell and his team don’t have this luxury. Sneaking around the guards to reach the entrance is preferred: one could just use the suppressed Type 63 and kill every guard in sight, but the door’s lock then subsequently becomes harder to pick.

• Seeing small details like reflections in the puddles on the road act as a reminder to why Cold War is DirectX 12 only: advances in graphics technology means that contemporary games are almost photorealistic, and even at lower settings, still look phenomenal. Because I ended up going stealth-only and took out three guards during my run, I had an easier time getting to the door leading into the training facility proper. Regardless of one’s stealth, Bell will be ambushed at the door, but Woods will show up and save him in the nick of time.

• The gargantuan proportions of the training facility become apparent once Bell and Woods are inside: gigantic steel trusses and girders keep the building up: the building’s design suggests a cavernous interior. A handful of guards will be found patrolling a corridor, and once Woods is in position, Bell is free to engage them. The Type 63 is a great choice here, as well-placed headshots will neutralise the entire group without risking a protracted firefight. Weapons in Cold War sound and feel great, with headshots from the Type 63 feeling immensely satisfying.

• I’d also swapped out the suppressed M1911 for a Krig 6 assault rifle, which is modelled on the Ak 5, a Swedish assault rifle based on the FN FNC that entered service in 1986. As an assault rifle, the Krig 6 is a solid all-purpose weapon with moderate damage, accuracy, firing rate and reload speed. Here, Bell and Woods cut through a 1980s arcade blaring Pat Benatar’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Woods takes down a mannequin, and in embarrassment, warns Bell never to mention it to anyone else. The arcade games can actually be played, and while on my current run, the mission was the only thing on my mind, it would be worthwhile to come back in the future and try everything out.

• It turns out the massive structure was built to house a course modelled on an American town, indicating that the Soviets had at least some plans to invade the United States in Cold War‘s timeline, if they were willing to invest this heavily to recreate an environment they’d expected their special forces to fight in. However, as Wood remarks, the Soviet special forces are no match for the two operators: I used the Type 63 to pick off distant foes and mopped up the remainder with the Krig 6. The heavy, powerful weapon sounds in Cold War makes each gun feel lethal, and psychologically led me to fire in controlled bursts. This in turn made my experience feel all the more authentic.

• Here, I pass by yet another Burger Town: it would seem that Burger Town is a recurring brand in Call of Duty, and while I’d been playing Call of Duty for almost a decade, it was only really with Modern Warfare 2: Remastered that I began noticing this fictional fast food joint. Entering the Burger Town here, I notice a menu not unlike that of A & W’s or McDonald’s: both places similarly serve a variety of burgers and even breakfast items. Earlier today, to mix things up, I ended up throwing together a Buffalo chicken-and-cheese sandwich with Frank’s Red Hot for lunch: the last time I had one of these was back in January, when Yuru Camp△ 2 was airing, and under different circumstances, I was really able to savour the sandwich, which was as every bit as delicious as I remember.

• Back in Cold War, there’s not time to really look around, since the Spetsnaz forces will be keen to wipe Bell and Woods off the face of the planet. After dropping some soldiers on a railing leading to the command room, I picked up the M82, a .50-calibre anti-materiel rifle that deals an incredible amount of damage in exchange for a slow aiming down sight time and heavy recoil. This weapon can down ordinary foes with a single shot anywhere to the body, and for the fight against a heavy trooper, proves invaluable: the .50-calibre ammunition will knock off the trooper’s helmet in as few as two shots, allowing one to be downed very quickly without an inordinate ammunition expenditure.

• After taking an elevator up to the command room, Woods will begin exploring the room while Bell works off a terminal. There’s a trove of information here: while the goal is to quickly get a printout of the Operation Greenlight files, there’s actually no rush to do so. Security won’t be tripped until one gets the files, and exploring the different files on the computer is a fantastic way of learning a little more about the state of the world in Cold War. When the Operation Greenlight files are retrieved, Woods is angered to learn that Hudson was involved with the project, but with the entire base alerted to their presence, it’s time to beat a hasty exit.

• While powerful, the M82 won’t be enough to stop the armoured vehicles from firing on Bell and Woods, so the only real option is to sprint through the next segments of the game, ducking and weaving to elude heavy fire. The M82 stops being useful in these hectic quarters, and I would switch back over to the Krig 6 for its usefulness in closer ranges. Some of the Krig 6 rifles are equipped with a forty-round magazine and a red dot sight, while others have a standard thirty-round magazine and an ACOG sight. Which one players go with is strictly a matter of preference, and I stuck with the 40-round variant simply to have more versatility at close ranges.

• Woods and Bell end up reaching a garage guarded by a pair of heavy troopers. The logic of keeping the M82 handy becomes apparent here, although folks who’ve dropped the M82 can pick up the CIGMA 2, a modified FIM-43 Redeye MANPAD that can lock onto enemy vehicles or fire unguided projectiles. The presence of the CIGMA 2 makes it considerably easier to deal with these behemoths, who can absorb magazine upon magazine of heavy fire and still remain standing. These heavy troopers are usually armed with an LMG of sorts and can lock players down.

• Purely for my own amusement, I ended up switching off the Krig 6 back over to the M16: while it does seem outwardly strange to have American weapons readily available here at the Spetsnaz training facility, it makes sense in retrospect to have American weapons around so the Spetsnaz know what weapons their adversaries are using handle like. Since their cover’s blown and the entire facility is on them, the time for stealth has passed, and there’s nothing left to do except clear the area and then steal an APC.

• I imagine that the CIGMA 2 was chosen purely for aesthetics: Cold War‘s weapons aren’t always true to their real life counterparts in terms of performance or when they should appear. The FIM-43 Redeye forms the basis for the FIM-92 Stinger, and in most games, Call of Duty titles being no exception, this has been a strict anti-air weapon that requires a lock on before it can be used. I imagine that Cold War simply needed an anti-vehicle solution, and the writers decided that since the Redeye pre-dates the Stinger, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to allow it to fulfil both an anti-ground and anti-air role.

• I’m not too sure what model and make the APC is, nor what the machine gun I’m using is called, but what I do know is that having unlimited ammunition makes it easier to provide cover for Woods while he starts the APC. Once Woods gets the APC going, players return to the mock-up of an American town and will have a chance to destroy the APCs that were firing on them and Woods earlier: the fact that the mounted machine gun can deal appreciable damage to the other APCs suggest to me that it’s at least a heavy machine gun, probably the NSV, which fires 12.7 mm rounds.

• With Woods at the wheel, all Bell needs to do is hold down the trigger and shoot at whatever stands between them and an escape. This chase segment was entertaining, although one can imagine that, with the ruckus caused and whatnot, Perseus would likely be made aware that someone is onto them and make the appropriate arrangements subsequently. Here, Woods and Bell tears through a segment of the map with neon lights, creating a visually-pleasing effect as the two escape the facility back into the cold winter night.

• With Perseus known to have an interest in Operation Greenlight, Mason and Woods head back to Yamantau. This mission puts players in Mason’s shoes, and he starts with the LW3 Tundra with a suppressor, as well as a suppressed Diamatti pistol. The Cold War revisit lacks the same emotional tenour as the original Yamantau mission from Black Ops, during which players get to play the mission from the perspective of an SR-71 pilot and camera operator, as well as Jason Hudson himself, and instead, does outwardly seem a ways more modest in terms of design.

• However, this is not the case, and the Yamantau mission, Echoes of a Cold War, proved to be remarkably fun in its own right. Cold War has particularly nailed the way sniper rifles handle in the campaign: the LW3 Tundra (L96A1) is a solid bolt-action rifle that has a lower ADS time and firing rate compared to the Pellington. While being slower, the LW3 deals more damage, and so, the weapon is better suited for scenarios where one can be assured time to pick their shots. This primarily applies in the multiplayer. In the campaign, the Pellington and LW3 will both get the job done.

• Returning to Yamantau brings back memories of Black Ops, which in turn reminds me a great deal of Higurashi: When They Cry. I picked up Higurashi: When They Cry durnig 2014 at the request of a friend and found the series an excellent one on account of its transition from supernatural murder mystery to a Cold War sci-fi thriller. The nature of Hinamizawa Syndrome was not so different than Nova 6, and immediately, I felt that Black Ops was what Higurashi would be if guns were allowed. Speaking with Dewbond on the matter during a collaborative post, I was finally able to put into words what had eluded me seven years earlier.

• Higurashi strove to convey that even in the face of an unyielding foe, violence is not the answer. Higurashi KAI made this explicitly clear: when Keiichi took a route of negotiation and indirect action, reaching out to people and winning hearts and minds, he was able to save Satoko more decisively and gave Rika hope that breaking the cursed fate was possible. Higurashi could’ve ended with KAI, much as how Black Ops could’ve ended once Mason stopped the numbers broadcast, but reality is hardly so kind. Cold War reminds players that of this fact by sending Mason back to Yamantau, and GOU indicates that happy endings don’t necessarily leave everyone happy.

• While GOU appeared to struggle in the beginning, once Satoko is introduced to the deity known only as Eua, and she accepts a deal with the devil, the series hits critical mass and raises all sorts of questions. Dewbond has made it clear that the supernatural aspect of Higurashi always remained the more intriguing of the two (over the Cold War aspects that I’m more familiar with), and given Eua’s enigmatic presence and goals, coupled with her claims that she serves even greater powers, I would tend to agree. When problems are scaled up so that guns and special tactics can no longer deal with them, a series is invariably going to suggest that force isn’t the answer.

• Of course, had Higurashi purely been about Tokyo, the Yamainu and Banken, I would be completely in my element, and the solution would simply to send a wet team in to bump off Miyo’s superiors and secure whatever assets might be at the Irie clinic before extracting Miyo herself for questioning. This would be too easy, and with SOTSU inbound, I’m curious to see what the writers have in store for us. I’ll write more extensively about GOU in the near future. Here, Mason and Woods passes through the old command post: despite being damaged by the avalanche that had occurred fifteen years earlier, the facility still appears to be in use.

• The collapsed catwalk remains intact following the avalanche of fifteen years ago, and while Mason is able to make it over with a jump, its rickety construction does not inspire much confidence, leading Woods to comment on the quality of Soviet construction. Cold War‘s addition of small jokes and minor bits of humour into things is a pleasant touch: Bad Company 2 had excelled in doing this, and while I’ve come to hope that more military shooters would take the Bad Company route of lightening things up with jokes, it is something that’s more situational.

• Cold War is all serious, but the occasional joke here and there helps to remind players that everyone, despite their skillset and dedication, are still human. Here, as Mason and Woods prepare to rappel over to the next section, they bicker about who goes first on the zip line. In classic manner, the line breaks and sends Mason tumbling downwards. While he manages to land on a catwalk, he loses his weapons in the process, and sets off to link up with Woods. At this point, Mason will only have access to a combat knife, and as he makes his way deeper into the facility, old memories begin resurfacing.

• The derelict facility is frigid, and with only a knife, the situation does suggest that capitalising on the darkness is a better idea. However, upon reaching a room with soldiers, it is possible to deal with them and confiscate their firearms. The knife occupies a weapon slot, and can be swapped out: beyond stealth, there’s no reason to hang onto the knife once the recurve bow is picked up. I suppose now is a good time as any to mention that after the Modern Warfare series, Call of Duty began using numerals to indicate ammunition counts again, making it far easier to know my status in a firefight: while I greatly enjoyed Modern Warfare, the ammunition indicator was tiny and only gave one a visual representation of how much they had left in a magazine.

• This would occasionally be troublesome during a firefight, since I would run out of ammunition and be forced into a reload at the worst possible time. Halo never gave me this problem because the display was larger, and I imagine that Call of Duty might’ve been able to use this approach had the ammunition counter been a bit larger, too. Back in Cold War, I found the recurve bow to be well-suited for stealth gameplay; it can kill in a single shot while being totally silent. Moreover, arrows can be retrieved, and one clever touch is that Woods’ dialogue to Mason will change depending on how he chooses to fight through the dark corridors. Off to the side in one of the smaller rooms, Mason can also find a key to a weapons locker.

• This weapons locker is more of an Easter Egg more than anything: it contains the Redeemer, a double-action six-shot revolver with high damage. After crawling underneath some pipes, Mason links up with Woods and enters a room overlooking a dig site of some sort. After ascertaining that’s where they’ll need to head, Woods jokes that while the Soviets have a crane, they’ve got Belikov and a helicopter. A veritable army stands between Woods and Mason, so the time has come to ditch the suppressed weapons and go loud.

• Belikov will provide covering fire in his chopper, softening up targets to make the fight to the mainframe computer a little easier. It speaks to the era that an entire mainframe needs to be hauled out; today, picking up intel would entail plugging in a hard drive and pulling data, or having some fancy system like ISAC gain deep persistent access into a system and then upload the data elsewhere for retrieval. The old-school mechanics of the Cold War era allow for the story to add additional challenge to things that, in the modern era, would take the blink of an eye to complete.

• A quick glance at the history books will find that in the early 1980s, the late Cold War, things were marked by rising tensions again: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and hard-line stances against the Soviet Union resulted in the deployment of Pershing II medium-range ballistic missiles to Europe, as well as the conducting of Able Archer 83 in 1983. The exercise had alarmed Soviet forces, who assumed that NATO was preparing for an actual nuclear war, bringing the world the closest it had been to calamity since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

• According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the world today is actually closer to the brink of total catastrophe than even during 1953, when the United States successfully tested the world’s first hydrogen bomb and saw the Soviet Union following suit a year later, or in 1984, when intermediate range missiles were deployed to Europe while President Ronald Reagan announced his intention to win the Cold War, accelerating the arms race. Factors include the withdrawal of both the United States and Russia from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, as well as a lack of action on climate change. I would add to the list the current reverence people have for social media; besides creating an illusion of expertise amongst those with large follower counts, it also amplifies the minority’s opinions and accelerates the spread of misinformation, obfuscating the ability for leaders to make proper decisions.

• A capable society would set zero stock on social media where politics are concerned, but with this trend looking like it’s here to stay, it does feel like humanity, in choosing to listen to popular people over skilled people, is on the precipice of unprecedented catastrophe. This is a matter for another day: at this point in Cold War, I’ve entered the building where the mainframe is housed. Woods and Mason hit the bottom floor, secure said mainframe and attach a winch to it, then prepare for a harrowing lift back out. To help with this, an AK-47 with a fifty-round magazine is provided. Belikov’s flying allows for the entire mainframe, a “regular-sized” one, as Woods puts it, to be safely brought back to West Berlin. I smiled at Woods’ remark, as it was worthy of Bad Company 2, and found the firefight here as hectic as it was cinematic; one must know where the enemy fire is coming from, or otherwise will succumb while riding the highly exposed mainframe.

It is therefore unsurprising that the seemingly coincidental timing of Cold War and Higurashi GOU can appear to be anything but: while seemingly separated by a dramatically different set of characters with their own unique goals and intents, both Black Ops and Higurashi speak to the depth that certain mysteries have. However, while the conspiracies and enigma may seem bottomless and hopelessly convoluted, one still retains the agency to make the sort of decisions that can leave one in a better situation, and by doing what’s right at the individual level, one’s choices still potentially have a knock-on effect in things that are greater in scale. This is where the commonalities between Black Ops and Higurashi ends; Higurashi had always been about solving problems through winning hearts and minds, while Black Ops, being a first person shooter first and foremost, encourages resilience and an unwavering determination to get the job done. However, Cold War has taken a few steps towards the routes that Higurashi takes: as Bell, players can make decisions that impact the game’s progression later down the line, and as the Berlin mission indicates, there are times where going silent yields results where going loud does not. Cold War‘s shift in direction speaks to the merits that Higurashi had so effectively conveyed in its run, but not to be outdone, GOU takes Higurashi in a brand-new direction, and this is a topic that is sufficiently sophisticated as to warrant a separate post: the choices that Satoko make sends the story heading on a path even I cannot speculate an outcome for. GOU therefore creates an exhilarating question segment that grips viewers and leaves them longing for answers, which the upcoming SOTSU will likely provide. While this is a few weeks away, I’ll have the time to both draft out my thoughts on GOU and continue making my way through Cold War, which has proven to be an absolutely enjoyable ride. Cold War might be about the multiplayer, zombies and Warzone modes for most players, but for me, I’ve always found the stories to be immersive, worthy of consideration, as well. With two excellent missions in the books, I’m very excited to see for myself what comes next.

Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War- Part I Review and Reflection, and Remarks on Yuri Bezmenov’s 1984 Warning on Ideological Subversion

“You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white, and black is black. You cannot change the basic perception and illogical behavior. In other words, [for] these people, the process of demoralisation is complete and irreversible.” –Yuri Bezmenov

In 1981, SAD/SOG operators Russell Adler, Alex Mason and Frank Woods capture Quasim Javadi shortly after the Iran Hostage Crisis, learning from him the whereabouts of Arash Kadivar. They pursue to a Turkish airfield and manage to neutralise him, but not before Kadivar speaks of the enigmatic “Perseus” as being the organiser behind the crisis. Back in the United States, President Ronald Reagan approves of a black ops assignment to take out Perseus, sending Adler to West Berlin, where he meets up with Lawrence Sims, Eleazar Azoulay and Helen Park, as well as the newcomer, Bell. Bell flashes back to Operation Fracture Jaw in Vietnam thirteen years earlier, when the name Perseus first surfaced: here, Bell and Sims secure intelligence on Perseus from a Viet Cong-held village before heading back to defend their base from the Viet Cong counteroffensive. Later, Bell and Adler sneak into East Berlin to capture Anton Volkov, who is suspected of having ties with Perseus. When his initial meeting at a bar unexpectedly changes, they tail Franz Kraus to his apartment and, after Bell sneaks in, he plants a tracker in his briefcase. However, Bell is captured and brought to meet Volkov. With help from Park and Azoulay, Bell is able turn the tables on his captors and defeats Volkov’s men before capturing Volkov himself. This is where I stand in Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War (Cold War from here on out for brevity) after an hour of play, and insofar, I am thoroughly impressed. In this first hour, I’ve visited the humid jungles of Vietnam, Berlin’s Geisterbahnhöfe and the Berlin Wall on assignments to locate any scrap of information related to the mysterious Perseus, who is only presented as being the single greatest threat to the Western world. There’s a sense of urgency to get ahead of things and thwart whatever his plans are, although standing in contrast with traditional Call of Duty games, Cold War also gives players a chance to experience the espionage side of the story, as well. It’s a fantastic start to a game that certainly held my attention from the first day the reveal trailer was announced in August: this trailer proved controversial for featuring segments from Yuri Bezmenov, a Soviet KGB defector who spoke of something known as Active Measures. For its controversy, the trailer did succeed in creating curiosity in Cold War: who was Perseus, and how was he related to the ideological subversion that Bezmenov had spoke of? While an hour into Cold War, it should be clear that the game has nothing to do with psychological warfare, Bezmenov’s interview nonetheless raised some insightful points about where the Western world was headed. In Bezmenov’s original interview, he suggested that the Soviet’s efforts in undermining, or subverting Western civilisation was concentrated in psychological warfare, which would take place during what he referred to as “demoralisation”. A demoralised individual is one who lacks morals, refusing to differentiate fact from fiction and blindly agree with their own ideology at the expense of facts, rendering them vulnerable to destabilisation. During this time, vital infrastructure in a country (economy, security, international relationships) would become fragile as more people lose the skills (or willingness) to do their jobs properly, and all it would take was a spark (crisis) to plunge a nation into chaos. From the ashes, a “new normal” would arise: in this society, all of the things that were previously present would be dismantled and destroyed.

Bezmenov’s interview seems hauntingly accurate in retrospect, and almost immediately, Activision was attacked for featuring Bezmenov in their promotion of Cold War: one particularly disreputable games journalist called out the trailer as being a “tacit endorsement of [Bezmenov’s] deeply flawed ideology”, being “irresponsible for the developers to disseminate his ideas without context” and expressed concern that people were suggesting Bezmenov had been describing the modern world with frightening accuracy, that leftist ideals would lead to the undermining of society as we know it. This is untrue: Bezmenov, while an opponent of Marxism, was speaking more broadly to the fact that a society unable to accept facts as being integral to reasoned discussion would be doomed to destruction. Bezmenov indicates that people whose thinking has changed as a result of having been indoctrinated early on will have a difficult time separating fact from fiction, and will tend to think in terms of black-and-white. Despite said games journalist’s attempts to discredit this, demoralisation is very much a problem that most evident on social media, where extremists with agenda mingle with those seeking approval and validation. On social media platforms, follower count, retweets, upvotes and karma matter more than the correctness of a given statement – so long as a statement adheres to a certain narrative and is published or shared by a source one approves of, it is automatically counted as authentic. Sharing is done in the hopes of getting one noticed enough to partake in the imagined benefits attached to being associated with individuals of note. This phenomenon creates a scenario where people are unable to differentiate between truth and lies: the information being shared matters less than who shared it. The end result can be devastating: indoctrinated individuals rally behind buzzwords and hold a bizarre insistence on terminology to control certain narratives. These individuals fight not for the causes they purport to support, but rather, seek nothing more than their own promotion. Similarly, in “cancel culture”, people will dreg up an individual’s perceived slights, claim this to be in contradiction with their own ideology and attempt to destroy said individual’s career on so-called moral grounds. “Cancel culture” represents an unwillingness to listen, and the stubborn belief that one’s own truth is indisputably the truth. This mode of thinking is a threat to the foundations on which the world is built: hard work, skill and teamwork do not mean anything to proponents of “cancel culture”, and through social media, such people have extended their influence to illegally impact systems they have no understanding of. In both cases, demoralisation results in people who see no alternative in making their way in society aside from undoing and undermining the efforts of hardworking people. When such individuals become enabled by more powerful actors, their threat towards a society built on collaboration and effort is immense: riots and other forms of disruption often result. Recent events have demonstrated that Bezmenov’s warning did come to pass, and it is therefore unsurprising that radicalised game journalists would see the Cold War trailer as a threat: it would appear Activision were calling out these individuals and their methods, making them known to more people. In fact, Activision’s only aim was to create a gripping and compelling trailer to raise interest in their game. Of course, the fact that games journalists would write a treatise claiming Cold War‘s trailer to be “recklessly [promoting]…conspiracy [theories]” suggests an intolerance for alternate perspectives, or at the very least, suggest an individual who is salty about lacking knowledge in C++ and the fundamentals of OO-programming.

Screenshots and Commentary

• Cold War begins in a bar as Adler and Mason pursue a suspect related to the Iranian Hostage Crisis. After finishing their drinks, Mason and Adler get to work: I ended up picking up an AK-74U, a cut-down AK-74 firing the 5.45mm rounds that is intended to offer more firepower than a submachine gun and more mobility than an assault rifle. The first two missions in Cold War are more cinematic than proper shooter experiences, serving to introduce the setting and set the tone for the remainder of the story. As such, I don’t have too many screenshots of the first two missions.

• Here, I prepare to take a shot on Arash, which quickly goes south when another guard walks in front of him. A brief chase on jeeps follow, and while Arash is killed, the enigmatic Perseus is revealed here. Before I continue further, I’ll note that as far as politics go, I prefer not to discuss them here on this blog. With this being said, there are certain actors and modes of thinking that I absolutely do not agree with, with “cancel culture” being one of them. Bezmenov’s theories accurately represent how “cancel culture” and some other movements operate, whose members favour mob mentality and memes over everything else, and who believe their opinion matters more than expert knowledge in a given field.

• When facts and evidence are ignored, such individuals invariably cause more harm than good. Ultimately, those who exist exclusively to use social media to push certain narratives or destroy the lives of others are no more than self-appointed vigilantes lacking any understanding of the system they oppose, and society has indulged their deluged, dangerous whims on far too many occasions. Cold War does seem to suggest that the truth that we know is not always what it seems to be, and while Bezmenov is never mentioned in the game, it stands to reason that his speech was present to warn players that twists await them, and that things aren’t what they appear.

• Vietnam is the first of the proper missions in Cold War, with the goal being to secure a village and use the opportunity to locate Soviet intel. The last time I played through a game set in Vietnam would’ve been 2010’s Black Ops, where Mason is made to remember various operations he’d previously participated in a desperate bid to understand what the numbers in his head meant. Cold War‘s Bell is equally as mysterious, and for my play-through, I ended up going with an MI6 background, with the “violent tendencies” and “survivor” options picked for my psychological profile.

• “Violent tendencies” increases bullet damage by 25 percent, and “survivor” increases health by 25 percent. This is optimal for a first-time player like myself: the extra survivability means I have a little more wiggle room to escape a bad situation, and extra damage means one fewer bullet needed to down an enemy. Here in this Vietnamese village, I finally had a chance to put my setup to the test: on a humid and bright morning, I stormed the village in search of intel, fending off the Viet Cong soldiers here. I climbed into a building to avoid fire and found myself a Pelington 703, the game’s equivalent of the Remington 700 bolt action rifle. This well-crafted weapon feels like a hunting rifle of the sort that Steven Rinella might use to hunt Dall Sheep or Grizzly Bear on MeatEater.

• Owing to the global health crisis, I’d been exercising more frequently from home, during which I streamed YouTube videos to my Apple TV through AirPlay. MeatEater was recommended to me on account of how much Survivorman I’d been watching, and I immediately feel in love with the series: besides being highly informative about how a seasoned hunter thinks when out in the bush, Rinella also fully captures how he feels about every moment in a hunt, from the anticipation to lining up the perfect shot, and my personal favourite, when he cooks up some freshly-caught meat. Besides MeatEater, I’ve also discovered Andrew Davidson’s Kent Survival, a YouTube series where Davidson demonstrates his expertise with bushcraft and cooks delicious meals in the British wilderness. These series have done much to keep my morale high during these unusual times.

• Bell starts the mission with the M16A1, which is derived off the ArmaLite AR-15 and chambered for a 5.56 mm round. Replacing the M14 battle rifle, the M16A1 entered service in 1964 and became the USMC’s primary service rifle. The A1 variant of the rifle was an improvement over the original design, which had a 20-round box magazine and was notorious for its poor reliability (its malfunction rate was twice per an average of 1000 rounds fired), but it was later discovered that the M16 had been billed as a “self-cleaning rifle” that didn’t require maintenance. Once cleaning kits and instructions were issued to soldiers, and the rifle was redesigned with a chrome-plated chamber and forward assist mechanism, reliability no longer became a concern. Cold War portrays the M16 as firing in three round bursts, which is a feature that was introduced with the M16A2.

• Entering the village, the Pelington 703 was no longer viable – it’s an exceptional weapon for long range, but bolt action rifles are tricky to use in close quarters. I ended up switching over to the AK-47, an old classic. Counted as the world’s most reliable assault rifle, the AK-47 will never jam or overheat. It fires whether it’s wet, covered in mud or filled with sand, and its reliability has become the stuff of legends. I’ve fired the AK-47 in numerous games before, and it is high praise to Cold War that I can say that the AK-47 here is probably the best-feeling AK-47 I’ve ever fired in any game.

• This feeling of satisfaction isn’t just limited to the AK-47 – once the shooting starts, it becomes clear that Cold War has probably some of the best, most-satisfying weapon feel of any game I’ve played in a long time, combining heavy, powerful weapon sounds with the tactile feeling of each trigger pull. Every gun in the game feels lethal and deadly, and while Cold War might not have the most accurate or diverse selection of weapons, the weapons that are available feel and handle very well. Here, I move through a courtyard after having found a folder full of intel en route to the extraction zone: the Soviet presence raises eyebrows, and it becomes clear that something is afoot.

• With the Soviet file secured, it’s time to return to Ripcord Base. While Cold War could’ve ended the mission here, what happens instead is one of the most impressive ways of welcoming players to the game. The player takes over as the helicopter’s pilot and gunner, using the Huey’s mounted Miniguns and rockets to lay waste to Viet Cong positions amidst the Karst landscapes. There are no words to describe how breathtaking and thrilling this sequence is, and it feels fantastic to finally be here for myself. The UH-1 Iroquois, better known by its nickname, “Huey” is a utility helicopter that entered service in 1956 as a medical evacuation vehicle, and during the Vietnam War, saw extensive usage.

• Players get to fly a fictionalised variant; the closest equivalent I can think of in real life is the UH-1 M6, which is armed with forward-facing M60 7.62 mm machine guns and MA-2/A 2.75″ (70mm) 2-Tube rocket launchers, and in Cold War, I’m armed with a pair of 12 mm Miniguns and 105 mm rockets, both of which are far larger calibre weapons than were available in reality (for one, the M134 fires 7.62 mm rounds, not 12 mm rounds). Here, I fly over rice paddies that are reminiscent of those in China’s Gulin province. Vietnam is quite famous for its terraced rice paddies, and usually, May or October would be the best time to visit; these are when the terraces are filled with water to become mirror-like and take on beautiful autumn colours, respectively.

• Fracture Jaw is named after its real-world equivalent, during which General William Westmoreland proposed clandestinely moving nuclear warheads into South Vietnam for rapid deployment should the need arise. In 1968, the plan was abandoned, and I imagine that the object of Sims and Bell’s mission is to retrieve such a warhead as the plan was being abandoned. Sims is evidently displeased with the plan; during the Vietnam War, there was a disconnect between the leadership and foot soldiers fighting the war. I personally count this as one of the most wasteful and unnecessary conflicts of the Cold War, with the other being the Soviet-Afghan War, which depleted the Soviet’s economy and was one of the factors contributing to their collapse.

• The Vietnam War was such a thorn in the United States’ side because the doctrine of the day had been to flatten an area with artillery and low-altitude bombing, use helicopters to drop soldiers in and clear out the Viet Cong, and then leave. The Viet Cong, prepared to fight the long war, would simply re-enter a decimated area and occupy it again. This then required additional resources to be sent in and re-take an area. In the end, despite having vastly sophisticated weapons and tactics, the United States never had a concrete objective in Vietnam besides “containing communism”, whereas the Communist North Vietnamese government intended to unify Vietnam and moreover, were prepared to outlast their enemy.

• The end result was that the Vietnam War proved unsurprisingly unpopular amongst Americans, leading to wide anti-war and the hippie movements. In particular, one infamous picture sapped the American public of their desire for war. Dubbed the Napalm Girl, this photograph showed a naked girl of nine running from a napalm strike. The photograph created revulsion amongst the public; this was what the war was accomplishing. The right or wrong photograph in the right or wrong place and time can tip public opinion of war, and much as how Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima galvinised the American public into pushing for victory, the Napalm Girl photograph further compelled Americans to oppose their government’s decisions.

• The power of imagery cannot be understated, and today, with social media being nigh-ubiquitous, its abuses are rampant; we are at a point where scandals and controversies happen every other day. After reaching Ripcord base, the player will need to circle it and fend off attacking Viet Cong elements. While the high visual fidelity means that enemies would be invisible and blend in with the mountainside (which is why coloured smoke was extensively used to mark positions, both target and friendly), Cold War gives players visual indicators of enemy positions. Together with the Huey’s unlimited ammunition, it becomes more of an arcade-like experience to flatten the enemies and land back at base.

• Upon picking up one of the Fracture Jaw nuclear bombs, Bell’s helicopter is shot down. With Viet Cong fast approaching, it is fortunate that there’s an M60 lying around. The M60 is one of the most iconic guns of the Vietnam War, alongside the M16A1, and while the version I picked up does not appear to have any modifications, has enough ammunition to fend off the attacking soldiers long enough for allies to mark a position for a precision napalm strike. Once the aircraft show up and clear the area, the mission draws to a close, with the nuclear device secured.

• After flashback indicates that Bell remembers encountering Perseus, the story returns to 1981. The mission opens with Adler and Bell sneaking through a Geisterbahnhöfe (“Ghost Station”) to enter East Berlin. These ghost stations are a surreal location unique to Cold War Berlin; after Berlin was divided into East and West, some train lines that existed prior to the divided proved to be inconvenient for the East, so they ended up sealing off those stations with concrete barriers, wiring electric fences and placing guard posts at these stations. These dimly lit stations remained visible to train passengers as they rode trains through the segments of rail passing underneath East Berlin.

• In Tom Clancy’s Locked On, John Clark recalls a mission during the height of the Cold War, where he was asked to do a bag drop off as an SAD operative by Gene Lilly: after Lilly had been extorted of his life savings by a honey trap, Clark was supposed to hand off the money in exchange for the film negatives in a Geisterbahnhöfe to rogue Stasi officers. However, the transaction went rogue, and Clark ended up shooting one of the officers dead in such a location. This incident would later give the Keatley administration something to go after in their bid to stop Jack Ryan from winning the election. Locked On is one of my favourite Tom Clancy novels, being a thrilling blend of political intrigue and doomsday plots.

• Until Cold War came out, I never thought I’d have a chance to ever explore the Geisterbahnhöfe for myself: after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the stations were reopened and put back into service. Former ghost stations are now fully operational, and visiting today would find them as nothing more than ordinary train stations. Most games probably wouldn’t be able to do much with the setting, either, so the odds of having such a spot to explore would be slim. With Cold War and its story, the intrigue behind Berlin’s Geisterbahnhöfe are brought to life, and here, Bell and Adler sneak past a few guards en route into East Berlin.

• Shortly after Cold War released, I decided to check the game out on YouTube by watching my favourite channels play through them. TheRadBrad and JackFrags ended up being the two channels I watched my gameplay footage from, and out of the games, Cold War‘s campaign intrigued me. I had skipped the open beta while it was running on account of how The Division 2 had been keeping me very busy with its manhunts and the like, and I had a feeling that the download was much larger than what was worthwhile for an open beta. This proved a smart decision, as my machine wasn’t able to run Cold War with Windows 8 on account of the OS lacking support for the DirectX 12 API.

• After exiting the dank, fetid and dark underground rail tunnels, Adler and Bell climb onto a rooftop overlooking one of the Berlin Wall checkpoints. Erected in 1961, the Berlin Wall was intended to keep East Berliners from entering West Berlin and seeking asylum there. While it was originally a simple concrete wall, escape attempts eventually compelled the East German government to dramatically expand it into a strip of death with razor-sharp barbed wire, Czech Hedgehogs, guard towers with armed patrols and even patrol dogs.

• While sneaking over the Berlin Wall was possible, the aggressive security meant that few attempts were successful, and over the years, the Berlin Wall would come to represent the Cold War itself, splitting a country and Europe evenly in two, separated by ideology. When the Wall fell in 1989, it was to celebration around the world: the very instruments and implementers of oppression had fallen. Of course, in Cold War, the Berlin Wall is still up and running: I picked an MP5 off a patrol earlier, but firing it will instantly alert enemies to my position and likely bring the mission to a premature end.

• Kraus will be spotted in a vehicle below, and with their target found, it’s time to tail him and figure out what he’s up to. I will go on an aside here to note that for the past while, I’ve been considering leaving the AnimeSuki community: aside from a few bad-faith actors like Verso Sciolto, Sumeragi and Toukairin (all of whom have thankfully been banned), I’ve generally had a good time discussing anime here. Among the folks who’ve made the experience a memorable, positive one are Ernietheracefan, Flower and Wild Goose. Conversations with them were always instructive and meaningful. However, most of the people I shared discussions with are no longer active these days there.

• Instead, the community has largely been displaced by those who only talk about current events, politics and criticising anime in a bizarre, passive-aggressive voice. If their objective was to make their own ideologies known, then they have been successful. Similarly, it is clear that these individuals have no intention of sharing anime and manga related materials without tearing them down. Rather than attempt to remain in a community so disinterested in anime and put up with the likes of serenade_beta, c933103 or ramlaen, whose ramblings only convey their ignorance and closed-mindedness, it’ll be easier if I were to be the bigger person and walk away.

• The plus side is that with the Jon Spencer Reviews community, I have no shortage of friendly, open-minded folks to run ideas by. The most important part of any community is having a group of open-minded people willing to listen; this, I find in abundance with the Jon Spencer Reviews community, and I am grateful for this. Thanks to my listening to the members, my perspectives have broadened, and I’ve been able to see things in a new manner. Having a group of excellent people also means being able to ask for feedback, and even talk about controversial things. This is a tolerant community: they’ve even put up with when I mention things like Bezmenov’s active measures previously as a part of my discussions.

• Yesterday, I had the chance to head out for some A&W grass-fed beef burgers, onion rings and yam fries. Whether by virtue of being a little more relaxed this time around, or the fact that I was anticipating a good lunch that represented a nice change of pace, this time around, I could taste the difference in their burgers; grass-fed beef has a slightly gamier taste to it, and I’m particularly fond of it. Moreover, while home-cooked burgers tend to be juicer, I find that fast food burgers have their own appeal, with their richer flavours. Some fresh cherries rounded things out: temperatures reached a high of 27°C, so the cherries proved most refreshing. I’m probably going to wish I have some for today, as the forecast indicates today’s high will be 31°C.

• This is one of the perks about working remotely: ordinarily, I’d pack my lunch, which consists of a sandwich and tea most days. However, there could be a return to the office at some point in the future, and with my province also preparing to reopen some businesses as of yesterday, I also was able to book a haircut. It is surprising to feel this happy at the prospect of going in for a haircut; I had an appointment booked for late April, but circumstances led to that being cancelled, so my hair’s a mess now. It’ll be nice to have short hair again. Back in Cold War, I enter Kraus’ apartment after the original plan of listening in on his plan went south. Instead, the goal is to sneak in, place a tracking bug in his briefcase and then get out. However, things aren’t so simple, and Bell is soon captured after discovering that one of the informants had also been caught.

• After spending most of the mission sneaking about and watching things happen, agency returns to Bell’s hands: it turns out that being brought to Volkov made things easier rather than harder. Park and Azoulay ambush Volkov and his men before Volkov has a chance to shoot Bell, and once Park tosses Bell an MP5 with a laser sight, Millstop Reflex, a fifty-round STANAG drum and foregrip, it’s time to go to town on Volkov’s men. While Volkov will run away, there’s actually not a time limit on things, so players can methodically shoot their way to victory.

• The MP5 is fun and can be hip-fired well, but for more ranged damage, I ended up picking a QBZ-83 off the ground. This is technically the QBZ-95, a Chinese bullpup assault rifle that entered service in 1995 and was a marked departure from the previous Chinese assault rifles. Since Cold War is set in the 1980s, this initially appears to be a bit of an anachronism, but looking more closely, the Chinese also had the Norinco Type 86S, a bullpup rifle based off the AKM. The QBZ-93 might therefore be seen as a fictional intermediate between the Type 86S and the Type 93 rifles.

• Eventually, Bell, Park and Azoulay will corner Volkov at a locked door. Here, there’s the option to capture or kill him. My modus operandi has been to capture everyone so far: per Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, capturing someone alive means being able to ask them questions and probe their minds for intel that saves months, or even years of surveillance. Dead men tell no tales, and in general, an enemy is worth a great deal more alive for this very reason. I’m not too sure how these smaller decisions will impact Cold War just yet, but if other games are a reliable precedent, choosing to spare an enemy typically yields returns later down the line.

In spite of the menacing atmosphere that Cold War‘s trailer conveys, and the resulting controversy made on the basis that such messages threatened the narrative of certain games journalists or ideologies, Cold War itself is simply an immersive game with a fantastic atmosphere. The game isn’t about promoting conspiracy theories, it’s about unveiling the mysterious individual whose machinations could result in millions of deaths in the worst case. The journey to do so takes players to places in the Cold War where things very nearly went hot, and indicates that during the Cold War, both sides were fervently working to undermine and subvert the other in the name of ideology, with the inevitable result that even decades later, the devices and methods one side might’ve counted as an asset suddenly became a lethal liability. Whether it be fighting off attacking Viet Cong amidst Vietnam’s karst landscapes by dawn, or sneaking around East Berlin on a rainy night to infiltrate a Stasi member’s house to place a tracker on his briefcase to get closer to a high value target carrying information on a ghost, Cold War‘s opening chapters really breathe life back into the Black Ops series: I thoroughly enjoyed 2010’s Black Ops for its settings and themes, but as the Black Ops series continued, the campaigns became diminished to the point where by Black Ops IV, there had been no campaign. The Cold War represents an era of history where technological advancement and ideology developed alongside one another: on one hand, we found new ways of improving our quality of life and standards of living, but at the same time, the same technologies could be used to inflict suffering at a hitherto unimagined scale. As such, while the Cold War itself might be in the past now, the events and their associated lessons remain as relevant as ever; short of reading books on the subject matter, video games like Black Ops can potentially elevate the players’ interest in the time period and encourage them to learn more about the material on their own and draw their own conclusions about which mistakes in history should be avoided. Having said this, if Cold War provides an entertaining story and perspective on the latter stages of the Cold War and brings players enjoyment, whether it be through the campaign, multiplayer, Zombies mode or Warzone, the game itself has succeeded. I am therefore especially excited to see what lies ahead in the next missions; early on in Cold War, there hasn’t been much in the way of full-scale firefights, but from the firefights I have gone through, the gun play feel excellent, comparable to Battlefield V and Titanfall 2. These are two games whose mechanics are absolutely solid, and if Cold War continues to handle this smoothly, it will be a thrill to continue going through the game to see what Perseus is.

Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!- Whole-Series Review and Reflection

“If it’s strictly comedy, I like to bring some darkness to it. If it’s strictly drama, I always like to lighten it up as well. I like to find some kind of dimension and make my characters human, so that it doesn’t feel like a sketch and feels more like a slice of life.” –Nestor Carbonell

In the aftermath of a new arrangement to help the Iron Blood and Sakura Empire better understand the Eagle Union and Royal Navy, the ship girls live and attend school together at the Azur Lane’s main base. Javelin, Laffey and Ayanami have become close friends since, and enjoy their everyday lives together, befriending Z23 in the process. Their daily activities include helping Baltimore with various club activities, manage to have a solid barbeque despite Rodney blowing up their ingredients, make chocolates with Prinz Eugen and even help Bismark work up the courage to ask Tirpitz to a dance. In these peaceful days, Javelin, Laffey and Ayanami attend a school festival, learn that Belfast is training a smaller version of herself to be a proper maid, set up an onsen with Shoukaku and Zuikaku, visit an amusement park with Yukikaze, Mutsu, and Nagato, and spend a full day trying to help a sleepy Laffey find her ideal pillow. Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! lives up to its name, being focused on the ship girls’ lives outside of their duties in combating the Siren. Similarly to Strike Witches: Joint Fighter Wing Take Off! and World Witches: Take Off!, Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! dispenses almost entirely with the questions that Azur Lane raises, and instead, capitalises on the fact that there are so many ship girls to show the sorts of misadventures everyone has in pursuit of their studies, while they partake in events around their school and even contemplate chasing the elusive commander’s heart. Such a series is invariably light-hearted, and while perhaps not offering much in the way of narrative progression, still serves an important purpose in demonstrating to viewers that military-moé series, by virtue of their characters, are about personal growth and an appreciation of time spent with others first and foremost.

By Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!, what’s become clear is that the different factions have all acclimatised to life with one another. Ayanami is now very much a part of Javelin and Laffey’s lives, and with this familiarity comes the sort of comedy that can result when people get to bounce off one another. Laffey’s lethargy befuddles Ayanami, and Ayanami’s love for video games often gets in the way of things. However, in spite of these character traits, it’s clear that without labels and factions impeding them, Javelin, Laffey and Ayanami are now best of friends. This is something that the original Azur Lane sought to convey, and indeed, this was probably one of the strongest themes in the series. To see an extension of that message in Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! reiterates that this is what Azur Lane had originally aimed to convey. Some events in Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! really drives this point home: in the original TV series, Zuikaku had been utterly determined to defeat Enterprise in combat, pushing herself even in the knowledge that she might be sunk in the process. By Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!, Zuikaku’s latest project is the installation of an outdoor bath, and she accepts Javelin, Laffey and Ayanami’s help in getting things set up, even promising the three first dibs on using the bath once they’re done. This is a dramatic departure from what was shown in the original series, and shows that beyond any doubt, the ship girls can indeed be friends where old grudges and alliances are no longer observed. In focusing on these elements of Azur Lane, Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! is able to act as a comedy, showing that despite the challenges imposed by warfare and the stresses this has on the ship girls, there are also equivalent moments of joy and idle relaxation. Azur Lane succeeds in using its spin-off to help viewers settle down after last year’s anime, creating an easygoing and comedy-filled series to remind viewers that at the end of the day, while Azur Lane might be about naval combat, the ship girls are very much human and experience the same emotions, of joy, sorrow, amusement and jealousy, as we would.

Screenshots and Commentary

• I believe it’s been a shade more than a year since I last wrote about Azur Lane: if memory serves, I found the series to be serviceable, with likeable characters and a solid soundtrack at the heart of its appeal. The production had been troubled, and like Girls und Panzer, the last two episodes were delayed for a few months. Enterprise had been at the heart of Azur Lane, but here in Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!, Javelin is the main character: the series opens with her showering, and every episode is centred around her, Laffey and Ayanami’s adventures.

• Z23 soon joins their group; while she’s initially set to lead the class as an instructor of sorts, Javelin, Ayanami and Laffey end up see her more as a peer than a senior, but a role model nonetheless. Z23 is originally a part of the Iron Blood faction. The resulting group of friends is representative of each faction. Javelin is from the Royal Navy, Laffey is from the Eagle Union, Ayanami hails from the Sakura Empire, and Z23 represents the Iron Blood. It’s a clever setup that really lets Slow Ahead! to demonstrate its themes.

• I’ve found that a lot of slice-of-life anime series, while seemingly trite and simple, are a lot more meaningful than they initially appear. Beyond their kawaii art style and focus on the frivolous, the characters’ experiences speak to various life lessons that are often worth reiterating; while anime that deal with philosophy or social issues create the most interesting discussion, said conversations can also get quite heated, especially when people of different backgrounds come to the table.

• Understanding how to get along with people is something that folks occasionally seem to forget, and this is something that slice-of-life anime excel in speaking to. Even more so than its predecessor, Slow Ahead! has a particular emphasis on fanservice. Four episodes into the season is the beach episode, which features Rodney partaking in the Japanese tradition of watermelon-splitting using her arsenal. Ayanami’s description for the activity speaks to her reverence of Japanese culture, but she forgets to mention the most critical rule; splitting the watermelon can only be done with a stick.

• In the end, Rodney manages to undo the damage by using her main cannons and blasting enough fish out of water for the barbeque’s main course. Slow Ahead! aired during the winter season, but because I’d been swamped (by episodic Yuru Camp△ 2 posts, and regular posts on Non Non Biyori: Nonstop), I decided to set this series aside with plans to watch and write about it shortly after the winter season concluded. However, my usual tendencies for procrastination kicked in, and this pushed Slow Ahead! back. We’re now about two thirds of the way through the spring season, and I’ve finally had the chance to give this series a go.

• Fortunately, Slow Ahead! episodes are only eight minutes long, and that means I could finish the entire series on short order. This made it much easier to catch up and wrap things up in an efficient manner. Here, Ayanami befriends Graf Spee after their shared interests. Individual episodes of Slow Ahead! don’t do anything too dramatic or meaningful from a narrative standpoint, but they represent fun moments into the world of Azur Lane.

• When a formal dance is held one evening, the girls help Bismarck ask Tirpitz for a dance after getting her decked out in suitable attire for the evening. Javelin feels a little out of place at these events, feeling them to be a little too stuffy for her tastes, it turns out she’s not the only one. Formidable has snuck off to a side room and finds cupcakes. Her evening suddenly takes a turn for the unfortunate when it turns out these cupcakes had been prepared for a food roulette game later, and she’d taken the one spiked with hot peppers.

• Formidable suggests that such parties aren’t her jam, despite her possessing the manner and air of a lady herself. However, when she sits down on some boxes to rest, the boxes collapse immediately. I suppose that this would be a joke on Formidable’s mass, since Formidable displaces 23000 tonnes standard (for comparison, the Enterprise displaces 21000 tonnes at standard) – like Kantai Collection, the writers have incorporated several jokes relevant to the original ships’ properties as a bit of a callback to the real world, which navel enthusiasts would find enjoyable. Azur Lane‘s ships seem to be quite far removed from their real-world counterparts and fight more like magical girls than navel vessels, so during the original TV series, I never did focus too much on these details.

• In my original talks on Azur Lane, I stated that St. Louis would probably be my favourite ship on account of style alone, but Formidable is a contender – aircraft carriers are the navel vessels I respect the most on account of their power and versatility. More so than battleships, aircraft carriers shaped the outcome of World War Two and greatly impact doctrine today, but as detection and anti-ship ballistic missiles become more potent, navel combat may change once again. Since Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! isn’t about the navy, I’ll probably not make too much mention of any real world equivalents here.

• Javelin later asks Formidable to learn how to dance and fails in even the basics: Formidable notes that learning to be elegant isn’t an easy thing, and that it’s something one must commit themselves into being. The contrast between her usual self and when she gets flustered is night and day, and for the time being, Javelin’s got a long way to go. Conversely, Ayanami and Laffey are content to enjoy the fancy food being served during this ball. What Formidable says is true – she subtly hints that Javelin should strive to be herself.

• One episode has Javelin, Ayanami and Laffey join Mikasa in cleaning the commander’s room, with Taihou attempting to leverage the situation and learn whatever she can about the commander in a bid to get closer to him. All of the ship girls in Azur Lane have a crush of sorts on the ever-absent commander, although some (Javelin and Honolulu) are more subtle about their feelings than others. Taihou’s efforts are especially brazen, and one can imagine the challenges of being the commander in such a world, if one’s charges are constantly coveting his heart where he has a job to do.

• During the school festival, while changing into costumes for the day’s events, Ayanami, Laffey and Z23 run into Honolulu, who is reluctant to change into a yukata that St. Louis had given her on account of it being too revealing. Characters who never had substantial screen-time during Azur Lane are given a chance to for some shine time here in Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!, but with some 450 ships altogether, practical constraints mean that some players’ own favourite ships won’t see time in the animated adaptation.

• While Honolulu initially feels embarrassed about her outfit, she ends up following Laffey’s lead and has fun along with the others, even scoring a prize to go on one date with the commander in a darts game, rendering the other ship girls jealous in the process. Throughout the course of Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!, seeing Javelin’s character helped to elevate my fondness for her: in the game, Javelin is an elite destroyer, making her classified as roughly the same as Kantai Collection‘s Fubuki. I’ve heard that Fubuki’s character was never particularly well-received in Kantai Collection‘s anime, but I myself didn’t have issue with her.

• While out and about one day, Ayanami, Laffey and Javelin encounter a mini-Belfast, whom the regular Belfast is training to be a maid. The mini-Belfast is effective and motivated, even helping keep Ayanami company in her gaming adventures. When Azur Lane first aired, I was constantly getting Ayanami and Laffey mixed up, to the point of being surprised whenever Ayanami didn’t sound like Maria Naganawa. Ayanami is voiced by Yō Taichi (Princess Principal’s Dorothy). Having watched Azur Lane all the way through, this is no longer a problem for me.

• Azur Lane had Zuikaku determined to defeat Enterprise in combat, but here in Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!, she’s more easygoing. When the base’s hot water supply is taken offline for repairs, she suggests setting up their own onsen and invites Laffey, Z23, Javelin and Ayanami to soak with her and Shoukaku, even enjoying tempura in the process. Having seen both Azur Lane and Kantai Collection, I prefer Azur Lane‘s Zuikaku and Kantai Collection‘s Akagi and Kaga. Curiously enough, both incarnations of Shoukaku are agreeable to me as far as aesthetics and personalities go.

• While Kantai Collection had been strictly set in the World War Two era had limited the kan-musume to what was available during the time, the girls in Azur Lane have access to game consoles, tablets and the internet, along with modern amenities and conveniences. Here, Javelin enjoys lunch with Yukikaze, Mutsu, and Nagato at the Manjuu Land amusement park. It’s a fun-filled day for everyone, even Javelin, Mutsu and Nagato, who are blown away by the ferocity of the amusement park’s première attraction, a massive roller coaster.

• The finale to Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! is a fanservice filled romp, during which a sleepwalking Laffey attempts to reunite with her pillow after being found in a treasure chest. Misunderstanding her, Javelin, Z23 and Ayanami spend the day trying to find her pillow, assuming that Laffey had lost her memory and would be restored if she found a stacked ship girl to hang with. Thus begins an episode of brazen fanservice, amplified by the fact that nothing seems to be working.

• Because Laffey’s referring to an actual pillow, the ensuring chaos winds up being hilarious to watch. Admittedly, this is more along the lines of what I’d expected Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! to be about when I first heard of the series, and while the series doesn’t disappoint in this area, it becomes clear that in addition to comedy, this spin-off’s focus really is about how the different ship girls get along with one another despite their different factions. For this reason, Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! exceeded my initial expectations coming in, and I had a great deal of fun watching it.

• With this post in the books, I’ve wrapped up my list of things to knock out before June arrived. May begin slowly, since I spent the first week getting my desktop back online after finally upgrading to Windows 10, and since then, I’ve been trying to catch up on posts: with news that Higurashi: SOTSU is happening in July and the fact I’ve begun going through Black Ops: Cold War, I figured it would be wise to clear up as many posts as I could before things get hectic. This did mean that the end of May was a bit crazy with respect to getting posts done (there’s been a post every two days for the last eleven days), but on the flipside, it means that I now have a bit more wiggle room in June: the only posts I’ve got scheduled are for Higurashi: GOU, Black Ops: Cold War, Super Cub, Yakunara Mug Cup mo and Higehiro.

• Before I wrap this post up, I’ll note that the spin-off’s name is a reference to the engine order, which is issued to engineers operating a ship’s engines. “Slow ahead” is precisely what it means, reflecting on how Azur Lane‘s spin-off is meant to depict things more slowly than the usual series did. In this, Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! does live up to expectations and provides a satisfactory experience. The short format of this series, however, means that not very many discussions of the series exist, and having now seen it, it becomes clear that Azur Lane: Slow Ahead! is really meant for the folks who did enjoy the TV series and are looking for more ship girls while awaiting Kantai Collection‘s second season. Beyond the fact that it will feature Shigure as the protagonist and air somewhere in 2022, not much else is known about this series.

The events of Slow Ahead! serve to act as a precedent for what more military-moé series should seek to do in between more serious stories; this helps to dispel any misconceptions about the characters’ beliefs, desires and intents. By showing characters outside of their duties, this serves to humanise them. When the chips are down and the defecation hits the oscillation, viewers are not left scrambling over one another to draw conclusions about characters or their motivations (in the past, this has resulted in flame wars). Instead, seeing characters and how they typically are helps viewers to appreciate that their actions have at least some basis in rationality. As such, series like Girls und Panzer and High School Fleet could each do with a slice-of-life spin-off: discussions surrounding these series have oftentimes become far more heated than necessary, since some viewers are convinced that such anime are all-serious works akin to the likes of Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Patton or Apocalypse Now, works that speak to the horrors of warfare and how individual merit and bravery in conjunction with teamwork is necessary to survive times that otherwise bring out humanity’s evil. The reality is that, were an anime intending to cover such themes, they would utilise a completely different set of characters and aesthetics. Seeing Javelin, Laffey and Ayanami doing the sorts of things that are expected of ordinary students serves to reinforce that at the end of the day, military-moé are more akin to the cute-girls-doing-cute-things genre, about discovery and exploration above all else. Here in Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!, seeing Ayanami getting along swimmingly with Javelin and Laffey, or Zuikaku and Shoukaku treating them cordially with an onsen experience for having helped them to set up, serves to illustrate that beyond factional differences and occasionally dissimilar combat objectives, the ship girls are more similar than unlike. This helps to put a smile on the viewers’ faces and reinforce the notion that we needn’t worry about things like the ship girls shouldering responsibilities alone or the consequences of accessing forbidden technologies, because at the end of the day, the series is more about the elements that make slice-of-life enjoyable: world-building and the ability for viewers to immerse themselves in a world that is simultaneously different from and similar to our own.