by Scott Bernberg

You know, the beauty of Call of Duty 4 is that you can play the game pretty much any way you like. Want to be a sniper and lurk on rooftops, waiting for that perfect headshot? Go for it! Prefer to play the aggressive Marine type hopped up on adrenaline? Grab you light-machine gun and charge into the middle of the map guns-a-blazing. And then there’s the way I play the game. With the most realistic depiction of what I would be like in battle…crouched under a stairwell waiting for time to expire on the multiplayer session.

That’s right, I believe in playing COD 4 the same way I would if I were deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq or even Canada, that is to say, tucked safely behind a burnt out oil canister, thinking about my wife and kids while I pray to God nobody comes around the corner and sees me drying my own tears.

You see, a lot of guys will bust their balls, playing countless hours of the game hoping to snag that ACOG red-dot site for their AK-47 so they confidently climb on top of a heavy-fire zone and pick up enemies as they relentless charge forward. I prefer to whimper silently, cowardly picking off opponents from unimaginable distances, watching the clock tick away for what seems like an eternity until my icon disappears off of the map as my weapon cools down.

The only achievements I seek are the Corporal Kilnger Challenge in which a letter about a family crisis at home allows me to leave the map 5 minutes early and return to the safety of the lobby, or the Private Joker badge which reassigns me to the media pool where I can accurately report on the days headshots and grenade tosses.

You see, I believe that if the developers at Infinity Ward took all that time to create a game this realistic, then damn it, I’m going to play in realistic manner, whimpering into my Logitech headset for everyone to just leave me alone. So the next time you hear the cries of SCaredSHtlss407 as he implores you to just “go somewhere else” I hope you will see that figure hiding under the dead body of recently spawned grunt and remember that he’s just a man who wants to return home to see his family. God Bless America!