If the single-player campaign of Modern Warfare 2 revolved around rescuing a puppy from the caves of Tora Bora for six hours, it probably wouldn’t affect the value of the purchase for those that make it.

Whether players are rescuing puddles the poodle, or fighting angry Russians, the game largely follows a template that sees them advance ten feet, duck behind cover while shooting at a cluster of enemies and hoping the grenade indicator doesn’t light up, and then advancing another ten feet to repeat the process. Sometimes you’ll be doing this in the streets, and sometimes you’ll be doing this inside McBurger Town USA. The point is that you’ll be doing this a lot, in many different places, in many short and sputtering ways.

But I don’t think that ever mattered, even as the game spices the scenery by borrowing most of the plot from Red Dawn. It doesn’t matter because the special-ops missions and multiplayer are the primary draw, with the singe-player campaign existing only to tie the package together, because for some reason we can’t stray from a standardized retail model of worth that ignores the fact that those traditionally added-on elements are herein the main draw.

Special-ops missions offer an ideal means of experiencing bite-sized adrenaline shots, as well as providing more practice for the multiplayer slaughter than the single-player campaign could ever hope to provide while tripping over narrative concerns and cinematic distractions. And more of that direct and focused game-play special-ops offers, in addition to the multiplayer and sans a single-player campaign for less cash, constitutes a more enlightened and efficient model. But I guess they don’t see it that way over at Activision quite yet.

So as if seeking a purpose in light of this, Modern Warfare 2 is a game oddly obsessed with doing something interesting with the first-person perspective, while entirely unsure of how to go about it. I came to this conclusion after playing some legitimately well crafted scenarios, continually having my perspective brought into play by last minute rescues that see my hands grabbing for help from comrades as the screen shakes. But these often come after high-speed chases that feel incredibly arcade-like, or drawn out gun battles that create a jigsaw puzzle of experiences that doesn’t quite fit together.

As far as the aim of immersion is concerned, the game never leaves the player in any one place long enough to truly become immersed or feel like part of the battlefield. And after awhile, the moments meant to put you deeper behind the eyes of the character become more of a convent means of ending the game rather than a true attempt at immersion.

The immediate impression I was left with from the single-player campaign was that Modern Warfare 2 doesn’t need to impress me, and it doesn’t want to. Though it does have a desire to punch me in the stomach and perhaps make me feel like shit for awhile.

So maybe it’s forgivable to assume that a level like “No Russian” is entirely about shock value, a sure sign that the game acknowledges the pointlessness of single-player story-mode and kicks against it in a desperate attempt for relevance.

But, since multiplayer is a thing better played than read about, the shock and awe inclusion of a terrorist act that players can participate in does give us something to discuss.

The question of initial interest is why a level like “No Russian” is included, even while realizing that there is no direct answer we could believe free of suspicion. There’s a sliver of me that wants to believe it represents a ballsy act - a recognition of the projected sales and players, and a desire to smack a great many people upside the head, if even a little.

But the fact that the game immediately begins with a warning screen that offers me the chance to avoid the level altogether sort of takes the piss out of that idea. It’s entirely a legal-point, to give Activision some cover from the expected flak and perhaps give the industry’s spokespeople a leg to stand on when Fox News hauls their asses in for the inevitable shit storm. And that warning also turns any notions about the size of Activision’s or Infinity Ward’s balls into raisins.

What we’re left with is a large machine gun in our hands and a whole lot of civilians waiting to be mowed down like cattle. Pulling the trigger asks us to rewire our brain within a game that is regularly preoccupied with screaming about avoiding innocent causalities. And while I’m certainly no stranger to killing civilians in a videogame, intentionally or otherwise, this is the first instance in which I’ve been invited to participate directly in an act of terrorism.

Between the people who will understate the relevance, and those that will scream this opens up a portal to hell for those who play videogames, how can we really find an answer to sum up the weight of committing such acts within a videogame?

Infinity Ward’s solution appears to be in punishing the player regardless of their actions. Whether you participate in shooting civilians, or simply watch it unfold, the end result is a guilty verdict and a bullet in the head. It’s a simplistic solution, but one that perhaps says something about the nature of guilt, more specifically disregarding any difference or consideration between active and passive participation in the act itself – because watching it unfold constitutes a passive level of acceptance that allows it to occur without interruption.

Mind you, should the player attempt to shoot the terrorists they will instantly die and fail the mission. But that does constitute a choice, even if it ends the experience abruptly. Deciding to stop playing constitutes a decision. Accepting your death in the attempt to stop the act does warrant an active choice, even while it ruins your weekend gaming plans.

The normally clear and clean waters of the FPS genre get murky when people trouble themselves to defend their actions during that level. There’s a fear of being judged a homicidal maniac from admitting participation, some players telling me they fired over people’s heads or didn’t fire at all, as if I was judging them based on an act committed against 1’s and 0’s. Mind you, in front of company I found it hard to pull the trigger, feeling that sting from potentially judging eyes beside me, causing me to second guess my actions.

But that is the question with the most longevity, not a matter of where you were when it happened, but entirely a question of what your actions were in that situation and what that might mean. It probably matters far more that we question that, and prove we have the capacity to do so, versus the tired debate of what is or isn’t permissible within the space of a videogame once again.

With that in mind, I’m at least willing to tilt my head and blur my vision enough to believe that Modern Warfare 2 has something more than shock to offer via the single-player campaign.

In many ways the kicking the game makes for relevancy separates it from all other games in the genre, specifically kicking against the idea of sterile war environments, and offering a view of modern combat as something that can’t be contained - so that when the Russians invade, there is space to see a recognition of the inability to contain war quite so much as we would wish to believe possible.