Who Do You Think You Are, Call of Duty?

I like to buy games. It’s a thing I do. Like to keep it fresh, keep it moving – keep up with what’s coming out. I’ve written before about the challenge of a ~850 GB hard drive. I would love to replay some games, but sorry pal, no room at the inn. Gotta make way for the future. God bless the indie title that come in at less than 10 gigs. Truly, you are a gift. I was surprised to learn the PS5 hard drive will only have 825 GB at launch, but I guess it’s super fast. We’ll see.

Enter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the game so nice they named it the same thing twice. I have always resisted playing this game due to its realism – I prefer a more imaginative universe – and its place of prominence in Bro culture. I finally downloaded it a few weeks ago as a way to keep in touch with some distant friends, and was alarmed to learn that it weighs in at a positively insulting 144.2 GB. That’s just the multiplayer. It doesn’t include the the single player campaign, or the Special Ops pack, whatever that is. Determined, I gritted my teeth and got to work making room for it. I got rid of XCOM 2 for this!

I’ve played it a bit. It’s a well designed, tactilely satisfying game. The battle royale map, Verdansk, is huge and incredibly detailed. Some might say too detailed. Here’s a short story. I was on the street, attempting to reach my team who had parachuted onto the roof of a 15 story building. I didn’t have all the nuances down yet so did the only thing I could think of; I went inside and took the stairs. And there WERE stairs, all 15 stories of them. I couldn’t believe it, they were endless. Between floors 10 and 11 I had to stop and catch my breath. Who needs this? Why is this here? Keep in mind, none of the floors are open so it’s just a long staircase. Imagine a team, or better yet, one guy, hiding in there and the only way to reach them is to walk up, or down, 7 flights of stairs. Exciting! These stairs can go. Program the first two floors and close the rest off. There, the game is smaller already.

Then this week, season 6 comes out, and for some reason, I can’t download the update. Not enough free space it says. What a surprise. Let’s take a look. Hmm, I’ve got 95 gigs free, and yet you’re telling me I need 33 more to download… an update? Let me get this math straight. Squatting on my hard drive, you take up 144 gigs and then, to keep you all nice and current, I need an ADDITIONAL 128 gigs of free space? ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE? In order to worship at the altar of Caaaall of Duuuuty I have to keep 272 GB free!? A full third of my available game-space??? The nerve of this thing…

I found an article online to help the poor gamer manage the file size, but you must really love this game if you’re willing to put this much work into keeping it, and I don’t. Good-bye, CoD, you corpulent asshole. You’re like a Judd Apatow movie, decent but in desperate need of a good editor.