Top 50 Video Game Moments: Number 11

Today's moment comes from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It's from the very end of the game. If you haven't played it by now, you probably never will, but the standard caveats apply.

General Shepherd is a bastard.

There are approximately four thousand twists in MW2 (No Russian! America is invaded! More nukes! The White House gets overthrown!) some of them work, some of them feel tacked on. Through all of it, it's important to note that Shepherd planned it all - even things he really couldn't have foreseen.

His grand plans involve facilitating foreign terrorism, murdering his allies, and allowing (encouraging, in fact) America's enemies to attack her.

This man kicks puppies.

It's all very shocking and twisty, but in the final level, where you take the super duo of Soap and Price to his compound to officially bring it, you want that crafty bastard to go down. Towards the end of that final mission, you put a couple of shots in him and end up finding him leaning up against a car. Supremely confident in your stabbing abilities, you walk up to him, ready to turn him into a 5-star pincushion.

Things do not go according to plan.

It turns out that for a 50 year old man suffering rather severe blood loss, the General is pretty spry. With a quick motion, he knocks you down, then stabs the shit out of you. In between stabbing induced blackouts, you see Price getting beaten to a pulp, helpless to do anything but watch. No weapon, fading consciousness... then you notice that Shepherd was kind enough to leave you with a weapon. You just have to extract it from your chest first.

The whole thing actually plays out in a very tense manner. I remember when I played through it, I was hammering the "pull the knife out of your chest" button on the controller. Having retrieved your weapon, you take aim.....and send it flying straight into Shepherd's left eye.

Yeah. Something like this.

Fuck yeah.