[Falcon] Sometimes video games are all about creating a massive fantasy and indulging something that’s utterly impossible, and sometimes it’s about the exact opposite.
And today, on Gameranx,the 10 most realistic missions in video games.
Starting off with number 10,”Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,”
the reboot from 2019’s “Clean House.”
(lock clanking)
So the original “Call of Duty 4”
attempted to emulate the
feeling of modern warfare,
but as that series went on,
it got a little bit more
and more ridiculous.
Like the second “Modern
Warfare’s” campaign
was about a Russian invasion
of the United States,
so it didn’t really take that long
for any semblance of reality
and the “Modern Warfare”
series to part ways.
The 2019 reboot is an attempt
by Activision to get back
to more of the grounded
scenarios of “Call Duty 4,”
and for the most part, it really succeeds.
There’s a couple missions from the game
that we could do on a list like this,
but the most realistic by far
is probably “Clean House,”
the one where you raid
a terrorist safe house.
Now, the mission is slow,
tense, and atmospheric
in a way that most “Call of
Duty” missions are just not.
(dog barking)
– [Price] Bravo 6, moving
to the first floor.
– [Terrorist 1] What are you doing?
– [Terrorist 2] Shut up! Do as I say!
– [Terrorist 3] Where do you need me?
– [Falcon] The actual
gameplay, it’s kind of minimal
because you’re just one soldier
among many storming this place.
But the brief moments where you’re tasked
with checking rooms and
clearing out hostiles
are about as intense as these games get.
In such close quarters,
death can come in an instant,
and just identifying hostiles
while wearing night vision goggles
is kind of a nerve-wracking experience.
The body count is significantly lower
than pretty much any other
“Call of Duty” mission
that isn’t a tutorial,
but that’s just another thing about it
that makes it feel perhaps
a little more real.
The graphics, the
presentation, the gameplay,
it all comes together
to create this mission
that feels realistic.
Now, it might not actually be
the most realistic mission of all time,
but it’s the one everyone talks about,
so we wanted to get this
one outta the way first.
(door clunking)
(door creaking)
At number nine is “Pouring Forth Oil”
from “Red Dead Redemption 2.”
Now, as far as open-world games go,
there are few games as obsessed
with realism as “RDR2.”
The attention to detail is second to none,
and the designers put
just a mindbogglingly
insane level of work into this game
to create a version of the Old West
that is just filled
with historical details
that are true to life.
There are, of course, some things
that are maybe a little less realistic,
but for the most part,
realism is a thing this game leans into.
Now, again, this is another one
where probably more than a
few missions could work here,
but, personally, “Pouring Forth Oil IV”
is probably one of the most realistic.
Compared to some of the
more over-the-top heists
that show up from time to time,
this is a really down-to-earth mission.
Most games that include train robberies
go, like, really wild with it
by making it so the robbery
occurs on a moving train,
but this mission’s a lot closer
to how actual train robbers did it.
Like they just parked
something on the train tracks,
waited for the train to stop,
and then robbed the passengers.
For a good long while,
you go through this mission
without even firing a shot.
It’s not until you get
to the cargo compartment
that some train guards shoot at you,
but then, I mean even
there, there’s only a few.
If there’s any issue with
“RDR2” when it comes to realism,
it’s the amount of people you
shoot in any given mission.
Your enemies don’t really have
much of a survival instinct
and that does come into play
at the end of the train job
where some lawmen start,
like, snooping around.
– [Arthur] There’s only
two of you, you fools.
We got a whole lot less to lose.
Why don’t the two of you ride away?
That way neither of you get killed.
– [Falcon] You just kill
them before getting away.
But outside of that,
the way the rest of this mission plays out
feels pretty real.
As far as missions go,
this is probably as close
to a real trained robbery
as the game gets.
At number eight is the “Malaysia Job”
and “A Normal Life” from “Uncharted 4.”
Now, the “Uncharted” series
is basically “Indiana Jones” on steroids.
The games are filled with
completely insane setpieces
and moments where the protagonists
seem like they should
be dead 100 times over,
but that’s just part of the fun.
It’s not meant to be realistic,
at least not most of the time.
And that’s what makes
these particular missions
at the start of “Uncharted
4” stand out so much.
The first, “The Malaysia Job,”
seems like another treasure hunt,
but it quickly becomes clear that Drake
isn’t exploring yet another forgotten ruin
in an exotic location,
he’s actually dredging up
a damaged chip container.
Instead of an exciting adventure,
it’s just another day in the job.
So you hook up the line,
make sure the cargo’s intact,
and then haul the container onto the ship.
Pretty much it.
The following mission, “A Normal
Life,” is just as mundane.
You start off in Drake’s attic,
you get to look at all the
souvenirs he’s accumulated,
you play with a Nerf gun,
and then you go downstairs and eat dinner.
The house itself is one
of the most detailed
and realistic interiors
ever created for a game,
and the things you do
in it are just as real.
You can heat up some leftovers,
you can play some video games,
stuff that we all do
but in video game form.
– Is there a problem?
– No. No, just, uh, how do you, uh…
How’d you make it go?
– Push the start button.
– I knew that. I got it.
– All right.
– [Falcon] It’s a fairly short sequence,
and it’s mostly just
there for story purposes,
establishing that Drake is
sort of aching for the life,
so to speak.
But nothing else in this entire series
is vaguely as realistic as
these two little missions.
At number seven is “Thunder
Run” from “Battlefield 3.”
Now, obviously, the “Battlefield” series
has its fair share of campaign
missions that look fantastic,
but there’s not a lot that
I’d classify as realistic.
Probably the closest I can
think of though is this one,
“Thunder Run,” the tank
mission from “Battlefield 3.”
Probably the most noticeable thing
about this mission starting
out is how huge and open it is.
Like, you don’t really
see wide open spaces
like this in video games
because, well, it’s hard
to make them interesting.
Not even open-world games
have maps like this.
A gigantic flat world would be too boring
to explore in an open-world game.
And for most “Battlefield”
missions, it’s pretty lacking,
in terms of the more showy visuals
that make it easy to tell where
we’re supposed to be going.
But the emptiness makes it
feel much more realistic
than a lot of video game locations.
How the mission plays out
is pretty realistic as well.
Most of the enemy’s Soviet-area equipment
is no match for the M1A2 Abrams tank.
Their speed and battlefield awareness
would allow an Abrams to run
circles around tanks like that.
Of course, their ranges
aren’t realistic at all.
One of the advantages of the Abrams
is that it would be able to fire
outside the enemy’s effective range,
so most of the shooting would be
little specs in the distance
if there were truly realistic.
But I’ll give the game a break on that.
Like it wouldn’t be
visually interesting or fun.
– [Tank Crewmember 1] Anvil Actual,
we’re approaching the burn.
(gun blasting)
– [Tank Crewmember 2] Roger!
All call signs continue
assault into encampment!
– [Tank Crewmember 1] There! Northside!
Let’s go!
(gun blasting)
Troops! Coax!
– [Falcon] There are
more cool events here,
like using thermal vision
to shoot at enemies
through a cloud of dust.
There’s a drone you can switch to
to take a rocket emplacement out.
And the tense sequence where
you run out on the battlefield
and detonate some
minefield clearing charges.
It’s probably one of the best
parts of “Battlefield 3,”
and it stands out as one of
the most realistic depictions
of tank warfare in a video
game campaign mission
at all, period.
At number six is “Bone Appetit”
in “Mafia: Definitive Edition.”
Switching from a giant battlefield
to something a little more intimate.
Probably one of the best missions
in all of “Mafia” is this one,
the one where Tommy escorts Don Salieri
to his favorite restaurant,
gets ambushed by a Morello hit squad,
and, well, everything
basically goes topsy-turvy.
– My mother, she would be so honored
if you tried her carbonara.
– Excellent.
– [Falcon] It’s a simple premise,
but the details really sell it.
The restaurant is lavishly detailed.
The destruction caused by the hitmen,
also lavishly detailed.
All in all, there’s less than a dozen guys
shooting up the place
but it’s still impossible to take them on
in a stand-up fight.
So you’re forced to escape
through the kitchen,
then you sneak around the alley
and you ambush the gunman from the side.
It’s a dramatic encounter
that you could easily see
playing out in real life.
That’s what makes it
feel so realistic to me.
Both sides are playing a win here.
The guys who ambush use overwhelming force
to try to kill you,
but quick wits are what keeps Tommy alive.
It’s a mission that can
end in only a few minutes
but it’s so intense and shocking,
it’s one of the most memorable
and yet doesn’t engage
in an unrealistic scale.
At number five is “LAX
International Airport”
from “Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow.”
The “Splinter Cell” Series
tried to be a little bit more realistic
than most military games at the time.
Of course, the nature of the protagonist
as a one-man super spy is unrealistic,
but the plots themselves are
fairly grounded in reality.
Probably the most grounded
and possible plots
come from the second game of
the series, “Pandora Tomorrow,”
which is about the US being threatened
by an Indonesian nationalist
with a deadly strain of smallpox.
At the end of the game,
you manage to take out
the terrorist leader,
but one of the allies manages to get away
with the smallpox strain
and a small group of followers infiltrate
the Los Angeles International Airport
where they intend to release the virus
and spread it all over the world,
without dwelling on
modern events. (chuckles)
It’s a simple but frighteningly
plausible terrorist act.
There’s no bomb, no hostages,
no violent shootouts,
just some guys in plain clothes
planning to release a virus
in a heavily trafficked area.
The only way to stop them is
to sneak through the airport
and take out the disguised terrorists
without anyone knowing about it,
which is much easier set than done.
It’s an all-around great
location to end a game on.
And while the graphics
aren’t nearly as impressive
as they used to be,
it’s still a relatively realistic setting
for one of the most
realistic terrorist plots
ever made in a video game.
At number four is “Call of
Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s”
“Death From Above.”
Like I said in the first point,
this was the “Call of Duty”
that really went out of its way
to try to create unique scenarios
that felt like realistic
modern war situations.
This is definitely one of them.
In this mission, you play as the spotter
on an AC-130 gunship.
And you’re not even technically the guy
firing any of the weapons,
you’re just the guy pointing
the camera at targets
for gunners to, you know, gun. (chuckles)
The entire mission has this
almost eerie detachment
that’s reminiscent of
the battlef
On Gameranx,the 10 most realistic missions in video games.
[Falcon] Sometimes video games are all about creating a massive fantasy and indulging something that’s utterly impossible, and sometimes it’s about the exact opposite.
And today, on Gameranx,the 10 most realistic missions in video games.
Starting off with number 10,”Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,”
the reboot from 2019’s “Clean House.”
(lock clanking)
So the original “Call of Duty 4”
attempted to emulate the
feeling of modern warfare,
but as that series went on,
it got a little bit more
and more ridiculous.
Like the second “Modern
Warfare’s” campaign
was about a Russian invasion
of the United States,
so it didn’t really take that long
for any semblance of reality
and the “Modern Warfare”
series to part ways.
The 2019 reboot is an attempt
by Activision to get back
to more of the grounded
scenarios of “Call Duty 4,”
and for the most part, it really succeeds.
There’s a couple missions from the game
that we could do on a list like this,
but the most realistic by far
is probably “Clean House,”
the one where you raid
a terrorist safe house.
Now, the mission is slow,
tense, and atmospheric
in a way that most “Call of
Duty” missions are just not.
(dog barking)
– [Price] Bravo 6, moving
to the first floor.
– [Terrorist 1] What are you doing?
– [Terrorist 2] Shut up! Do as I say!
– [Terrorist 3] Where do you need me?
– [Falcon] The actual
gameplay, it’s kind of minimal
because you’re just one soldier
among many storming this place.
But the brief moments where you’re tasked
with checking rooms and
clearing out hostiles
are about as intense as these games get.
In such close quarters,
death can come in an instant,
and just identifying hostiles
while wearing night vision goggles
is kind of a nerve-wracking experience.
The body count is significantly lower
than pretty much any other
“Call of Duty” mission
that isn’t a tutorial,
but that’s just another thing about it
that makes it feel perhaps
a little more real.
The graphics, the
presentation, the gameplay,
it all comes together
to create this mission
that feels realistic.
Now, it might not actually be
the most realistic mission of all time,
but it’s the one everyone talks about,
so we wanted to get this
one outta the way first.
(door clunking)
(door creaking)
At number nine is “Pouring Forth Oil”
from “Red Dead Redemption 2.”
Now, as far as open-world games go,
there are few games as obsessed
with realism as “RDR2.”
The attention to detail is second to none,
and the designers put
just a mindbogglingly
insane level of work into this game
to create a version of the Old West
that is just filled
with historical details
that are true to life.
There are, of course, some things
that are maybe a little less realistic,
but for the most part,
realism is a thing this game leans into.
Now, again, this is another one
where probably more than a
few missions could work here,
but, personally, “Pouring Forth Oil IV”
is probably one of the most realistic.
Compared to some of the
more over-the-top heists
that show up from time to time,
this is a really down-to-earth mission.
Most games that include train robberies
go, like, really wild with it
by making it so the robbery
occurs on a moving train,
but this mission’s a lot closer
to how actual train robbers did it.
Like they just parked
something on the train tracks,
waited for the train to stop,
and then robbed the passengers.
For a good long while,
you go through this mission
without even firing a shot.
It’s not until you get
to the cargo compartment
that some train guards shoot at you,
but then, I mean even
there, there’s only a few.
If there’s any issue with
“RDR2” when it comes to realism,
it’s the amount of people you
shoot in any given mission.
Your enemies don’t really have
much of a survival instinct
and that does come into play
at the end of the train job
where some lawmen start,
like, snooping around.
– [Arthur] There’s only
two of you, you fools.
We got a whole lot less to lose.
Why don’t the two of you ride away?
That way neither of you get killed.
– [Falcon] You just kill
them before getting away.
But outside of that,
the way the rest of this mission plays out
feels pretty real.
As far as missions go,
this is probably as close
to a real trained robbery
as the game gets.
At number eight is the “Malaysia Job”
and “A Normal Life” from “Uncharted 4.”
Now, the “Uncharted” series
is basically “Indiana Jones” on steroids.
The games are filled with
completely insane setpieces
and moments where the protagonists
seem like they should
be dead 100 times over,
but that’s just part of the fun.
It’s not meant to be realistic,
at least not most of the time.
And that’s what makes
these particular missions
at the start of “Uncharted
4” stand out so much.
The first, “The Malaysia Job,”
seems like another treasure hunt,
but it quickly becomes clear that Drake
isn’t exploring yet another forgotten ruin
in an exotic location,
he’s actually dredging up
a damaged chip container.
Instead of an exciting adventure,
it’s just another day in the job.
So you hook up the line,
make sure the cargo’s intact,
and then haul the container onto the ship.
Pretty much it.
The following mission, “A Normal
Life,” is just as mundane.
You start off in Drake’s attic,
you get to look at all the
souvenirs he’s accumulated,
you play with a Nerf gun,
and then you go downstairs and eat dinner.
The house itself is one
of the most detailed
and realistic interiors
ever created for a game,
and the things you do
in it are just as real.
You can heat up some leftovers,
you can play some video games,
stuff that we all do
but in video game form.
– Is there a problem?
– No. No, just, uh, how do you, uh…
How’d you make it go?
– Push the start button.
– I knew that. I got it.
– All right.
– [Falcon] It’s a fairly short sequence,
and it’s mostly just
there for story purposes,
establishing that Drake is
sort of aching for the life,
so to speak.
But nothing else in this entire series
is vaguely as realistic as
these two little missions.
At number seven is “Thunder
Run” from “Battlefield 3.”
Now, obviously, the “Battlefield” series
has its fair share of campaign
missions that look fantastic,
but there’s not a lot that
I’d classify as realistic.
Probably the closest I can
think of though is this one,
“Thunder Run,” the tank
mission from “Battlefield 3.”
Probably the most noticeable thing
about this mission starting
out is how huge and open it is.
Like, you don’t really
see wide open spaces
like this in video games
because, well, it’s hard
to make them interesting.
Not even open-world games
have maps like this.
A gigantic flat world would be too boring
to explore in an open-world game.
And for most “Battlefield”
missions, it’s pretty lacking,
in terms of the more showy visuals
that make it easy to tell where
we’re supposed to be going.
But the emptiness makes it
feel much more realistic
than a lot of video game locations.
How the mission plays out
is pretty realistic as well.
Most of the enemy’s Soviet-area equipment
is no match for the M1A2 Abrams tank.
Their speed and battlefield awareness
would allow an Abrams to run
circles around tanks like that.
Of course, their ranges
aren’t realistic at all.
One of the advantages of the Abrams
is that it would be able to fire
outside the enemy’s effective range,
so most of the shooting would be
little specs in the distance
if there were truly realistic.
But I’ll give the game a break on that.
Like it wouldn’t be
visually interesting or fun.
– [Tank Crewmember 1] Anvil Actual,
we’re approaching the burn.
(gun blasting)
– [Tank Crewmember 2] Roger!
All call signs continue
assault into encampment!
– [Tank Crewmember 1] There! Northside!
Let’s go!
(gun blasting)
Troops! Coax!
– [Falcon] There are
more cool events here,
like using thermal vision
to shoot at enemies
through a cloud of dust.
There’s a drone you can switch to
to take a rocket emplacement out.
And the tense sequence where
you run out on the battlefield
and detonate some
minefield clearing charges.
It’s probably one of the best
parts of “Battlefield 3,”
and it stands out as one of
the most realistic depictions
of tank warfare in a video
game campaign mission
at all, period.
At number six is “Bone Appetit”
in “Mafia: Definitive Edition.”
Switching from a giant battlefield
to something a little more intimate.
Probably one of the best missions
in all of “Mafia” is this one,
the one where Tommy escorts Don Salieri
to his favorite restaurant,
gets ambushed by a Morello hit squad,
and, well, everything
basically goes topsy-turvy.
– My mother, she would be so honored
if you tried her carbonara.
– Excellent.
– [Falcon] It’s a simple premise,
but the details really sell it.
The restaurant is lavishly detailed.
The destruction caused by the hitmen,
also lavishly detailed.
All in all, there’s less than a dozen guys
shooting up the place
but it’s still impossible to take them on
in a stand-up fight.
So you’re forced to escape
through the kitchen,
then you sneak around the alley
and you ambush the gunman from the side.
It’s a dramatic encounter
that you could easily see
playing out in real life.
That’s what makes it
feel so realistic to me.
Both sides are playing a win here.
The guys who ambush use overwhelming force
to try to kill you,
but quick wits are what keeps Tommy alive.
It’s a mission that can
end in only a few minutes
but it’s so intense and shocking,
it’s one of the most memorable
and yet doesn’t engage
in an unrealistic scale.
At number five is “LAX
International Airport”
from “Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow.”
The “Splinter Cell” Series
tried to be a little bit more realistic
than most military games at the time.
Of course, the nature of the protagonist
as a one-man super spy is unrealistic,
but the plots themselves are
fairly grounded in reality.
Probably the most grounded
and possible plots
come from the second game of
the series, “Pandora Tomorrow,”
which is about the US being threatened
by an Indonesian nationalist
with a deadly strain of smallpox.
At the end of the game,
you manage to take out
the terrorist leader,
but one of the allies manages to get away
with the smallpox strain
and a small group of followers infiltrate
the Los Angeles International Airport
where they intend to release the virus
and spread it all over the world,
without dwelling on
modern events. (chuckles)
It’s a simple but frighteningly
plausible terrorist act.
There’s no bomb, no hostages,
no violent shootouts,
just some guys in plain clothes
planning to release a virus
in a heavily trafficked area.
The only way to stop them is
to sneak through the airport
and take out the disguised terrorists
without anyone knowing about it,
which is much easier set than done.
It’s an all-around great
location to end a game on.
And while the graphics
aren’t nearly as impressive
as they used to be,
it’s still a relatively realistic setting
for one of the most
realistic terrorist plots
ever made in a video game.
At number four is “Call of
Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s”
“Death From Above.”
Like I said in the first point,
this was the “Call of Duty”
that really went out of its way
to try to create unique scenarios
that felt like realistic
modern war situations.
This is definitely one of them.
In this mission, you play as the spotter
on an AC-130 gunship.
And you’re not even technically the guy
firing any of the weapons,
you’re just the guy pointing
the camera at targets
for gunners to, you know, gun. (chuckles)
The entire mission has this
almost eerie detachment
that’s reminiscent of
the battlef
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