Sure as snot seems that way! Ice-T (gamertag "Lord 187X") posted an image of the after action report for a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 multi-player round. The report details the player's score and Accolades — awards for completing a session with a specific set of requirements.

Ice-T's top three Accolades for the session:

The Show
10 kills/No deaths

Supernatural
Kill/Death ration over 10

Immortal
Highest kill/death ratio

None of which are easy Accolades in the slightest. Yep, you gonna die!

Ice T Demonstrates His 'Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2' Gaming Skills In Today's Daily TwitPic [MTV Movies Blog]

"I, being a Pakistani, was so excited at seeing a Karachi map and then immediately so disappointed when I played the map," says the Karachi resident. The map has Arabic written all over, even though that isn't the country's language.

The country of Pakistan has two official lingos: English and Urdu. With somewhere between 60 and 80 million speakers of the standard language, Urdu has more speakers than, say, Italian, Korean or Polish.

"Infinity Ward probably thought, 'Oh hey its a Muslim country so Arabic is the language,'" says Saad.

While Arabic and Urdu use the same script, the words are completely different. For example, the noun "people" is "al-naas" in Arabic (الناس), and "log" or "loug" (لوگ) in Urdu.

"To someone who doesn't know urdu won't be able to tell the difference," Saad explains. "It's like Spanish and English, I guess. Some letters are same, some are different but the words are completely different."

There isn't a single Urdu word on the entire Karachi map and no one writes in Arabic in Pakistan.

The patch is live on U.S. servers, so if you live there, download. If it's live elsewhere, you can download it as well. So there you go.

Thanks to all who sent this in!

Let's get the obvious out of the way — these games make serious dough.

"Business leaders have an opportunity to... reverse an alarming trend of not recognizing the sacrifices made by the men and women of our military service," CEO Robert Kotick tells Victor Godinez at the Dallas Morning News. Business leaders also have the opportunity to make a gajillion dollars on the backs of those sacrifices.

But, that's being jaded — perhaps too jaded. Video games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare have not been critical of the military like many war films of this past decade have. What's more, war, for better or worse, is an ideal setting for a video game. There's conflict, shooting, objectives — the laundry list goes on and on.

As Godinez points out, video games are filling that gap left by Hollywood.

"The last Brothers in Arms video game," developer Randy Pitchford says, "if that was a movie shot in live action, could never exist because it would cost a billion dollars."

Video games take command of war epics as movies retreat from recent conflicts [Dallas Morning News]

But what about the Xbox 360? According to early sales figures, over 10,000 Xbox 360 consoles were sold the week that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 launched in Japan. Those who follow the weekly hardware sales will know it's been forever and a day since Microsoft has sold 10,000 consoles in one week — heck, in two weeks, even.

The boast in sales is believed to have been caused by the bundled MW2 console. Call of Duty is on a roll in Japan, outselling even Namco Bandai's Wii RPG Tales of Graces in its first week.

Since these are early sales figures, do wait for the official numbers later this week.

スタジオジブリ最新作「借りぐらしのアリエッティ」2010年夏公開決定、他｜忍之閻魔帳

IW's Robert Bowling updated the Modern Warfare 2 masses on the developer's current plans to fix some nagging problems. He writes, "Update in Test now: 1887s Balanced. Public "private" Match fix. Infinite Ammo fix. Prestige Hack on PS3 fix. Texture Hack on PC fix."

Looks like we can expect few double shotgun wielders in our future and less in the way of grenade spam. When all those updates will go live and onto your platform of choice isn't always Infinity Ward's call. But keep an eye peeled! I mean, stay frosty!

While Michelle Rodriguez isn't appearing in Avatar, she's doing other things — playing video games! Here's how her interview with game site GameCulture plays out:

What games are you playing these days?

Assassin's Creed II.

What do you think about the Italian Renaissance thing going on there?

I think it's awesome, but I haven't had a chance to get that far into it yet because I'm too busy with freaking Call of Duty!

What are your thoughts on the airport sequence in Modern Warfare 2?

There's an airport sequence?

Where they make you go and kill the hostages.

Holy shit.

You haven ‘t played that part?

Uh-uh. I haven't gotten that far. I've been playing online.

There's a sequence where they force you to kill the hostages.

Holy shit. And do you have to do it?

You have to do it or you die, since they find out you're undercover.

Fucked up. Talk about collateral damage.

She's doesn't seem to be irked! No biggie. She's too busy to be irked.

GameCulture Exclusive: "Avatar" Vet Michelle Rodriguez Talks Modern Warfare and Dodging Earthquakes [GameCulture]

Modern Warfare 2 is a sexist game. On this fact, I think most people agree because it's a war game, a typical male fantasy. Beyond that, though, the game omits women from its experience almost entirely. If you skip the infamous No Russian level, the only female contact you have is an automated voice telling you all phone lines in America are down. There are no women in the bunkers, no women in the chain of command, and I'm 90% sure that that poor astronaut also isn't a woman.

To be fair, the lack of women in Modern Warfare 2 doesn't seem as blatantly sexist as other video games where big-breasted bimbo women are shoehorned into the story for the main character to drool over. However, excluding women — who make up more than half of the world's population — from the entire cast of characters is still sexist. Like branding every copy of the game with a No Girls Allowed stamp.

Sexist or not, though, Modern Warfare 2 captured the hearts and minds of at least three feminists simply by being a good game. There may have been moments when my friends and I as women felt uncomfortable — like riding in the Humvee in the mounted gun position; there was something a little too butch about that. Overall, though, I had to conclude that we weren't shut out from enjoying this male fantasy. We just have to ask if there will ever be room for us to exist within it.

Originally my two friends and I weren't planning to spend our entire night in playing Modern Warfare 2. It was just an item of curiosity, like stealing my big brother's Playboy magazine to show off at a slumber party. The game had been out for about a week and everybody was talking about it, particularly the No Russian level. So after a gracing the first level with our presence, we decided to keep playing and see what all the fuss was about.

Two days later I still hadn't left my friends' house. Empty takeout containers littered their living room and the fashion magazines and nail polish had been abandoned in the kitchen. We were at the final level and we were screaming our heads off with all the high-octave fervor of preteen girls at a Jonas Brothers concert.

SPOILER WARNING: MODERN WARFARE 2

That moment went something like this:

"Ohmigod, you have to catch him! Don't let him get away!" This was from Felicity,* a girl in her early 20s who works in local government.

"Ooohhh... He killed Ghost!" This came from Tiffany*, a classmate of mine at Mills College — bastion of feminist principle in the West — and the owner of the PS3. She insists she bought it for the Blu-Ray player but we've all seen the stack of PlayStation One games on her bookshelf.

"We know he killed Ghost, we were there! Oh! Oh! Quicktime event!" That was me, the games journalist who couldn't name a single feminist movement leader.

After negotiating who would perform the quicktime event (me, because Tiffany pointed out I play games for a living), we sat back and soaked up the final moments of Modern Warfare 2 almost in revered silence. After the credits sequence ended, my friends and I stayed up late into the night, gossiping, mooning and moaning over every little detail in the game. Sort of the same way we do for movies we like starring people we'd like to sleep with.

"I heart Ghost," I declared. "He can carry me on his back to a helicopter any day."

"Oh come on," Tiffany replied. "You can't even see his face. MacTavish, now he's dreamy."

"The mohawk's not doing it for me," Felicity contributed. "He'd have to wear his snow cap and goggles to bed."

It struck me then to wonder about our behavior. First of all, I thought it was weird that we were lusting after Ghost and Soap as if they were Brad Pitt and Jason Statham. Second, I noticed we had moments of masculinity when our typical female language ("Omigod! Eee!") was replaced by more aggressive language ("Kill that guy! Run and knife! Go loud, go loud!"). Finally, I thought maybe we failed at being feminists. Modern Warfare 2 is sexist but we played it — and not just played it, loved it.

That last point is important because it's part of a catch-22 in the video games industry: Developers don't make games for girls because they assume girls don't play games, and because developers don't make games for girls, girls don't play video games. In other words, if I accept Modern Warfare 2 as awesome despite being not having a single female character for me to identify with in it, will Modern Warfare 3 also lack female characters?

I brought the drama up with Tiffany first. "It is possible to enjoy something despite it being sexist, not because it's sexist," she said. "I think there needs to be a move away from the language that makes some things for boys and some things for girls so we can enjoy things without using gender language."

To me, that's typical "Millsbian" language — it sounds nice, but it doesn't offer any solutions. So I asked Tiffany if she thought the game would be better with a playable female character in it.

Tiffany said no, she didn't want to play as a woman, she just wanted to see women. The non-playable character women in No Russian don't count because they offended her (and me). Here's why: they all seemed to be wearing the exact same purple shirt whereas the male NPCs had a variety of outfits. It's like the developers had no idea what women wear and copy-pasted one character model into the level to save time.

Above: Spot the women. Now spot the women without purple shirts.

Felicity mentioned the purple shirt ladies as "not real women" too, but she didn't seem nearly as offended by them as Tiffany and I were. She's inclined to forgive Modern Warfare for not really having women in the cast because she prefers that to Japanese role-playing games where all the girls are cutesy, skinny and have huge tits.

"I would have been OK with some of your radio commands coming from women, though," she said. "But I'd be more worried about having a playable female character because it might seem more like they shoehorned a woman into the game."

That made me think of the first Modern Warfare. In that game, there is a female helicopter pilot in a combat situation. For the majority of the level, she's helping your male character out — then at the end, just as you're about to escape a nuclear blast, she gets shot down and your character goes back for her and dies trying to save her.

This triggers my feminist rage in two ways. First, it's inadvertently suggesting that men wouldn't go back for other men on the battlefield — only for women (and from there, it's not much of a stretch to conclude that women shouldn't be on the battlefield). Second, it's implying that women can't drive. Seriously, why couldn't some of the male pilots get shot down?

I give Modern Warfare 2 credit for not repeating the female pilot nonsense. But at the same time, I feel like they wasted an excellent opportunity to give me, Tiffany and Felicity a female character we could easily relate to without feeling like she'd been shoehorned in: the D.C. Invasion levels. You really think the U.S. Army would care about the no-women-in-combat-zones rule when the enemy is in the White House? You would see every able-bodied adult on the battlefield at that point.

That's ultimately what I'm asking for from Modern Warfare 3: room to exist within the male fantasy. I don't just want to lust after Ghost and Soap — I want to imagine myself there with them. I don't just want to know that women are in the Army by hearing their voices on a radio — I want to see them fighting for their country the way I would if the enemy were at the gates and my country needed me. I want developers to know that I play video games too, so they should pander to me as well as men.

*Names have been changed.

The patch combats the game's "javelin exploit" (WARNING: BENNY HILL MUSIC) as well as the care package glitch.

Micrsoft has been banning players taking advantage of the javelin exploit.

fourzerotwo [Twitter]

In a country traditionally dominated by role-playing-game, this American first-person-shooter actually is posting reasonably healthy first day sales — that is, for a Western FPS in Japan.

Early data has the Xbox 360 version of MW2 selling 42,000 copies while the PS3 version apparently sold 64,000 copies for a grand total of 106,000 copies of Modern Warfare 2 in Japan. That is low compared to what it did in the West, but extremely high for Japan. Generally speaking, Western games just do not sell 100,000 in Japan on their first day. Baby steps, folks, baby steps!

Other things to keep in mind: Some players have already bought the imported versions and others have been complaining about the localization job MW2 Japanese publisher Square Enix did.

In a recent interview, Square Enix president said that "youge-", the term used to separate Japanese games from foreign titles, has had a "terribly discriminatory meaning" in Japan.

If these numbers are correct, not bad Modern Warfare 2, not bad at all. Could this mean the Japanese gamer demographic is *gasp* changing?

Wii「テイルズ オブ グレイセス」初日で11万本を販売、他 [忍之閻魔帳]

Settling for third, behind the two versions of Modern Warfare 2, was Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which managed 1.39 million copies. Nintendo's latest Mario adventure for the Wii did so with five fewer days on U.S. store shelves.

Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed II came closest to reaching New Super Mario Bros. Wii, with 794,700 units on the 360, 448,400 on the PS3. Combined, Assassin's Creed II came even closer, with 1,243,100 copies sold across both platforms.

The Xbox 360 and Wii tied for the number of top ten games appearing on each platform. The Xbox 360 scored top showings with Left 4 Dead 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, with Wii bestsellers Mario Kart Wii, Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort continuing to score big figures.

The full top ten, according to the NPD Group is as follows.

01. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) - 4,200,000
02. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) - 1,870,000
03. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) - 1,390,000
04. Assassin's Creed II (Xbox 360) - 794,700
05. Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360) - 744,000
06. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) - 720,200
07. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) - 679,000
08. Assassin's Creed II (PS3) - 448,400
09. Dragon Age: Origins (Xbox 360) - 362,100
10. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) - 315,000

Total software sales were a relatively healthy $1.406B, down just 3.1% from the November prior. Thanks, Modern Warfare 2.

"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has achieved the top spot for first-month sales of any game at the title level," says Anita Frazier, NPD analyst. "Halo 3 previously held the spot when it sold 3.3 million units in September '07 in 12 days at retail. MW2 bested Halo 3's daily sales rate by 16% in its 19 days at retail in November.""

"While this year's top-selling item bested last year's by 283%, it couldn't make up for softness elsewhere. The top 50 games this year sold 5% less units than did the top 50 last year."

In the section "No Russian", the player is told, "Remember, no Russian." Here, this means "Do not speak Russian," a plot point for this scene. However, in the Japanese version, this is localized as "Kill 'em, the Russians." Players, it seems, will not be able to kill anyone in this scene. Actually, that's not entirely true.

If players do shoot civilians in the Japanese version, it will automatically be "game over". It is possible to kill civilians in this mission in the Western version of MW2. This holds true for the game's bonus content as well.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has also been similarly censored in Germany.

According to MW 2's Japanese publisher Square Enix, the game does not have an English language track. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 goes on sale in Japan tomorrow.

Thanks Lenny for the tip!

"Even now, there have been people in Japan using the label youge- (Western games) with a terribly discriminatory meaning," Wada said in a recent interview on Japanese TV in which he discussed Square Enix and Modern Warfare 2, which it published in Japan. "I'd like them to try it once. If they play it once, they'd realize how incorrect that label is."

The term "youge-" has been used to separate Japanese games from foreign titles, which, until recently, were believed to have little or no appeal to Japanese gamers. "Game" (ゲーム）refers to video games. "Youge-" (洋ゲー）means something else — these games are different, they are the other.

Continuing, Wada noted that Western developers really started to come into their own in 2005, but that there was a lag in importing these titles into Japan. "Japanese game makers have been overwhelming strong," Wada said. "Thus, perhaps it was not necessary to look outside." Times are changing, and so is Square Enix, it seems.

Wada Interview [YouTube]

Dubbed FROST ROAD, the film will be produced by Cary Brokaw's Avenue Pictures (CLOSER, ANGELS IN AMERICA) will produce with Steven L'Heureux's Solipsist Films, in association with Arem's own PCB Productions.

Arem penned the script, and FROST ROAD is also in development as a graphic novel. Here's a plot summary:

FROST ROAD concerns a small coastal Eastern town which is suddenly and inexplicably devastated by an invisible contagion. A young man awakens from a car accident to discover he is one of few survivors in the aftermath of a mysterious outbreak. Somehow immune, he tries to save the remaining survivors from themselves, as he desperately struggles to prevent the deadly wave from spreading across the entire planet.

It's evident that Arem can construct exciting set pieces, but can he tell a story?

"I'm extremely excited about this story," said Arem about FROST ROAD, "and thrilled to have the opportunity to bring the skills I've honed in the game industry to the big screen. There's an incredible talent pool currently working in the game industry, and I hope that the success of FROST ROAD will give other creators the chance to show what they can do on a wider canvas."

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Director To Make Feature Film Debut [Slash Film] [Pic]

Localization.

The game has been dubbed in Japanese by its publisher Square Enix. Many Japanese players are saying the voice track sounds "cheap", and that it's hard to follow what is going on. (Not that the English version is any easier!) Other players are upset that the game does not appear to have English language options and have been saying they will not be buying the Japanese version. The sentiment is similar to Western players who would rather play JRPGs in Japanese with English language subtitles.

The online voice track for the Japanese version seems particularly annoying as well. Worse yet, according to one screenshot, the controversial section "No Russian" apparently has the line "Remember, no Russian" (AKA, Don't speak the Russian language) written as "Kill 'em, the Russians" in Japanese.

Sure, technically, that's what you are there to do in this scene: Kill the Russians, but some Japanese players are upset as this changes the meaning of this section slightly — not to mention misses the point of the "No Russian" title.

And, thus, Photoshops like this have been appearing on the Japanese internet!

But Kotaku Japan notes, playing the Japanese language version might be different that watching a gameplay clip — meaning, it might be easier to follow.

The newest issue of Famitsu weighs in on Infinity Ward's blockbuster, crippling it with a mere 39 out of 40, one point shy of greatness. While potentially disappointing, it puts the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game in good company. Famitsu has also deemed games like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Okami, Grand Theft Auto IV, Resident Evil (for GameCube!) and many more worthy of 39/40 praise.

Sadly, though, Modern Warfare 2 won't join the ranks of 2009's other "perfects" which include New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Bayonetta, Dragon Quest IX and Monster Hunter Tri. And Final Fantasy XIII, we presume. Probably safe to save Square Enix a second spot on the list.

Virtual shoppers spent a great deal of money online between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but according to Retail Decisions, people perpetrating credit card fraud spent more. 23% more to be specific, spending an average of $248 per transaction across the two busiest holiday shopping days so far this year. The average actually makes sense, once you realize what they are spending other people's money on.

The top for fraud prone products are:

1) Virtual gift cards and gift cards
2) Xbox 360
3) Nintendo Wii
4) The "Call of Duty" Xbox game

We're going to assume that by Call of Duty then mean Modern Warfare 2, unless the credit cards are a few years old. No, that didn't make sense. The items do, however. Especially number one, which can then be used to buy numbers 2 through 3 with an added layer of anonymity.

Having spent the better part of last month struggling with my own credit card fraud woes, I can't stress how important it is to not let other people have my credit card numbers. You can do whatever you;d like with your own, just leave me mine.

We're discussing the last three levels of Modern Warfare 2 today.

-The Enemy Of My Enemy (Planes!)
-Just Like Old Times (Caves!)
-Endgame (Rafts!)

I had heard people complain that the game ended abruptly. They felt it pulled a Halo 2 and all but required a sequel to provide a satisfying narrative conclusion.

Talk about what you thought of these final levels, but can we also dollop some praise upon The Enemy of My Enemy?

Not since one of the final levels of Resident Evil 4 have I played a section of a game that removed my character from being the center of attention and asked me to still have fun. Games so often position our character as the most important person in the scene. In Modern Warfare 2's The Enemy level, it felt fresh to be less important, as the Americans and Russians went at it. Rarely does the world of a video game not revolve around the player — how did you feel not being the focal point of The Enemy of My Enemy?


And what's the big picture take on this campaign? What were you looking for from it and what did you get out of it?

Finally, thank you to everyone who participated in this revival of the Kotaku Game Club. I was happy with how we were able to discuss a shared experience bit by bit, though I'm still not sure how we'd handle this for a game with a less universally-experienced progression like, say, Dragon Age. Feel free to offer feedback on what we should do for Game Club next.

Driver Joey Logano will go round and round in the Modern Warfare 2 themed stock car, moving at high speeds at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, viewable on ESPN2, aka The Deuce.

"This is the perfect race to have Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on the car because it is the last race before the holiday season," Logano said. "GameStop gave me a copy last week, and it is an unbelievable game. It should definitely be at the top of a lot of Christmas wish lists this year."

Sure, I guess that makes... sense?

We're covering:

-Second Sun (Goodbye, space station)
-Whiskey Hotel (Goodbye, Oval Office - almost!)
-Loose Ends (Goodbye Ramirez Roach and Ghost)

Those of you who didn't exactly follow Game Club protocol already began to spoil that the levels we're discussing today would include a plot twist. Once teased, it was obvious what the twist would be.

So let's talk about plot twists... We just had one in Modern Warfare 2. Have the twists been done well in this game, compared to, say the twists in the first Modern Warfare or other games with big surprises such as Knights of the Old Republic? (When you answer, please show some restraint about spoiling too many other games.)

Also, what do folks think of territory-defense levels like Loose Ends? I was frustrated in the 90s with GoldenEye's late-game level like this. But I rather liked the one near the end of the first Gears of War. I believe MW2's was another success, offering the player to make tactical decisions, something the campaign otherwise seldom permitted.

NOTE - The next Game Club meeting will be on Monday, same time as this one, 2pm Kotaku Time, 4pm ET. We'll be covering the game's final campaign levels.