I received Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare from Gamefly, last night. So far, it is the most visually astonishing game that I've played for the PS3 platform. For example, in the first level, a helicopter ferries you to board a cargo ship being tossed about by storm in the Bering Straight. As you strafe the ship, it is periodically illuminated by lightning. Once on deck, waves wrack and breach the sides of the craft, obscuring your vision. As the boat rocks in the torment of the ocean waves, the shadows cast by cargo containers and moonlight skitters across the deck and railings.

But after playing only 5 levels of the game, I'm going to send it back. I find it emotionally disturbing in a way that twists my gut too often.

Case in point: the level I described above opens with the captain of your squad informing you that the civilian cargo ship's crew are expendable. Within seconds of touching down, you raid the crew's quarters killing everything that moves. One of your squad members turns his gun on the crew members asleep in their bunks. The visual animation of this happening is ghastly real.

Even worse, in the second level, you passively watch a Saudi Arabian coup as it transpires from the perspective of the target of the coup: the President of Saudi Arabia. As the events unfold ultimately leading to your beating and public execution, you witness civilians being cut down in the streets, caught in the cross-fire of running gun battles. The game's makers went even as far as to add the cries of agony of not only those of civilians, but even the bad guys.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some Halo 3 where there is no gore, no suffering: just cartoonish animations of a semblance of violence. Other, similar, fantasy representations of violence I find enjoyable. Perhaps I am splitting hairs, here. Nevertheless, I can't help but conclude that Call of Duty 4, while a great achievement by its authors, is simply not my kind of game.