So I know I was talking about Europe last week and I promise to seriously consider eventually going back to that topic someday, but my rapid-fire brain doesn’t really work like that.

Right now, I’m thinking about the latest “Call of Duty” game. I’m not as obsessed with the series as some people are, but my roommate is, and therefore we ended up pre-ordering the game.

Needless to say, if the game is just sitting there, of course I will play it. There is something entertaining about creating a strategy and attempting to enact it. Especially, because you are playing against live humans.

Sooner or later, computers become predictable, even if they are randomized, but with humans, you can never tell. Sometimes you will get a skill level far beyond what you imagined was possible in a video game, and sometimes you will get somebody who is distractedly texting while playing the game.

Personally, I tend to be a bit more of a fan of the Battlefield games. Impressive destruction-based physics and the ability to use vehicles in multiplayer combat is always an impressive feat. However, I am more interested in the PS4. Of course, contrary to popular belief, I do not have large piles of money lying around. So my current plan is to start saving money now, and eventually purchase a PS4 when all the games aren’t $60 each.

Call of Duty as a series is interesting; it tends to spark a lot of controversy despite being relatively tame compared to other M-rated games. There is a lot of emphasis in both Call of Duty and Battlefield on realism, but all that realism goes out the window when every time you die, you just magically spring back to life in five seconds. If you are ever injured in any way, all you have to do is hide behind a corner and wait for your wounds to heal as if you were X-Men’s “Wolverine.”

Of course, this goes back to my belief that video games, plus all other forms of violent media, do not cause violence at all. Rather, they are the scapegoat that happened to be nearby a disturbed individual when they decided to act out their irrational beliefs. Normal people do not enjoy killing other people. Some people may fantasize about it, but even then, they usually aren’t fantasizing about actually taking the life of another human, but merely causing harm to someone they dislike.

Taking a human life is a serious issue and not something that most people, even the millions of people who play Call of Duty and plenty of other violent video games could ever possibly enjoy. There is a big difference between fiction and reality and the only people who have trouble discerning these differences are psychopaths and those desperately trying to find a scapegoat for the acts that came from a truly sick and depraved mind.