Anyone who did get the game today will have played this level by now.

Personally I was able to play it without having a nervous breakdown - because it is just a game. However, I really did not see the need for it.

The SP story seems to "flow" as well as the original Timesplitters - lots of excellent set pieces but with a tenuous link between them rather than a story.

This level is about establishing the baddie as just about as baddie as you can get - which could easily have been achieved with you playing the security forces or something.

I slaughtered everyone, and I enjoyed it.

Not really.
Play thru the whole game.
Its the most important level in the game story wise.
EVERYTHING happens because of the end of the level.

Yeah I maybe should have mentioned that - the reason for the games battles, is the Russians think the Americans caused the airport massacre, because the only recovered terrorrist corpse was American, or something. Pretty good plot detail, considering it's not one of the CoD series' strongest points.

My conscience made me on purposly miss the civilians. I had good dreams till i put in GTA4 for a little Tuesday evening drive. It was there that i was crushed as i accidentally run over a pedestrian and caused a massive pile up. I screamed as i saw old ladies go straight through the windscreen and into the the lights of an on coming Bus. As i dried my tears after seeing the last pedestrian crawl out of a car on fire, i realised i had caused more grief and loss then the 'No russians' mission. I had failed my task of protecting our country from terrorism and as i swallowed the last paracetamol, i prayed that god have mercy on me.

I only hope in my final hours that the government continue the good fight against video games in the hope that this smut be banished forever from Gods green earth.

But in answer to your question, i loved the level.

ive played all cod games must admit this level is just a tad on the violent side but you can decide at the start if you want to play this level or not .

Not sure Russian people will be happy with that level.

I think what they should have done was let you skip the first half, but continue with the SWAT outside, as that is no different from killing cops in hitman, gta, mafia, godfather etc etc

I thought this level was rather poorly done, I have seen far too many episodes of 24 they show how to portray being undercover with a concious, or even Splinter Cell Double Agent did it better.

I think there could have been an option to wound people and bonus for making it look like to you following lead terrorist and not actually killing anyone. a slightly different ending if the terrorists thought you werent part of them.

I just think its was a shame there was no consequences to either action, being good or killing everyone.

i have got to say though I think thats the only place the COD games fall down story telling. I can never follow the plot, I would love a great story akin to the quality of U2 to go along with the rest of this near perfect war game!

Bauer - agree with just about every letter of that post. Like the shoot to not-kill detail - would have made for a fantatsic challenge (as the very next level shows with, sadly, only one non-lethal takedown objective).

"the Russians think the Americans caused the airport massacre, because the only recovered terrorrist corpse was American, or something. Pretty good plot detail, " - I disagree with - I think it's pretty lame plot detail. And would the things that happen later in the game really happen on the back of that incident?

"I disagree with..."

Don't ignore the rest if you're going to quote me: -

"Pretty good plot detail, considering it's not one of the CoD series' strongest points."

CoD stories blow. I said it's good by CoD's standards.

I don't know. The fact that the Russians full blown invasion hinges on the body of one American found dead seemed a bit flimsy. In this current day and age, I would've perhaps expected an argument in the UN and some diplomatic avenues explored, rather than a playground attitude of escalating into a full blown war in a matter of days!? That said, we don't play COD for realism, just a good storyline, and as far as that goes, the level serves its purpose.

great shout on the maiming option bauer. Only when you had to fight the police was it necessary to actual kill. An achievement called sheep in wolfs clothing would go down well in the airport bit. (see what i did there?! Ha ha). I did find myself firing shots into the air, and reloading, as reloading the machine gun is time consuming.

How did people deal with those that were injured?
I have to admit I finished a few of them off.
Not really sure why, and no, I didn't used to torture cats as a child.

How would the Ruskies even know he was a Yank? Did he just happen to have his 'CIA Spy' ID in his wallet?!

"I have to admit I finished a few of them off."

Yeah I put a few out of their miseries too. Didn't enjoy watching them crawl.

"Did he just happen to have his 'CIA Spy' ID in his wallet?!"

He had his super secret CIA t-shirt on underneath his disguise.

I shot loads of people in the crowd and tons of those injured. I'm not disturbed; they're only polygons.

Also, did anyone else only have two comrades still alive when they reached the truck? I'm sure there was only Malakov (or whatever his name was) and one of his cronies left, which means there was the bodies of two heavily armed Russians somewhere outside the airport too. And yet they invade the US because of one American corpse...?!

Both good points. Still, its the principle, at least in GTA you aren't a terrorist being forced into killing civilians, yeah you may plough into one or two as you career down the pavement, but thats not the underpining point of the game, whereas in COD it was for that level.

Tel - yeah I lost some team mates too. Would've been more pallatable had they been indestructible, and the undercover dude being the only one to die.

I tried out of curiosity if I could finish the whole level without firing a shot, I even wondered if there would be an acheivement for it, but what I discovered was that although it is possible to actually make it to the very end of the map without even firing a single bullet, by the timeyou have got there, the leader says something about cowards and comes and kills you, so you simply have to kill some of the SWAT or you can't finish the level. Incidentally if you fire a grenade from your rifle at the Swat the animation of them all flying through the air is the best I've ever seen in a game, they could win Olympic gold for synchronized diving.

DA - sorry if you felt I was taking you out of context.

I think the story is pretty lame though by anybody's standards

lol i was finishing off the injured ones too was quite fun, at the end of the day its just a video game, i thought it was hilarious that they gave you the option to skip the level if you would be offended, after all you are killing people throughout the game with emphasis on headshots etc.

"DA - sorry if you felt I was taking you out of context."

Heh, sorry mate, I just read that back and realised I wrote it kind of snarky - wasn't intentional.

The story is gash, that was effectively my point, the airport level was a good bit of plot development for a Call of Duty game; I wasn't calling it a masterpiece or anything.

that was the best bit.....

Personally I found the level super boring, wish I had skipped it on the grounds that it was just too easy.
I didn't even get any sick pleasure from it, what was the point in giving me the option to play it when it still felt like a boring cutscene anyway.

It was well overrated imo.

I did shoot as many civilians i could though, i even knifed one guy who was crawling across the floor. I was so willing to kill as many as i could that i got killed by the other terrorists because theyre bullets were hitting me too.

But it wasnt as good as people were making out.

At first its like 'this is so wrong'. But then you just realises its just a game and they aint real people.

The ending was a nice surprise though, where you get killed.

Yeah I got no qualms with saying I wanted to enjoy killing them lol it just wasn't fun, I also died by getting too enthusiastic with my task at hand.