Let’s take a look at the end of the level “Hornet’s Nest” in Modern Warfare 2.
During my first time playing through of the level, I ended up on the edge of my seat with a big exhale of relief after the final leap of faith I had just made. MW2 has a lot of high action moments, but this was the one that had the best peak.
There are a few elements in this level that work together to create tension. You have the exciting score, the countless enemy spawns, the yelling NPCs, but these elements are also found in all the other action moments in the game. What made this moment different was the simple requirement of a jump at the end. It’s strange, I’ve done the leap of faith in so many games before. I’ve jumped large gaps as an assassin, as a mail-carrier, and as an adventurer, but in none of those situations have I found myself worried I wasn’t going to land it.
In the three games pictured above, jumping and leaping is in the repertoire for these games. While as in Modern Warfare 2, you spend 95% of your time aiming down sights and shooting targets. I can count the number of times I have jumped in MW2 on one hand - and that’s what makes it exciting. The end of "Hornet's Nest" asks the player to use a mechanic they shouldn’t have found comfort with. Before this level, the game takes its time to explore the many different ways the player can shoot a target, but the dimensions and timings of the character’s jump are never explored. If I was asked to bunny hop around in any of the previous levels, this leap of faith would not have been as daunting. The high-stakes situation needing the player to use a disregarded mechanic makes it exciting.
It’s funny how jumping, something that's become irrelevant in modern shooters, manages to take center stage gracefully for such a brief moment only because it is such a brief moment. Games like Pacman DX and Braid demonstrate the worth of getting every last drop out of a mechanic, but Modern Warfare 2 shows there is some value in retaining unfamiliarity in a base mechanic.