Editor's note: Jon died -- a lot -- while playing Modern Warfare 2, which meant that when the story killed off some characters permanently, the emotional impact was blunted. I recently experienced a similar disconnect during a critical scene in Uncharted 2. Do developers need to reconsider the concept of death in shooters? -Brett

(Warning: spoilers ahead -- but are you really playing Modern Warfare 2 for the story?)

The primary constant in first-person shooters is death. Whether it's demons, zombies, Nazis, or anything else: you point, you shoot, it dies. Of course, these games wouldn't be much of a challenge if you didn't run the risk of dying yourself.

In Modern Warfare 2, especially on the harder difficulty levels, death is less a risk and more a guarantee. You will die playing that game. This is common throughout most first-person shooters. Death is the easiest way to tell a player he's doing it wrong.

The problem with the death mechanic in Modern Warfare 2 specifically is that Infinity Ward is trying to tell a very complicated and emotional story. There are some specific instances when you are quite clearly supposed to be feeling the moment, but those repeated deaths keep ruining the illusion.

In what I would consider to be the most emotionally engaging moment outside of "No Russian," General Shepherd betrays and shoots Roach and Ghost immediately after they obtain some crucial information on the terrorist Makarov. Ghost seems to die from the gunshot while Roach -- through whose eyes you have been playing the mission -- remains conscious but immobilized. You watch from Roach's perspective as Shepherd has his men dump you and Ghost in a shallow grave, pour gasoline on you, then light you on fire.

It's an unmistakably powerful scene. However, this is probably the 2,488th time you've died as Roach during the course of the game -- 158 of those deaths coming during the three minutes it takes to download the intelligence off Makarov's computer and run from the house to the clearing where the grisly burning takes place.

So I found myself more significantly affected by what was happening to Ghost than what was happening to my own character. Ghost's AI made him a good teammate, and his mask -- combined with some great dialog -- made him cool.

He also hasn't died 2,487 other times.

By making the game so difficult to progress through without dying, Infinity Ward took the wind out of this scene. They likely didn't intend for you feel bad for Ghost while not caring about Roach, but that's exactly what happens.

Roach is an empty shell of a character; you never even see his face. And since you die so consistently when you play as him, you forget that he's an actual character in the story. It makes his final "death" seem like a joke.

It's sad to see a game so ambitious with its storytelling defeat itself with its own mechanics. Infinity Ward could have conveyed the exact same feeling by taking the camera out of Roach's head and shown the two of them being killed. Then at least you'd remember that there was more than one of them to begin with.