The new Call of Duty is getting a Tamagotchi that you feed kills

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will come with a real blast from the past when it launches in October. Tamagotchi, the kids toy / torture device that was huge in the 90s/00s, is coming to Call of Duty as a wrist-mounted cosmetic that you can feed your kills. 

Still, instead of endlessly tapping the buttons to feed them, play with them and clean up their excrement when it comes to Call of Duty’s version, the… uh… Tamagunchi things are a little different. It doesn’t want food, to be cleaned up after or played with. It just wants you to keep killing in the games multiplayer modes. 

“This little thing on your wrist, every time you get a string of kills, it goes, ‘Ya-ta!’ and it makes a little noise, then you look at it, and it evolved out of an egg,” says art director Joel Emslie in an interview with Game Informer. “Tamagunchis are fed by the player’s performance in multiplayer. It’s just this little active wristwatch thing.”

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It’s just a cosmetic item, so if you want to avoid it you can, especially as it feels like such a substantial departure from the more serious and realistic tone that the developers have been promising from the new game. It seems that there are still a few 

But if you do decide to strap a Tamagunchi to your wrist, it’s ride-or-die. As Emslie himself says: “if you don’t take care of your Tamagunchi, it will rot and die.” no doubt leaving players heartbroken.

I can’t say a Tamagunchi is for me, but the idea of interactive cosmetics and a few cool meta-tweaks outside of the usual collection of challenges is exciting, and could hint at something that will suck in more than the usual audience, providing it doesn’t mess with the reworked and more realistic shooting mechanics.