For those of you who have not experienced the “Call of Duty” franchise — because of a steady sex life or plenty of other good reasons — there’s a lot to catch you up on. The game established new grounds in realistic, gritty warfare, which often was set in skirmishes from the World War II era.

But game developer Infinity Ward decided to break from its historic template when creating “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” in 2007, which brought a significant step up in combat.

Soldiers don’t lose limbs from artillery fire or have their legs blown off by mines as they doin 2008’s World War II reboot, “Call of Duty: World at War,” because when the game is set in the not-too-distant future, gamers are forced to see modern soldiers be eviscerated by combat. To a certain extent, it’s unsettling to see characters so close to real people die in pointless warfare.

And that’s the entire point.

The franchise always has attached an anti-war moral to its games, but the moral has been limited with the games’ historic setting. It’s hard to convince people World War II wasn’t a just war when the fight was against people as unforgivably evil as the Nazis.

But by reincarnating the Soviet Union in Russia and launching a full-scale war against them, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” brings Americans something they haven’t seen in a century — a war on U.S. soil.

Crumbling parliament buildings mean little to Americans who generally lack international perspective, but set off a nuclear bomb in Washington, D.C., and the game takes on a new sense of realism. In the wake of the attack, the White House merely becomes a tactical position.

The game hammers this point throughout its single-player story line. Fire fights happen inside fast food restaurants, U.S. tanks roll through Virginia neighborhoods and terrorists the U.S. government hires to empty thousands of rounds of light machine gun fire into civilians at a Moscow airport.

These are just the things war creates.

The franchise even has updated its famous war quotes, which pop up every time the player dies.

I fight through legions of enemy soldiers, spray bullets into nearby bunkers and get caught with a few lucky shots from a well-placed enemy, and I’m treated to quotes from Persian Gulf-era administrators such as former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and this one from former House Majority Leader Dick Armey:

“You cannot get ahead while you’re getting even.”

Thanks, Dick.