A couple of seconds later  you realize you've been hornswoggled by yet another commercial for a new first-person-shooter combat game. You were fooled because the graphics were so goddamned realistic.

But I'll bet you didn't know just how realistic modern video games strive to be. Or what a chore it is to keep up with the ever-changing military state-of-the-art.

In the latest installment in Activision's hugely successful "Call of Duty" video game series, "Black Ops 2," released on Monday at midnight, the secretary of defense is a guy named David Petraeus. That might have been a reasonable assumption, as recently as a week ago. But now it's ancient history. Might as well have Ulysses S. Grant running the show.

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