Modern Shooters Played Out (CoD)

[Terralthra]

I worked at 2K while Spec Ops was being published. Vendetta and xthetenth are getting exactly the experience the main dev team was trying to create.

[xthetenth]

It's important to note that the game accuses Walker. It only accuses the player if the player is doing the same thing and feeling the same way about its goals as Walker because it only accuses the player if the accusations towards Walker ring true when directed at the player as well. It never outright breaks the fourth wall even it thins it down to a sheet of gauze by the end.

It's a weird Stanford Prison Experiment-y territory and I think some of the harshest critics of the game feel the criticism is both aimed at them and are really sensitive to it. I engaged with the game and I think it a very worthwhile experience and a very interesting set of ideas to wrestle with.

From an artistic standpoint alone it's well worth witnessing because the way it shifts and twists initially unnoticeable genre assumptions is fantastic. For example the brief slow motion action shot when you shoot someone in the head feels radically different at the start and at the end. At the start every time is a congratulation. At the end every time is a question.

[Alkaloid]

I've found this topic fascinating, and it's made me wonder if I should buy Spec Ops: the Line, but I have to say, if the only choice in a game is 'press A to be a war criminal', or turn it off, and then later on it blames you for becoming a war criminal, then you are being railroaded. Unless there's the choice to simply walk away and have a game over that says that Walker quit, it really is having to pay sixty dollars for being forced into being a monster, or being ripped off.

Y'all mention the alternate choices, such as shooting in the air, or trying to take out the snipers, but it seems that no matter what, the choice is bad, and ends with people dead, or you dying. Is that supposed to be the moral of the game? Don't play it, or you will have no choice but to have horrible things happen by you.

Where's the choice to be moral, that isn't turning your game into the 60 dollar coaster? Is there one? And while you can make the complaint that we're assigning monetary value as a priority, that's only because we're not getting to be satisfied emotionally or recreationally by the game, and instead feel that we're being lectured at by our game about how awful we are.

Look at Bioshock, it wonderfully shows the consequences of blindly following orders, but it doesn't make you a war criminal for doing so, and you can still make things better.

It seems the game is instead saying that trying to be a hero is an awful thing, and will hurt you for trying.

Remember how a couple of months ago there was a thread here asking why video games weren't respected as much as other art forms? If you were so affected by a film that you were physically ill or wept uncontrollably and could not finish watching it would you feel ripped off? Because that's why.

Art isn't about completion, it's about the experience or the story and how it affects you. Things that have absolutely no value beyond their completion aren't stories, they are puzzles and completing them for their own sake is not art. (although you could say that the creation of puzzles is an art form) There is absolutely nothing wrong with puzzles but they aren't doing the same thing to you as poetry or music or story telling.

This game should make you uncomfortable. It's essentially about a man who is suffering to an astonishing degree while committing a series of atrocities, it is not a nice thing to witness. Learning whether or not there are things you aren't even willing to have done to pretend people is something worth $60 bucks to you is something you will have to decide, in the same way I need to decide whether its worth my $30 to see the Mona Lisa. (I have no idea what the entry fee for the Louvre is, I'm just guessing. Don't judge me)

[Vendetta]

It's important to note that the game accuses Walker. It only accuses the player if the player is doing the same thing and feeling the same way about its goals as Walker because it only accuses the player if the accusations towards Walker ring true when directed at the player as well. It never outright breaks the fourth wall even it thins it down to a sheet of gauze by the end.

A piece of literature doesn't have to break the fourth wall in order to be addressing the audience directly. That's what themes are for.


Spec Ops' conversation with the player is not quite the same as with Walker the character. The conversation with the player is all about how war is presented in other modern military shooters, and how that presentation is warped not "for the sake of entertainment" but to give the player a personal hero fantasy where they get to be Right because the enemy is Wrong and there are no grey areas.

It's not about "Press A to commit war crime, you pig." it's about "The situations you use for your hero fantasies are messy and have no heroes or villains".

[TheFeniX]

Art isn't about completion, it's about the experience or the story and how it affects you. Things that have absolutely no value beyond their completion aren't stories, they are puzzles and completing them for their own sake is not art. (although you could say that the creation of puzzles is an art form) There is absolutely nothing wrong with puzzles but they aren't doing the same thing to you as poetry or music or story telling.

Art is way to subjective to make that kind of concrete definition. Tetris is so perfect in it's simplicity it has survived in it's current form for decades. Is that not art? Even watching a Starcraft 2 replay and seeing a perfect marine split to counter banelings (or whatever) or seeing pinpoint micro of loading units in medivacs and dropping them further back to keep them (and their DPS) alive evokes an emotional response in me and I don't even play ladder games. Watching a player who has so mastered the game can have the same impact as a gripping storyline. The "games are art" argument is just dumb because what is and isn't defined as art is dumb.

Based on the comments in this thread (and the fact that it's on PC), I plan to give Spec Ops a try even with the played-out combat once I get into my new house. It's only $30 now, might be cheaper by then.

[Thanas]

Fenix - if you enjoy watching really really great Terran SC2 play, I suggest you look at anything done by Taeja, especially his recent Dreamhack series. Link.

[TheFeniX]

Fenix - if you enjoy watching really really great Terran SC2 play, I suggest you look at anything done by Taeja, especially his recent Dreamhack series. Link.

I watch my casts during lunch and usually limit myself to HD, Husky, and LAG, in that order. I generally keep out of the current scene because I don't care who wins what, just like seeing good (and bad) players. I am saddened WhiteRa has released so few replays lately as I am a huge whore to the Protoss establishment. His blink stalker micro is madness and he never ceases to come up with the craziest builds that actually work, at least for a while.

I did see Taeja's all-kill against Axiom (via Husky), but I'm just bored by the current Terran game in general. The strength of Terran tier 1 and 1.5 over tier 3 Protoss and Zerg is weird. There's no reason for Terran to tech up aside from upgrades and it's hurting the game. It still takes a fuck-ton of skill, but marine splits and kiting are really all you need on top of 500 barracks and 2 Starports. God help your opponent if you know how to micro medivacs well.

[Thanas]

The current scene is pretty much saying the opposite - that Terran is forced to stay on Tier 1 because all the other options suck vs the other races (I agree with that). But Dreamhack was a really stacked tourney, maybe the hardest of the year and Taeja showed why he is Flash 2.0 in that one.

[TheFeniX]

It's kind of a chicken-egg thing. I will say that Terran first-tier units being "only" effective against the higher tier stuff of other races is a pretty good position to be in.

I'm not saying the game is all that imbalanced. It's just that the way it's balanced right now keeps everyone with pretty much the same builds with few deviations. Blizzard needs to give Terran a reason to get of Marine/medivac for the gameplay to keep evolving.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Spec Ops' conversation with the player is not quite the same as with Walker the character. The conversation with the player is all about how war is presented in other modern military shooters, and how that presentation is warped not "for the sake of entertainment" but to give the player a personal hero fantasy where they get to be Right because the enemy is Wrong and there are no grey areas.

It's not about "Press A to commit war crime, you pig." it's about "The situations you use for your hero fantasies are messy and have no heroes or villains".

That is true. Playing the game multiple times, I never really felt anything directly pointed at me. Everything is pointed at Walker, and so everything depends on how much you empathise with him. If you view him as the extension of yourself so you can get in the game and heroically shoot at polygons, you'll have a bad time looking at the loading screen saying "This is all your fault". Being detached, though, and looking at Walker as something as distinct from you as a movie character yields a completely different experience. So anyone saying "makes me a war criminal, sucks" is hilarious to my eyes.

I do not know if that is a common way of looking at games, of course. Perhaps the acceptable way is the "player extension" mindset, in which case I'm completely wrong and critics are completely right that Walker is a whiner and the game spoils their fun, suckering them. But I don't think any moviegoers felt suckered or cheated after watching From Dusk Till Dawn.

[Thanas]

I think the extension of yourself is the commonly accepted theme in shooters. I also think the game plays with that in a masterful way.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

I'd love to see a different way to approach the material. Shooters, as it is, are pornographic: the only realistic thing for them is guns and uniforms. Spec Ops tries to be more conscious by adding a different kind of realism: how is it any better via your actions? Modern Warfare never answers whether anybody gives a fuck about killing Makarov anymore, whether it is going to undo the damage caused so far or whether it even has the potential to stop future damage, but it's what the protagonist wants so the world be damned, he'll get it. Spec Ops points out that this shtick, in real life, would be reserved for villains: people getting what they want without regard for others is Really Bad Shit.

But apparently this peeves people.

[Thanas]

I love Spec Ops precisely for playing with that, I was not criticizing the game.

[xthetenth]

It's important to note that the game accuses Walker. It only accuses the player if the player is doing the same thing and feeling the same way about its goals as Walker because it only accuses the player if the accusations towards Walker ring true when directed at the player as well. It never outright breaks the fourth wall even it thins it down to a sheet of gauze by the end.

A piece of literature doesn't have to break the fourth wall in order to be addressing the audience directly. That's what themes are for.


Spec Ops' conversation with the player is not quite the same as with Walker the character. The conversation with the player is all about how war is presented in other modern military shooters, and how that presentation is warped not "for the sake of entertainment" but to give the player a personal hero fantasy where they get to be Right because the enemy is Wrong and there are no grey areas.

It's not about "Press A to commit war crime, you pig." it's about "The situations you use for your hero fantasies are messy and have no heroes or villains".

Right. That's what I'm getting at. It's about showing how distorted the narrative ideas underlying the genre are and showing how misplaced the emotions and goals of a typical protagonist and confronting him with it it can just as easily be a question as an accusation. Do you agree that shooters and their fundamental assumptions and cliches are this destructive and warped? Do you go along with them without asking? Do you internalize the main character's views without questioning them?

I'm still wrestling with the question of complicity. It's an interesting one.

I think those questions are well worth the price of admission.

Plus hot damn, that art direction is fantastic. The music and use of color are outstanding especially as it gets more surreal.

[TheFeniX]

To move on a bit, I've been wondering about the slide of CoD's popularity. We're at a point in the market where just being successful isn't enough to keep things going. You have to keep growing or worry about facing the axe. Now, Ghosts had to deal with launching on many different systems, so that could be swinging things, but it got creamed by GTAV and couldn't outsell Black Ops 2. Could EA finally see an era where Battlefield is the big hitter, after years of chasing the CoD audience and killing so many games along the way?

No one is killing CoD, but will Activision tuck it's tail between it's legs and go back to WW2? Or are we going to see a shift like we did in the movies (like the shitfests of Red Dawn and Something Down, that one I had to listen to the wife watch where Aaron Eckheart yells a lot and North Koreans are evil or something, I don't fucking know, it was bad. It was conservative porn, bad. I dropped 5% of my DPS during a raid because of the stupidity)? I mean, HAWX used the phrase "Mexican Airforce" without the voice actors bursting into insane laughter. Could we be seeing a shift where "ultranationalists" isn't to go to bad guy.

Can we just start making up crazy shit now? Seriously, Canada and Mexico collude to invade the U.S. It's like Canadian Bacon with more oora ",not bad asshole, not bad," and we have talk about how it's barely worth it to capture all that tasty maple syrup and learn the secrets of Hockey. The Mexican's are involved because.... I don't Drug Cartels or some shit. Look, I'm not a video game writer here, I can't dial up the crazy that much.

That's not even that crazy. At least those two countries are physically capable of getting planes over American airspace. Canada just gets tired of us stealing all their Comedians and Mexico wants Texas back, ok. So, it's just this huge invasion into New England and.... Texas? California? I don't know, you figure it out.

[Thanas]

How many of you actually caught on what is really happening in SpecOps the line, besides Walker being crazy?
Spoiler

It is made quite clear that Walker is dead the entire game. That helicopter crash in the start? That killed him. The rest of the game is just him being stuck in purgatory and forced to go through all his choices again - up until his death, at which time his visions take over. Only what happened until the helicopter crash is real, the rest is a vision from hell. Also telegraphed by how the entire art direction gets more and more surreal

[TheFeniX]

Spoiler

What a TWIST!

[Thanas]

Not sure if sarcasm or not.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

What, you mean like how that was the writer's personal interpretation of his story?
Spoiler

It works because it explains the last two chapters. They are ludicrously hard (hellishly so), being as hard in their entirety as other chapters are in their highest points. The idea that all three of the team would survive a helicopter crash and end up so far apart is also very strained. As is the idea that Walker and Adams survive being doused in motherfucking phosphorus. As is the idea that Walker's hallucinations are so powerful he can just have a friendly chat with his personal Tyler Durden. Or the little thing about how the helo at the end should be able to gun down Walker with ease no matter how much distraction Adams provides.

Spoiler

On the other hand, it is problematic from a literary view because it provides no closure to the actual plot. The confrontation with Konrad explains the plot and provides definite answers to all past events, and it is supposed to be imaginary? The game at that point explicitly asks the player whether Walker can be redeemed or not, but our opinion on it is worthless if he's dead already. Note that I cannot deny that the last chapters, as events, make more sense if they are Walker's little torture chamber. But the things I say are a valid criticism for the trope as a whole, not its particular execution in Spec Ops. It's one thing to rob the audience of its preconceived notions and it should be applauded when it's pulled off, but it's completely different to take away the catharsis. Fenix is right to take the piss.

Also Thanas man, don't take my remarks personally. I was itching to give my opinion of the game, and I've read the rest of the thread so I know your position.

[Thanas]

What, you mean like how that was the writer's personal interpretation of his story?
Spoiler

It works because it explains the last two chapters. They are ludicrously hard (hellishly so), being as hard in their entirety as other chapters are in their highest points. The idea that all three of the team would survive a helicopter crash and end up so far apart is also very strained. As is the idea that Walker and Adams survive being doused in motherfucking phosphorus. As is the idea that Walker's hallucinations are so powerful he can just have a friendly chat with his personal Tyler Durden. Or the little thing about how the helo at the end should be able to gun down Walker with ease no matter how much distraction Adams provides.

He was quite explicit in German media about that saying that is what he intended.

[xthetenth]

Spoiler

The interpretation I personally prefer is that after the first helicopter crash, it's him going through what led him to that point and pushing past into hallucinatory territory in his head as a means of judging himself. If it's him judging himself I think it's better tied to the themes of the game and helps reinforce that comparison that gets drawn between him and the player. Plus the ending really makes sense in that light.

[Vendetta]

He was quite explicit in German media about that saying that is what he intended.

It's always worth remembering the principle of the Death of the Author. What the author intended isn't necessarily what the work communicates to a given audience, because meaning is a construct between the text and the audience, not the author and the audience.

[PeZook]

Modern Warfare never answers whether anybody gives a fuck about killing Makarov anymore, whether it is going to undo the damage caused so far or whether it even has the potential to stop future damage, but it's what the protagonist wants so the world be damned, he'll get it. Spec Ops points out that this shtick, in real life, would be reserved for villains: people getting what they want without regard for others is Really Bad Shit.

Hey, remember how MW3 ends with you mercilessly gunning down dozens of Dubai cops?

Apparently nobody felt this was, well, WRONG.

[Thanas]

He was quite explicit in German media about that saying that is what he intended.

It's always worth remembering the principle of the Death of the Author. What the author intended isn't necessarily what the work communicates to a given audience, because meaning is a construct between the text and the audience, not the author and the audience.

Yes, but I fail to see where the problem is in acknowledging his intent, especially if the work allows for that interpretation.

[ray245]

Call of Duty 2 introduced the "health meter recharges when not getting shot at" mechanic, which... I'm sure other games had it but it was new to me. Aside from that, yeah.

I'm disappointed that no one tried base assault mode for CoD: UO. It has one of the best multi-player mode whereby teams are actually forced to act together as a team. So far, it's the only game that actually make a random bunch of team form a tank/vehicle convoy in order to assault a base.

It would be nice if the CoD series can re-introduce this game mode.