Critical Miss: Top Five Games of 2012 #5
- Thread starter The Wooster
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Aw, would you look at those puppy dog eyes. I don`t have it in myself to say anything bad to a face like that, even if she did just shoot someone in the face. But in all seriousness, i really enjoyed Spec Ops: The Line, as well. Haven`t played quite anything like it before. Tho actually, I´m not sure if "enjoyed" is the correct word. But i liked it.
Eh, that's debatable. In a lot of games with choice the 'choice' just becomes a programmed response based on what play through you're doing at that time. If your playing as an asshole, you make all the asshole decisions without a second thought as to context, or what you would honestly do faced with this situation, or what you think your character would do based on their background and what they appear to believe in. It's arguable that had people been given a choice it actually would have made them think less about what they were doing.Blunderboy said:
The game forcing you to do these things may also be making a point in and of itself. You're a soldier after all. Soldiers don't get choice, they follow orders. Over the course of history many individuals have tried to wash their hands of the suffering they caused by claiming that they only ever did what their superiors ordered them to do, and that they didn't have a choice, and indeed, all Walker ever did in Spec Ops was follow at least what he interpreted to be his orders, but the game doesn't except that as an excuse. The game is subverting its own mechanics to make a point about the dangers of willingly giving up your own power to choose for yourself what's right and wrong.
During the whole game I kept thinking "this isn't what I would do" Forcing a player to do something isn't innovative or unique.
If the game convinced me as the player to make the choices, that would have been something.
As it is it was a OK game with an OK story line and OK game play.
If the game convinced me as the player to make the choices, that would have been something.
As it is it was a OK game with an OK story line and OK game play.
That comic perfectly encapsulates my main problem with the game.
It forces you to do something and won't let you progress until you do, then spends the rest of the game trying to make you feel guilty about it.
I love what it was trying to do, but the implementation left much to be desired.
It forces you to do something and won't let you progress until you do, then spends the rest of the game trying to make you feel guilty about it.
I love what it was trying to do, but the implementation left much to be desired.
That's what I was thinking, it annoys me in RPG's where is forces you to walk into an enemies trap and then calls you stupid for something you couldn't avoid, this just seems like a different level of that.Blunderboy said:
Fallout Vegas did it well where they actually called the player out on it, You saw signs from Ulysses saying 'You can turn back whenever you want' etc and then you got to a point where you had to do something horrible. Then Ulysses would say you hadn't changed alluding to the character and players forgotten past. It made bitter fun of the players reckless curiosity without calling the actual player an asshole. That to me was much more intelligent.
Not to mention that the game never forces you to play it at all. Whats stopping you from turning it off and saying: "Nope, I'm not doing this. If that's the only way to do it Id rather not do it at all."? Same goes for the people who say "I was just following orders." Sure, in some cases disobeying orders would have led to execution, but in many cases there still was quite a bit of choice involved.NinjaDeathSlap said:
Because you just paid £50 for the game....What are you going to do play half of it. I see what they were trying to say but its kind of clumsy.Mojo said:
This comic actually read more like sarcasm to me. An attempt to send-up the worshipful attitude everyone is taking towards Spec Ops: The Line by pointing out that players conditioned to follow orders from video games are not necessarily bad people for doing so. We've just become used to that being the way things work; sure we can refuse, turn off the game and go outside to play with puppies in the sunshine, but then we're depriving ourselves of the content we paid for. We just do what the game tells us to do without thinking, because that's all we've ever done - shoot this, go here, collect that, brutally murder all those indigenous tribespeople. It doesn't make us bad people, because we're aware that it's just a virtual environment and that none of what we do has any genuine consequence.Grey Carter said:
I haven't actually played SpopsLine, though I did slog through the demo. I appreciate that it probably is as interesting as people are saying and that the message is an important one, but from reading the criticism and the essays and the other guff floating around the net it seems as if the game is being a trifle unfair in blaming the player. Of course we unthinkingly follow what you tell us to do, game - you're a game! Monopoly doesn't end by criticisng the players' slavish adherence to unrestrained capitalism, because anyone playing it is just following the rules laid down by the game itself.
I think it's more aimed at people who play first-person, modern-military shooters more often than us here. We lack the fascination with using the latest hardware to wipe out poorly equipped and disorganised militias.Zhukov said:
If your usual game is Call of Duty or Battlefield, you're quite likely to go through shooters just gunning down whoever registers as an enemy on your radar. If, however, like most of us here, you play a variety of games featuring moral choices and civilian NPCs who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, then yeah...this game will probably not have the same lesson to teach you. We already KNOW what this game has to show, but then, we're not the target audience of the Spec Ops label.
Instead of writing my whole rant, I could have just written this. Sigh. You have out-eloquented me once again.Moonlight Butterfly said:
Yes, there's a choice not to play, but if you've just spunked your cash on something you want your damn moneys worth.
Actually I didn't. But after hearing all the hype I read up on it. I'm not convinced.DeadpanLunatic said:
That's actually a pretty good point.Thyunda said:
When playing most shooters I usually already feel like a bad person... y'know, in a detached, eye-rolling kind of way.
"Oh look, more brown people with turbans and AK47s on which to enact my 9/11 revenge fantasies, what fun! Ohh, now I get to wipe out dozens of essentially helpless foes from the safety of a gunship while the game gently massages my balls and whispers assurance that, no really, I am a total badass."
So when a game tries to turn around and say, "You're a bad person", my reaction is, "Yeah, no shit. Glad you've caught up there, hotshot."
...
And yes, I'm aware that this post makes me sound like a bit of a douche.
The problem with Spec-Ops and it's infamous Wiley Pete scenario is that it effectively railroads you into commiting the atrocity. There's no in-game way of getting around it, providing a solution, or simply retreating. You can perform the atrocity and survive, or turn off the game.Blunderboy said:
At the end of the day, am I supposed to feel bad for something a soldier did for survival? Because I don't.
Yeah, I thought that about the game for a couple of bits, especially in the White Phosphorous bit. But in hindsight I felt it worked quite well. Not giving you a choice in that particular area worked because it giving the choice of shooting the White Phosphorous or not would kind of ruin the misdirection of that moment that is the impetus for a lot of the story thereon. Personally, I thought that moment in particular really made me appreciate the game the most since in that moment I was switched to some UAV Mode and being a guy that has played Call of Duty games I immediately thought "Oh, new toys". And well you may know the rest. But I even enjoyed the few moments where it gives you a choice (the civilian crowd, the people strung up). Anyway, the game did accomplish the goal of making me feel guilty, and apparently some others as well. I am curious, however, as to what you think it could of done to make the game better? Because the whole "It forces you to do something and won't let you progress until you do" sounds only like a linear game to me. Which it is. Now, the making you feel guilty part can be hit or miss, I understand that (especially if you are trying to deconstruct the game the whole time while playing it, trying to find out why people like it).Zhukov said:
Well its current price tag is 20$ on steam (5 on a sale) and even if you got it day one for 50$ then you still are not forced to play it if you don't like it. If you buy a game day one and don't wait for any reviews or seeing what the general attitude towards the game is then its you own fault. The last game I got day one was Guild Wars 2. I played one character to level 40 and haven't touched it since then. I cant complain I got ripped off though, since I could have easily waited a few weeks for reviews or my friends opinions. (I know playing to lvl 40 in GW2 is a bit different then half of Spec Ops, but I hope you get my point) I agree that is was quite clumsily done and I too would have appreciated more choice in some occasions.Moonlight Butterfly said:
Isn't that a matter of opinion? I say I didn't get my moneys worth out of, lets say a 4 map expansion for BF3, but you could say that you did because you like the maps and they were worth 15$ to you. Imo you can only really say you didn't get your moneys worth if the game isn't functioning as intended (bugs etc...) But maybe that's just me, oh well...SonicWaffle said:
(I don't mean to insult you guys or anything, sorry if it comes across like that. Its just my opinion on the matter.)
Dude I don't even have the game I was just making the point that it's a bit far fetched to just expect people to turn the game off.Mojo said: