Wow. I am normally a negative person but, i have nothing bad to say here. So well done you get my applause. *applauds*
Call of Duty 4: Because Modern War Ain't Fair
- Thread starter Gigantor
- Start date
They talked about the exactly right issues this game has.
seeing as this has been resurrected from this past June, I'd like to point out that there was no instance in the game in which the middle eastern foes were called "terrorists". Actually they aren't really called anything. The only hint you get as to what they are or why they're doing whatever they're doing is that Al-Asad kills the president of the ambiguous country (which appears to be Saudi Arabia) and whatever kind of revolution they're going for is begun.
Calling them terrorists would make the political message of the game much different (depending on the manner of labeling them as such). It would probably be assumed that it's advocating the US's invasion of Iraq and other aspects American foreign policy.
The political message of the game is rather malleable depending on one's own political viewpoint.
Someone who believes in America's foreign policy will view the detonation of the nuclear bomb as saying "Middle Eastern terrorists place no value on human life and their only purpose is to destroy as much as possible without restraint, thus they must be neutralized" A more skeptical person will interpret it much the same way as Gigantor. The case is similar for the actions of the Ultra-nationalist enemies in the SAS part of the campaign. Evil commies destroying freedom or embittered revenge seekers. The game does more to show the revenge motives of Zakhaiv though.
There are other subtle messages in the game. The Marines are given some glory in their death by a gigantic nuclear boom in that they stop to rescue the pilot of a downed helicopter, which wastes just enough time to get them all killed anyways. The SAS are portrayed as cold, "ends justify the means", and indiscriminately destructive with the killing of unarmed crew members on the ship in the prologue and the torture and execution of Al-Asad in the safehouse.
I suppose Al-Asad's death was meant to give him an almost identical end to the one he gave the president of the ambiguous country.
Calling them terrorists would make the political message of the game much different (depending on the manner of labeling them as such). It would probably be assumed that it's advocating the US's invasion of Iraq and other aspects American foreign policy.
The political message of the game is rather malleable depending on one's own political viewpoint.
Someone who believes in America's foreign policy will view the detonation of the nuclear bomb as saying "Middle Eastern terrorists place no value on human life and their only purpose is to destroy as much as possible without restraint, thus they must be neutralized" A more skeptical person will interpret it much the same way as Gigantor. The case is similar for the actions of the Ultra-nationalist enemies in the SAS part of the campaign. Evil commies destroying freedom or embittered revenge seekers. The game does more to show the revenge motives of Zakhaiv though.
There are other subtle messages in the game. The Marines are given some glory in their death by a gigantic nuclear boom in that they stop to rescue the pilot of a downed helicopter, which wastes just enough time to get them all killed anyways. The SAS are portrayed as cold, "ends justify the means", and indiscriminately destructive with the killing of unarmed crew members on the ship in the prologue and the torture and execution of Al-Asad in the safehouse.
I suppose Al-Asad's death was meant to give him an almost identical end to the one he gave the president of the ambiguous country.
Necropost. Yay!
All fair points, though. It's certainly a more tricksy game than it gets credit for being.
In my defence, I think I called them "terrorists" rather than terrorists, because I wanted to get across how murky the motives were for the game's war. It's not really explained, although if it were a "war on terror" it would seem justifiable given that the chaps do seem to actually have nuclear weapons. Recent wars have been started for less.shufflemonkey16 said:
I'd certainly incline more toward it showing a case of the Americans forcing their opponents hand, and everybody suffering as a consequence. I don't think the game wants to come down on either side, precisely because when a nuclear bomb goes off, there aren't really any winners. Just survivors. That was a bit naff. Oh well.shufflemonkey16 said:
As per the marines, I think the point of rescuing that downed pilot is that it's an action which suddenly becomes completely pointless. The player is so involved in their own little gung-ho macho microcosm, only for the perspective to zoom out, and for that one act to become completely insignificant when the nuke goes off. At least there's a certain straight-forward honesty about the Americans, unlike the SAS, who provide all sorts of moral quandaries.shufflemonkey16 said:
All fair points, though. It's certainly a more tricksy game than it gets credit for being.
It's more of a commentary on a commentary than an actual review of the game itself. All you really did was gripe about the difficulty curve, then mused on the ethical quandaries the game presents, whether the quandaries were deliberate or not.
Don't get me wrong, it's very well written and possibly one of the most intelligent reviews I've ever seen, I just feel that commentary on gameplay and game design and all the other usual staples of reviews were overlooked in favour of exercising an esoteric vocabulary.
Don't get me wrong, it's very well written and possibly one of the most intelligent reviews I've ever seen, I just feel that commentary on gameplay and game design and all the other usual staples of reviews were overlooked in favour of exercising an esoteric vocabulary.
Online gaming presumably offers the bonus of a twelve year old (who is admittedly much better at this sort of thing than me) deriding my manhood as he riddles me with P90 fire, only for him to riddle me with accusations of faggotry as I smite him from beyond the grave with Martyrdom.[/quote]
Yep, you got it pegged. Awesome review, probably the funniest and wittiest i've read in ages.
Yep, you got it pegged. Awesome review, probably the funniest and wittiest i've read in ages.
Believe it or not, that's not exactly true. While it would be a waste for our SF and Deltas to pull guard duty and civil policing, safe civil discourse and cultural classes are mandatory predeployment classes.BallPtPenTheif said:
The unconventional warfare manual advocates cultural awareness as a means of enlisting the aid of local forces. The SF receive extensive language and cultural awareness training and are experts at entering an area and building a rapport the locals, It just makes more sense to take advantage of on site assets rather than depending on what you could bring to bear yourself. If your interested, you could research the Tiger02 team and their work with General Dostrum in Northern Afganistan during the opening months of the war.
As a counterpoint look up the various instances incidents involving the Paras when they were stationed in Northern Ireland as security forces. The whole thing was a cluster fuck because highly motivated assault troops don't mesh with sensitive peace keeping operations.Heathen92 said:
I never looked at the game so deeply through the political perspective, of course I noticed the political references and such but I just thought "whatever, it's just being realistic, like CoD always does (for the most part)" but hell, I never thought of the game as:
CoD4's single player campaign offers a brief but striking commentary on war.
that^ - I always thought the single player game as if it were just another war movie - where you take the FP view of Soap and...whatever the guy in the Middle East was, I think it was Jackson or something.
(Honestly I still don't see it, but you are a good writer Gigantor and I'm surprised someone hasn't hired you yet. You could write about how Kingdom of Loathing is the greatest piece of philosophy on the entire planet so far, and I'd probably agree with you. Speaking of, since Robert Janelle talked about KoL, you should jump on the bandwagon damnit!)
CoD4's single player campaign offers a brief but striking commentary on war.
that^ - I always thought the single player game as if it were just another war movie - where you take the FP view of Soap and...whatever the guy in the Middle East was, I think it was Jackson or something.
(Honestly I still don't see it, but you are a good writer Gigantor and I'm surprised someone hasn't hired you yet. You could write about how Kingdom of Loathing is the greatest piece of philosophy on the entire planet so far, and I'd probably agree with you. Speaking of, since Robert Janelle talked about KoL, you should jump on the bandwagon damnit!)
I never got the opinion that the game had some great message against war.
It didn't.
The price of war was more then the Americans or the British expected, but it was ultimately shown to be absolutely the correct action and was justified all along the way.
It's called heroic bloodshed. Our hero dies, our friends get killed, but we secure the safety of the world against nuclear weapon-crazies and the world will never know. Along the way our naive young warrior witnesses the horror of war or is raped by polar bears and goes about his work with a new sense of quiet dignity.
It's like the plot of Hero but with guns and a nuke.
The only unexpected thing was the cavalier attitude about executing people.
It didn't.
The price of war was more then the Americans or the British expected, but it was ultimately shown to be absolutely the correct action and was justified all along the way.
It's called heroic bloodshed. Our hero dies, our friends get killed, but we secure the safety of the world against nuclear weapon-crazies and the world will never know. Along the way our naive young warrior witnesses the horror of war or is raped by polar bears and goes about his work with a new sense of quiet dignity.
It's like the plot of Hero but with guns and a nuke.
The only unexpected thing was the cavalier attitude about executing people.
