Critical Miss: Top Five Games of 2012 #5

[Erttheking]

snip

Maybe I will check out the advice forum, but the thing is, overall the Escapist has left me a much more bitter and cynical person since I came here. Here are the things I learned from this website.

1. I never want to talk about religion or politics ever again

2. I never want to get a job in the video game industry, because it would be a very thankless job

3. I can't laugh at my own religion again, because after being exposed to the R&P forum, I automatically assume that every causal joke is a hostile attack now.

4. I can't talk about my favorite video games without getting a good list of reasons of why they're not good.

5. Really, that the video game community is just one of the most hostile communities out there.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that I'm glad I found the escapist. It's done nothing but make me bitter and feel...really like I'm very lonely.

 

[I.Muir]

There are many things that make me feel emotion/ guilt
Video game story lines are not one of them but I appreciate what it tried to do

 

[Frission]

Alot of people seem to have missed the point of the game. Then, again harping on about it won't help. I would just suggest completing the game. It amazes me how personal the game can become.

Then again, since I tried to restrain Walker whenever it was possible, I didn't feel as affected when someone said Walker was a terrible person, sinceI already knew that. I had built enough distance from him that I could only nod in approval.

This poster phrased better than I could.

I see a lot of people criticizing the WP scene, and I get why... but I think an element of the railroading with that is this is the first moment Walker's actions are ripped out of your hands. His squad doesn't want to do this. You, if you know what is coming or know how horrific WP can be, don't want to do this. Walker doesn't care. This is HIS mission... as he sees it at that stage. He's already off in the head, obsessing over seeing this through and being heroic. Yes, on the most obvious level, he COULD walk away, report to his superiors. He won't. That isn't who he is. He plunges ahead, even knowing deep down this isn't what he's here for, isn't what he should do... because he wants to see this through, and he's dragging you along for the ride.

I would argue that it's one of the reasons most of the choices in the game come AFTER this scene... because his mental break and 'Konrad' test, all that, is his brain DESPERATELY trying to remind him he DOES have a choice. But other than minor elements here and there, he's not listening. He's lost in his delusion. He's the hero. He's going to right the wrongs. Take out every bad thing he's ever done on 'the bad guys'. He isn't so much a mirror on the player, though his efforts and the climax do stare you in the face to ask you why YOU played this far. He's the worst elements of the (no pun intended) escapist, retreating into a fantasy to blame his actions on. He's everything most of us hate in a gamer, made larger than life, and then we're given the controls and told to play as him. And while by the end I had more pity for him than anything, I still deeply disliked him, which is kind of the point.

Konrad's famed big speech is aimed at Walker but hits you too, IF you were playing through the game gung-ho Rambo super-hero mode heedless of what you've done or who you've hurt. But if you tried your best to corral Walker, to force him not to lose himself as a monster, to not play the game, spare lives, etc., the only one that speech is for is him. Yes, you could have turned the game off any time, but that's not all the game is asking you to consider. It's asking you what YOU chose when it DID give you a choice. That's why in the ending what you see is based on what you decided to do in those moments.

To sum up, walking away was an option only in the abstract; in the diseased and obsessed mind of Walker, already just short of cracking wide open into full-blown insanity, there was no walking away, no retreat. Heroes don't walk away. And if that sentiment isn't your cup of tea, if it in fact disgusts you especially considering what came after, congratulations. You're not Walker. You didn't cross The Line.

/snip

I think they intentionally were blatant about it so there would be absolutely no doubt you were doing terrible things. If what I see on the internet is any indication, some people will be quite willing to defend the most vile actions. The game may have lost in subtlety, but it certainly had little chance of losing the main message. If you had any other choice, then you could just wave away the main message and the theme would be lost.

Alot of Soldiers loved "Apocalypse Now" even when it was supposed to be anti-war, so I guess the creators consciously chose to be heavy handed to avoid having people completely miss the point. Imagine if Walker had used the White Phosphorus, without having the squad and Konrad chew him out for him. I promise there would have been a jackass who wouldn't have realized by himself that WP was a bad thing.

 

[Saviordd1]

It would be more effective if there was an actual choice. Rather than being forced too.

This is true and untrue.

On the whole it's more genre encompassing than just game encompassing. The idea that we need to break out of this bullshit spunkgargleweewee thing with shooters.

I think a lot of people only see the moral choices and cling to those when there's a lot more to the game.

 

[operationgenesis]

Yeah, guys, they should have totally made the white phosphorus scene into a binary moral choice. 'Cause those are always so impactful in Bioware games, and nobody ever criticizes Bioware's writing because of them.

Listen, listen, given how much shit you're given for that scene, a lot of people would have gone back and redone it because they would have been like, "Oh, I made the wrong choice. Okay, game, I'll go back and redo it." The scene would have turned into a game mechanic instead of a story point. Nobody would talk about this scene, it would just be all, "Oh, did you do a good play through or an evil play through?"

 

[Farther than stars]

Actually, there were quite a lot of instances in which you could take a humane alternative, with the exception of the white phosphorous scene. It's just that the humane options weren't always that explicit, which I suppose they wouldn't be on the battlefield.

I think they should've gone all the way; non-explicit sane options all the way. It would be very difficult to complete the game as a saint, but not impossible.

Naw, subtlety's too rare these days. This is a game that's trying to make you look from the self-justifying point of view of a villain and that's something fresh to video games. This isn't about playing as a saint.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

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.

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.

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.

How charmingly elitest of you.

You know, when I was asking about if gamers could talk about anything without ripping each other apart, this is what I was talking about.

So calling people out for their douchbaggery is "ripping them apart" eh? Good to know.

He didn't really seem like a douchebag. It was more that he was confirming the existence of the causal market. Also you more or less just called him an elitist and walked away, without elaborating on the point.

Okay, here's some elaboration: I'm really fucking sick of this constant "Us and Them" dicotomy, and it's especially strong on this site. Thyunda came across as snooty and condescending with, "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." Trying to make people who like Military FPS's out as some kind of undesirable. As if the Escapist was this last bastion of "thinking men".

Pal, no matter how you look at it, there are a large amount of unfortunate implications surrounding the modern military shooters, and while I have no problem with the people that like them, they clearly either don't see these implications or they don't care. The point of Spec Ops the Line is that it's pointing out the darker and more horrific side to modern military shooters to people who normally don't see it or think about it. That's what he was trying to point out.

The Medal of Honor games maybe, but I fail to see what unfortunate implications there are in the CoD games besides "player characters are all secretly Captain America" and "air support is awesome".

And before you go into the whole "shooting brown people in the desert," CoD4, MW2, MW3, and BlOps 1 all had Russia as the main antagonist. Hell, in Blops 2, you fight mercenary Cubans, and they had invisibility suits, killer robots, a secret underground science base, and a laser equipped techno-fortress in Haiti.

Then I won't say how it's about "shooting brown people in the desert," it's about "shooting Russians because Russians are evil, because we say so." Blops 2 I have not played however, therefore I am not talking about that one. I have played Cod 4 through Blops 1 though, so I feel confident in criticizing them one, battlefield bad company 2 and battlefield 3 did the same thing now that I think about it, although to be fair I had a hard time following what the fuck was going on in BE 3. Maybe Blops 2 breaks the formula and is actually pretty good, but it came out after Spec Ops, so Spec Ops wasn't trying to deconstruct that game. The point is that while I don't hate the people who play these games or the games themselves (I fucking hate the term spunkgargleweewee) you can't deny that they're not particularly deep, just saying "kill these people because because" and said people have a tendency to be foreigners, especially Russians for some reason. I mean, when was the last time there was a game about France taking over the world?

To be fair, the games are supposed to be from the perspective of a common soldier. To one of the grunts, how much of the conflict is anything other than "shoot these guys because the guy higher up on the totem pole says so."? What we perceive as a lack of depth could in fact be a deliberate obfuscation in order to simulate the feeling of being another cog in the machine.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Yeah, guys, they should have totally made the white phosphorus scene into a binary moral choice. 'Cause those are always so impactful in Bioware games, and nobody ever criticizes Bioware's writing because of them.

Listen, listen, given how much shit you're given for that scene, a lot of people would have gone back and redone it because they would have been like, "Oh, I made the wrong choice. Okay, game, I'll go back and redo it." The scene would have turned into a game mechanic instead of a story point. Nobody would talk about this scene, it would just be all, "Oh, did you do a good play through or an evil play through?"

I and some other dude made the argument that the choice could have been "bomb shit or go home". If there was a choice for Walker and team to just say "fuck this, I'm out" and turned around and went home (thus ending the game earlier) it would have been doubly effective: not only is WP your fault, but every other thing afterwards is also your fault.

 

[Brainwreck]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
I like that the game made me consider my actions, to bring actual morality into the question. I didn't like that it immediately condemned me upon presenting these questions. And that it assumed I was your stereotypical CoD player.

A specific example for my dislike:
'None of this would've happened if you had just stopped', says Konrad at one point and this got me thinking, because it is technically true. I really never would've experienced Spec Ops if I just stopped playing. Just like I wouldn't have finished any other game. Just like the Iron Giant would not have died if I just stopped watching. Just like Winston Smith wouldn't have suffered the horrors he did if I just stopped reading. The game was condemning me for consuming media wherein horrible shit happens, on the grounds that I'm the cause for said shit happening.

And the game was advertised purposely as another run-of-the-mill shoot the non-white people FPS.
I'm pretty sure someone got way too into being a prophet of truth and lambasting an imagined audience of frat boys from a moral high ground.
But that's just as well, because this game is bold and daring and different and brilliant.

 

[Zhukov]

[snip]

Really, guys? The...."BAD THING" in Spec Ops the line happens because the player in a bad position, where they are desperate and have to rely on hard decisions and a little bit of moral duplicity just to pull through. It wouldn't be much of a game if it said "YOU ARE IN AN INCREDIBLY BAD SITUATION AND THIS IS YOUR ONLY HOPE TO SURVIVE: DO THIS DANGEROUS AND DAMAGING THING TO YOUR FELLOW MAN!" and you could just look at it and say "nah".

Besides, I think the greatest part of Spec Ops, apart from the "BAD THING" was the fact that for all the choice it does allow you, bad things still happens and tragedy occurs. I think the that the way Spec Ops drags you kicking and screaming into its unpleasantness makes it so moving in what it does and highlights the potential for video games to expand in this field.

It wasn't bad because you were forced to do it. It was silly because after forcing you to do it the game tried to make you feel bad about doing it. I can't feel bad about something for which I am not responsible.

I wasn't dragged forward kicking and screaming, I was led forward by the nose while sighing and rolling my eyes.

Also, Walker wasn't in a desperate position and the white phosphorous thing wasn't his only hope to survive. The people down in the encampment didn't even know he was there. He really could have looked at that WP mortar and said, "nah". But then the game wouldn't have been able to harangue you over it for the rest of the duration.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Critical Miss: Top Five Games of 2012 #5

Five days. Five of 2012's best games.

Read Full Article

Nice to see the artist challenging themselves with a shift in perspective. Keep up the good work.

 

[operationgenesis]

Yeah, guys, they should have totally made the white phosphorus scene into a binary moral choice. 'Cause those are always so impactful in Bioware games, and nobody ever criticizes Bioware's writing because of them.

Listen, listen, given how much shit you're given for that scene, a lot of people would have gone back and redone it because they would have been like, "Oh, I made the wrong choice. Okay, game, I'll go back and redo it." The scene would have turned into a game mechanic instead of a story point. Nobody would talk about this scene, it would just be all, "Oh, did you do a good play through or an evil play through?"

I and some other dude made the argument that the choice could have been "bomb shit or go home". If there was a choice for Walker and team to just say "fuck this, I'm out" and turned around and went home (thus ending the game earlier) it would have been doubly effective: not only is WP your fault, but every other thing afterwards is also your fault.

Hm, that's actually really interesting, but I don't know how well it would work out. The game's already silly short, so making it possibly even more so probably isn't a good idea. Though it would be interesting, because, seriously, how many people would ACTUALLY go back home? And the people that did, they would totally feel jipped and go back and play the white phosphorus scene anyways, and then the game could be all "HAHA GOT YOU"

Arkham City actually does something pretty similar, in that it gives you a choice as Catwoman to go help Batman or leave Arkham City, and if you leave Batman dies and the game's over and everything's terrible forever, but this I guess would be a positive version of that. So putting in a kind of "nonchoice" is totally interesting, and pretty much defeats my point, but I think in the end a lot of players who have a problem with the game as is would still have the same reaction of "the game made me do it," because the white phosphorus is the only way to actually PROGRESS, you know? They would have a less strong argumentative point, but I don't think that feeling of being forced to do it would go away because nobody's actually going to stop playing the game.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

It would be more effective if there was an actual choice. Rather than being forced too.

See, the entire point of Spec Ops is that you don't get to argue "Oh, I had to this to progress in the game, not my fault". You did have a choice. You chose to play Spec Ops.

Actually I didn't. But after hearing all the hype I read up on it. I'm not convinced.

...there's a bit of a hole in that logic, but alright, I'll roll with it.

There's another moment later on...actually, two moments. Among a pile of others, two moments really stand apart as times when you're given a choice in an emotionally tense moment, and that moment dictates how you feel just as much as it does Walker's. Play the game, man. It's a worthwhile game in and of itself, but I've far too much respect for it to give away what those moments are.

 

[ksn0va]

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.

Then you missed the point. Just imagine if players were able to avoid the white phosphorus event...

 

[Judas_Iscariot]

You don't get to have an opinion on the game if you haven't played it. It's well and good to say "Well, I don't see why you didn't get a choice, because I would have never..."

While playing the game the atmosphere is such that you really, as a player, have no reason to suspect the action you are about to take is going to have such horrendous results. If you either knew about the scene before hand, or haven't ever played it, you did it wrong and that's why you didn't enjoy it.

If you are just so hipster cool that when you played you actually didn't, as a player, want to use the bad-ass weapon the game was handing you on a silver platter, you probably need to pull your head out of your ass.

 

[Yeager942]

It would be more effective if there was an actual choice. Rather than being forced too.

I think that would invalidate the game's entire argument. As a player we did have a choice. We could've turned off the game, and never play White Phosphorous, but instead we keep playing so we can progress through the story and feel better about ourselves by playing the "hero." You can argue how effectively the game does this, but offering any other choice defeats the point.

 

[Madkipz]

It would be more effective if there was an actual choice. Rather than being forced too.

Remember No russian? remember this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NMnnMRWJ-0

Do you feel like a hero yet?

You could fire over their heads. You could not fire at all. You could take one of the many prompts the game throws up and skip it entirely.

You can fire over their heads. The civvies still die in front of you. You can fire not at all. The civvies still die in front of you.

You can skip it entirely, and guess how that would translate into spec ops. I guess, I dunno. You could maybe stop playing the game. <,<

Waah! Waaah! I had no choice! The game never allowed me to avoid being sucker punched into a guilt trip. Guess what. Spec ops is not a choose your own adventure game. <,<

 

[Machine Man 1992]

It would be more effective if there was an actual choice. Rather than being forced too.

Remember No russian? remember this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NMnnMRWJ-0

Do you feel like a hero yet?

You could fire over their heads. You could not fire at all. You could take one of the many prompts the game throws up and skip it entirely.

You can fire over their heads. The civvies still die in front of you. You can fire not at all. The civvies still die in front of you.

You can skip it entirely, and guess how that would translate into spec ops. I guess, I dunno. You could maybe stop playing the game. <,<

Waah! Waaah! I had no choice! The game never allowed me to avoid being sucker punched into a guilt trip. Guess what. Spec ops is not a choose your own adventure game. <,<

Context! It's all about context! No Russian had you as a deep cover operative embedded into a terrorist cell lead by the most ruthless bastard in the western world. Sure civvies still die, but not by your hands. According to information at the time, you could not stop the massacre without blowing your cover, and you did not have standing orders to kill Makarov, merely lie in wait. Not aiding in the massacre is all you can do.

And it all means dick at the end anyway, as Makarov caps you in the face before getting away.

Also, for the record, if the purpose of WP was to guilt or shock me, then it failed by several orders of magnitude. It's little different from the Token Shocking Moments from the Modern Warfare games. Especially since I've done way worse things to people in other games. Expecting me to feel bad about killing people I've never met or, indeed never seen, is just stupid.

 

[Madkipz]

It would be more effective if there was an actual choice. Rather than being forced too.

Remember No russian? remember this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NMnnMRWJ-0

Do you feel like a hero yet?

You could fire over their heads. You could not fire at all. You could take one of the many prompts the game throws up and skip it entirely.

You can fire over their heads. The civvies still die in front of you. You can fire not at all. The civvies still die in front of you.

You can skip it entirely, and guess how that would translate into spec ops. I guess, I dunno. You could maybe stop playing the game. <,<

Waah! Waaah! I had no choice! The game never allowed me to avoid being sucker punched into a guilt trip. Guess what. Spec ops is not a choose your own adventure game. <,<

Context! It's all about context! No Russian had you as a deep cover operative embedded into a terrorist cell lead by the most ruthless bastard in the western world. Sure civvies still die, but not by your hands. According to information at the time, you could not stop the massacre without blowing your cover, and you did not have standing orders to kill Makarov, merely lie in wait. Not aiding in the massacre is all you can do.

And it all means dick at the end anyway, as Makarov caps you in the face before getting away.

Also, for the record, if the purpose of WP was to guilt or shock me, then it failed by several orders of magnitude. It's little different from the Token Shocking Moments from the Modern Warfare games. Especially since I've done way worse things to people in other games. Expecting me to feel bad about killing people I've never met or, indeed never seen, is just stupid.

They are by far the exact same scenes. The agent had a choice there. A choice that entailed breaching his own cover, but he didn`t. Walker had a choice too. He could have gone home, but he didn`t. Instead he used whatever means necessary to advance and move forward. Just like the player of both games uses whatever means to advance the game. So he can feel like a hero.

Modern warfare used the scene to paint the situation as a fairly dark vs white, pro jingoistic scenario, and used it to paint the protagonist / player as a hero.

The Line used the scene as a turning point to try and express what such a scene would have actually done to the man being played, and the player playing it.