Let's talk about what I see as hypocrisy in the FPS genre.

[CaitSeith]

snip.

1. There is a bias against Call of Duty style game mechanics (and with a good reason). However most of the bashed games don't have something else (interesting plot, fun map layout, engaging combat, excellent ambience, etc) good enough to compensate it; while the praised ones do. Not every gamer evaluates a game by focusing only in a specific feature and nothing else.

2. Each franchise has a style that it's expected to be kept or improved in the new games, or else it will suffer bashing like Goldeneye Wii, Duke Nukem Forever, etc. A lot of games lost that when they were made more like an average following-the-trend game.

PS: Weird, I thought BF4 was bashed because of the game breaking bugs.

 

[Foehunter82]

Have you watched MovieBob's episode on Michael Bay bashing?

In a nutshell, Michael Bay bashing isn't about bashing Michael Bay. It's about bashing Michael Bay's audience. The problem is that most critics don't have the balls to say that Michael Bay's fans' taste in movies sucks, so they proceed to talk about how Michael Bay's movies suck and how he will be the end of Hollywood.

It's the same general premise behind the CoD/Battlefield bashers. It's not necessarily the games that suck, it's some of the gamers that play them. The problem is, saying that would be perceived as an attempt at trolling, so the games themselves get bashed instead. The core argument here seems to be "Call of Duty and Battlefield draw in the ultra-competitive, near-exclusionary gamer crowd, therefore the games themselves are bad."

As far as the singleplayer plots of these games go, they really are no different than most Michael Bay films: Just enough plot to justify a series of gun battles and cinematic explosions, but are basically boring after a playthrough or two (not unlike many Dean Devlin/Roland Emmerich films).

Another thing to consider, though, isn't so much the "Game A and Game B have the same things, but Game B is considered stupid," but rather, "Game A did a better job of utilizing the elements than Game B did."

For the record, I quit playing CoD at around the time that the singleplayer campaigns started getting shorter, and the devs started insisting that CoD gamers only buy the game for the multiplayer features anyway. The Battlefield games? Al the ones that I've played are basically interchangeable. Same basic gameplay, but with a change in setting and/or military hardware that your character can use. The could have technically just built a mod for Battlefield 1942 in that case.

 

[seris]

heres my reason for criticising a few of those titles:

-CoD: Ghosts: had HORRIBLE performance on pc, multiplayer felt the same like the same boring multiplayer infinity ward always does
-Battlefield 4: Multiplayer was an absolute disaster at launch with huge issues making it almost unplayable

reasons for liking a few
-Wolfenstien the new order: very good story in my opinion, was emotional in some parts and had a very interesting setting and weapons

 

[COMaestro]

Also, I disagree with the idea established IPs can't switch genres. Wolfenstein turned into an FPS. Mario got Kart and Tennis and RPG and party game spinoffs. Not everyone is going to be happy, but there's nothing inherently wrong with taking a story/character/etc and placing them on top of a whole new gameplay model. I grant this is very controversial. I dislike the way quality game sequels are dismissed simply because they switch genres, regardless of the game's quality within this new genre framework.

These are not good examples, as for the most part they are not direct sequels. Wolfenstein turned into an FPS, but it also got named Wolfenstein 3D. That name right there gives an idea that the gameplay would be different than what came before. Same happened with Duke Nukem. As for Mario, again, total renames, giving the customer an idea of what they are getting into if they purchase the game. I don't go to the store and pick up Mario Kart and expecting the gameplay of Super Mario Bros. 3.

If I buy a game called Super Mario Bros #, I expect some kind of sidescrolling platformer where I jump on the heads of goombas and koopas or whatever new creatures they've created on my way to defeat Bowser or some other new baddie. Any time they've made a change to the formula, they've also changed the name of the game entirely to let the customer know that this game will not be just like the games that came before (World, 64, 3D, Galaxy, etc), even if they share some features, such as the characters.

An actual sequel to a game should maintain a similar gameplay style as the preceding game. It does not need to be exactly the same, but changing up the formula too much can alienate an already existing fanbase. This is why the newer Syndicate game received such backlash: it had nothing in common with the games that came before it.

 

[DrOswald]

My problem with the FPS genre is a snobbishness which reminds me of the attitude of hardcore Pacific Rim fans who insist that Michael Bay Transformers movies are stupid, but Pacific Rim is super smart and totally not at all like Transformers, despite the fact Pacific Rim is cut from the exact same cloth. (Many story-driven FPS games are described as being like Michael Bay movies, often by people who are less than fans of Bay's oeuvre.)

Ok, right here we have a problem. Details make all the difference. Pacific Rim and the Transformer movies have similar superficial elements. But quality is in the details, not the broad strokes. For example, Pacific Rim doesn't have a scene where the giant robot pisses on a guy, cause you know what is really funny? Pissing! Height of all humor right there.

Transformers had all the same potential Pacific Rim did. Pacific Rim chose to concentrate on how awesome giant monsters fighting giant robots can be. Transformers chose to make masturbation and penis jokes.

Now, lets bring it back to video games. I have played some COD single player. It was a completely negative experience. It was not fun in the least. And I didn't go in expecting it to be bad. I was excited for a fun FPS experience, I had heard good things. And it was boring and horrible. Zero fun. I hated it. Metro, on the other hand, was excellent. I loved that game. I don't have the expertise required to explain what was different, but the details made it different.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Battlefield 3 was bashed for its story and gameplay. Both are remarkably similar to the game BLACK, a game which is not painted with the same brush.

BF3 was hardly criticized for just its story and characters. Pretty much everything was criticized when it came to the singleplayer of that game. The story and characters just didn't help matters at all.

Syndicate 2012's story, by the same writer as Crysis 2, was criticised for vague reasons which seem to boil down to "WHY ISN'T THIS GAME LIKE THE OLD SYNDICATE GAMES!" (Yet nobody complained that Wolfenstein: The New order isn't like the old 2D Wolfenstein games for some reason.)

Not sure why you had to bring up Crysis 2 here, but if it is to imply that Crysis 2 had a good story, then...bahahahahah! That's a good joke.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Anyways, The New Order was helped in that it was viewed as a continuation of Wolfenstein's already long history of providing FPS games like Wolfenstein 3D, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Wolfenstein (2008). Syndicate didn't have that history, and after over a decade of waiting, I doubt many fans wanted to see the next game in the series completely change genres.

Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 were, in my view, unfairly bashed. They adapted the Crytek formula to an urban setting, which meant a shift away from lots of jungle towards more constrained environments.

You've already answered the question for the complaints. As much as I loved Crysis 2 (it is probably my favorite console shooter), it was still more restrictive than the original game, and that wasn't taken too well by many fans. There were also plenty of technology reasons for why many fans complained about it. Crytek also didn't help matters with their comments about PC gamers.

All in all, I think that many linear, story-driven FPS games get unfairly treated. Their stories are often not given the attention or respect they deserve, and it saddens me.

One of the things that set BioShock and BioShock: Infinite apart is that they showed the potential of stories in FPS games. How many FPS games actually come even close to telling stories on the same level as those two? Very, very few. Most of them are more concerned about getting a paper-thin story meant to justify the action and maybe have some incredibly weak commentary thrown in. That's fine, and if someone can't handle that, then the FPS genre is probably not for them. However, when games like BioShock and Infinite show the potential of the genre and most games fall so far short of that potential (along with comparisons to games in other genres), it's not hard to see why FPS games often aren't praised for their stories.

And there are many strange double standards where Game A does the EXACT SAME THINGS as Game B, but game B is seen as "stupid", but Game A is seen as "smart".

FPS games are mechanically simple, so it shouldn't be surprising that two games can be almost identical mechanically but still be viewed completely differently. It comes down to how well those mechanics are used through the level design and challenges. Ultimately, when looking at an FPS (or any game for that matter), it isn't just what the mechanics are but in how well they are used throughout the experience.

And a series like Crysis, which dared to experiment with later titles, is bashed by the same people who bash Call of Duty for not being experimental enough.

People want to see Call of Duty evolve. That's the change they want to see. Crysis, however, was perceived to take steps backwards rather than forward, which is why the change was seen as a problem.

I see people who hated Crysis 2 all of sudden excited about Advanced Warfare, which seems heavily influenced by Crysis 2, right down to oddly similar set pieces in the trailers.

Well, it helps that so much of Crysis 2 was ripped directly from Call of Duty games. They're bound to be similar when CoD starts adding more Crysis-like mechanics. The difference, again, is that CoD taking influence is seen as an advancement of the series' design while Crysis taking influence from CoD is seen as a step backwards from what the fans wanted.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Battlefield 4 was bashed for its characters, story, and ending. (Penned by the guy who wrote Modern Warfare 2) I thought the characters were interesting and the ending was powerful.

I didn't know that, but thinking back it makes a degree of sense and explain a lot of the things I really hated about BF4 and MW2.

Both games continue resolved stories in an extremely arbitrary manner. Both brought back characters for no good reason (although MW2 at least re-used popular characters, did anyone really want to see Agent Kovic again that badly?), both games regularly killed people off to create 'powerful' moments and both of them replaced vaguely plausible stories from the preceding game with complete nonsense that Michael Bay would look down on.

I actually liked BF3's story (and it's beginning of US ground troops returning to Iraq in 2014 is looking downright prophetic) even if it hit some bum notes about killing it's characters off. There was no reason to carry that story on though, it ends with the whole plot being blown open, Black proved right and a huge diplomatic incident that wouldn't result in war (neither side was supposed to be in that field in Iran to begin with, neither side had specific orders to attack the other, Cole just took it upon himself to do so).

I really liked Modern Warfare's story too, killing the hero at the end of the first act was stupidly brave (See Halo 3 backing away from such an ending in the same year), nobody had done it before. The plot in that game was self contained too, it ends when the 'good' Russians stomp on the Ultra Nationalists heads at the end and a crippled Soap gets airlifted out as he watches Price bleed out.

Of course in both cases the next game dreams up characters you never heard of in the previous game, a series of massive ass-pulls (Soap and Price weren't that badly hurt after all! America and Russia went to war anyway, because who cares if it really was a Terrorist plot?) and a globe trotting conspiracy to draw the super powers into war with each other.

It's all so offensively dumb, whoever that writer is, he needs to be banned from typing.

 

[Goliath100]

Transformers vs Pacific Rim

I'm tempted to say everything is just better in Pacific Rim but that doesn't explain its better so here goes: Pacific Rim has better camera work, everything is shot nice and clearly without the hand-hold shaky cam Bay has a tendency to abuse. All the characters has consistent arcs, starting at one place and ending on another, in transformers, that is really the case. Most characters are the same stoke character from beginning to end. And for the" racism", well, "the black guy" in transformers is JUST the black guy, where Pacific Rim's characters are characters (or is overshadowed by something awesome in the case of the russians and chinese).

Goldeneye Wii was bashed for having "Call of Duty-like" game mechanics which were actually almost identical to [...] Metro: Last Light['s]...

I only need to point to the fact that Metro has inventory management and Goldeneye 007 don't to say "that's a lie". Furthermore, Metro is a FPS, Stealth, Survival Horror hybrid, Goldeneye is a FPS with some stealth elements. How are they the same?

Edit:
So, after a couple of maps from Goldeneye 007 Wii I can safely say: "What the fuck are you talking about?" The environments are bland, chest high wall corridors populated exclusively by the same generic bad guys. The "stealth" consists of taking out unaware guards with a silenced handgun, letting them be is not an option with no real branching paths. The guns feels lightweight with no real impact. The resetting of equipment at the start of every mission makes them feel really disconnected and remove any semblance of consequences for your actions.

Metro nor Wolfenstein has this amount of notable flaws to this degree.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Thank you for all the replies.

A few points:
1-Using BayFormers as an example is troublesome because you can't assume everyone will treat the four films as a whole. TF4 heavily tones down the various excesses earlier films are known for. And each of the 4 is a shift in tone. (Plus the lead writer changed after 2.) It's like talking about Terminator films, but you can't assume people have seen Terminator 2.

2-Another problem is that people have strong opinions on games they've never played. As a game that only sold 200k copies, most people have not played Syndicate 2012. As a game that was on Wii, most people have no played Goldeneye Wii. (Goldeneye: Reloaded was a different creature.) People judge Crysis 3 when they've never played it. People judge CoD entries they've never played, despite the fact Treyarch and Infinity Ward CoD games are very different.

3-I've also yet to see an explanation as to why Battlefield 3 is bad, but BLACK is good. Besides the obvious plot similarities, they're both games which use environmental destruction as a gimmick, and are heavily linear and scripted.

4-Syndicate 2012 was a Starbreeze game. When you give an IP to an FPS developer, what do you expect them to make? Also, Syndicate and Wolfenstein: TNO are extremely similar mechanically. (Because Wolfenstein was by ex-Starbreeze people.) It was a Goldeneye vs Timesplitters 2 sorta situation. I brought up their shared writer because I felt Crysis 2 and Syndicate both had excellent writing which was dismissed for wishy washy and vague reasons. IMO, Crysis 2 is a better version of the Mr House storyline from New Vegas than New Vegas had.

5-I've always felt modern CoD games are influenced by Delta Force: Black Hawk Down.

6-FPS stories are often dismissed without any proper, sensible reason given. That bugs me. For example, I myself dislike the story of Goldeneye Wii, especially compared to the original film. Characters with complex motivations are reduced to stupid cutouts. Alec's heartwrenching origin is switched to a whiny dude who hates banks. The game shoehorns Bond into situations he didn't belong. The GoldenEye apparently doesn't affect night vision goggles because reasons.

I'm not saying people have to like everything. But I wish they would back up blanket statements with logic.

 

[DoPo]

I'm not saying people have to like everything. But I wish they would back up blanket statements with logic.

It's funny you say that when your entire OP was a blanket statement throwing together vastly different opinions and attacking the hodge-podge thus created. Almost as if strawmanning. Actually, it is exactly that.

 

[Vivi22]

Battlefield 3 was bashed for its story and gameplay. Both are remarkably similar to the game BLACK, a game which is not painted with the same brush.

Honestly, I can't be bothered to type out a response to everything you mentioned, but I'd like to cover this one because it's relatively straight forward. First, I've never played more than the demo of Black, but I can safely say that no one played that for the story. It was just a fun balls to the wall action game from what I remember. So whether the story to Battlefield 3 is similar is irrelevant (even more so considering how something's told is at least as important as what is said, and BF3 was awful in every regard on that front). But more over, there's a difference between having similar game mechanics, and using similar game mechanics well. BF3 was a half assed mess of some destructibility mashed together with some really boring level design, awful graphics, and some of the worst pacing I've ever seen in an FPS.

Regardless of whatever cursory similarities the two might have, BF3 did not execute what it did well on any level. It was bland, boring, repetitive, and the single player wasn't even a good representation of what a Battlefield game is. The single player is incredibly linear, anmd surprisingly empty. Which is the exact opposite of what Battlefield multiplayer is. Even worse is that the single player in the Bad Company games which directly preceeded BF3 were much more open and interesting. They weren't perfect by any stretch, but they played more like a single player Battlefield should than 3 ever did. Assuming you even want a single player with Battlefield. I'll probably never play one again because 3 was really that bad and 4 barely worked, but I'd still rather DICE stop pretending the series needs single player and just make the best multiplayer Battlefield they can.

Anyway, this and a lot of other games you mentioned probably boil down to the same things: one game did something a lot better than another game that did something similar. It really is that simple a lot of the time.

Syndicate 2012's story, by the same writer as Crysis 2, was criticised for vague reasons which seem to boil down to "WHY ISN'T THIS GAME LIKE THE OLD SYNDICATE GAMES!" (Yet nobody complained that Wolfenstein: The New order isn't like the old 2D Wolfenstein games for some reason.)

Maybe if most people even remembered those games they'd care. But the vast majority of gamers aren't aware there were any Wolfenstein games before 3D. And there's nothing wrong with that. But the people who wanted a Syndicate sequel were not expecting, nor asking for, an FPS.

 

[ElMinotoro]

Hang on, is the challenge here to explain how games with similar mechanics can vary in quality? You realise that each game is its own thing and that games within the same genre can be different?

As for BF3/Black.... BF3 was rated highly but not for the story. If your problem is that people think that Black's narrative was executed better, well really, it wouldn't be hard.

I also wish you'd stop defending Syndicate. You might as well defend bomberman zero so I can tell you're a troll.

 

[EternallyBored]

Syndicate 2012's story, by the same writer as Crysis 2, was criticised for vague reasons which seem to boil down to "WHY ISN'T THIS GAME LIKE THE OLD SYNDICATE GAMES!" (Yet nobody complained that Wolfenstein: The New order isn't like the old 2D Wolfenstein games for some reason.)

Maybe if most people even remembered those games they'd care. But the vast majority of gamers aren't aware there were any Wolfenstein games before 3D. And there's nothing wrong with that. But the people who wanted a Syndicate sequel were not expecting, nor asking for, an FPS.

Yeah, nobody remembers the 2d wolfenstein, the game only became known after 3d was released, people complained about the Syndicate remake because syndicate fans were mainly comprised of people that liked the previous game.

Wolfenstein's fanbase is pretty much entirely comprised of fans of the 3d version, if castle wolfenstein had gained a large fan following then they might have complained, but wolfenstein 3d kind of came at a time before the internet made it easy for people to get together to talk about games so if the 2d version had a fan base, they have long since been supplanted by fans of the 3d version.

If Syndicate wasn't a critically panned shooter and people who bought it actually liked it, then it likely would have developed its own fanbase that could have supplanted fans of the older games, sort of what happened with the newer Fallouts, the old Fallouts still have their fans, but the general perception is 3 and new vegas amongst most gamers nowadays.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

My problem with the FPS genre is a snobbishness which reminds me of the attitude of hardcore Pacific Rim fans who insist that Michael Bay Transformers movies are stupid, but Pacific Rim is super smart and totally not at all like Transformers, despite the fact Pacific Rim is cut from the exact same cloth. (Many story-driven FPS games are described as being like Michael Bay movies, often by people who are less than fans of Bay's oeuvre.)

Goldeneye Wii was bashed for having "Call of Duty-like" game mechanics which were actually almost identical to praised games such as Metro: Last Light and Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Battlefield 3 was bashed for its story and gameplay. Both are remarkably similar to the game BLACK, a game which is not painted with the same brush.

Battlefield 4 was bashed for its characters, story, and ending. (Penned by the guy who wrote Modern Warfare 2) I thought the characters were interesting and the ending was powerful.

Syndicate 2012's story, by the same writer as Crysis 2, was criticised for vague reasons which seem to boil down to "WHY ISN'T THIS GAME LIKE THE OLD SYNDICATE GAMES!" (Yet nobody complained that Wolfenstein: The New order isn't like the old 2D Wolfenstein games for some reason.) Despite having almost identical game mechanics to Wolfenstein: TNO, Syndicate's game mechanics were criticised, too.

Call of Duty: Ghosts was heavily bashed for its story, graphics, and game mechanics. In my view, while inferior to Black Ops 2, Ghosts improved heavily upon the older Infinity Ward titles by removing the "follow the waypoint" mission design and replacing it with something more organic. Ghosts may not be the best looking game, but it has extremely high resolution textures compared to previous entries, and the engine received some major DX11 visual upgrades. The game even has Nvidia fur effects for animals, something which Witcher 3 fans seemed to think was something never before seen when shown in Witcher 3 previews. As for the story, I think it had some flaws, but it was reasonably well written, took us interesting places, and Rorke was a compelling villain.

Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 were, in my view, unfairly bashed. They adapted the Crytek formula to an urban setting, which meant a shift away from lots of jungle towards more constrained environments. This was partially due to console limitations, sure, but also because urban environments lend themselves to being constrained by tall buildings and such. The two games explore some very interesting themes around warriors abandoning their humanity and Psycho's angst over his own human frailty after he loses the suit. Crysis 3 also includes the line "IT WAS NEVER ABOUT THE SUIT!" which almost seems like a challenge to the people who grumbled about the nanosuits being altered in C2 and C3, plus the use of your suit malfunctioning as a story point.

All in all, I think that many linear, story-driven FPS games get unfairly treated. Their stories are often not given the attention or respect they deserve, and it saddens me. And there are many strange double standards where Game A does the EXACT SAME THINGS as Game B, but game B is seen as "stupid", but Game A is seen as "smart". And a series like Crysis, which dared to experiment with later titles, is bashed by the same people who bash Call of Duty for not being experimental enough.

I probably should've tidied and rewritten this a few times, but I hope I got my message across. As the release date for Advanced Warfare approaches, I see more and more flippant attacks on CoD: Ghosts as being a "trash" game "everybody" hated, and I see people who hated Crysis 2 all of sudden excited about Advanced Warfare, which seems heavily influenced by Crysis 2, right down to oddly similar set pieces in the trailers. I feel as if people are caught up in a snobbish hatred for "dumb pleb" FPS and a snobbish like for the "smart" FPS games which are usually bizarrely similar to the "dumb" ones if you scratch the surface.

I'm sorry, but there are many things wrong with this position.

To start with, I think you are confusing majority opinion with individual opinion. I guarantee you that the people bashing Battlefield 3 for it's mechanics are NOT all the same as the people praising BLACK for it's gameplay. This is not hypocrisy, it's a dialogue on dissenting opinions between thousands of different people.

SECOND, you yourself use the terms "in my opinion..." or "I think..." several times. Herein you betray yourself; you are dismissing opinions you disagree with by citing your own opinions. This is not logic, and it's not helpful.

THIRD, any legitimacy to your claim is very easily reconciled. You are basically taking each game on a handful of its attributes, comparing these broad attributes to each other, and declaring that, logically, anyone who likes these attributes should like both games. This is absurd.

Except in the case of literal ports of a game to another system, no two games are so similar that every important factor is the same. The differences in detail, in setting, in specific characters, the inclusion or absence of just one or two mechanics, can completely change the experience of playing a game. If Borderlands had been precisely the same game it is now, but hadn't chosen to alter the photorealistic graphics into a semi-cell-shaded aesthetic late in production, they would not be the same game. The feel of the game would have been dramatically different, and I would likely not be so fond of the game as I am.

Your perception of "hypocrisy" is incorrect. Not that individual hypocrisy isn't there, but each game is judged by different standards based on its unique characteristics and comparisons to other games. Not because FPS are a homogenous genre with only a dozen archetypal games that are all the same.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Syndicate 2012's story, by the same writer as Crysis 2, was criticised for vague reasons which seem to boil down to "WHY ISN'T THIS GAME LIKE THE OLD SYNDICATE GAMES!" (Yet nobody complained that Wolfenstein: The New order isn't like the old 2D Wolfenstein games for some reason.)

Maybe if most people even remembered those games they'd care. But the vast majority of gamers aren't aware there were any Wolfenstein games before 3D. And there's nothing wrong with that. But the people who wanted a Syndicate sequel were not expecting, nor asking for, an FPS.

Yeah, nobody remembers the 2d wolfenstein, the game only became known after 3d was released, people complained about the Syndicate remake because syndicate fans were mainly comprised of people that liked the previous game.

Wolfenstein's fanbase is pretty much entirely comprised of fans of the 3d version, if castle wolfenstein had gained a large fan following then they might have complained, but wolfenstein 3d kind of came at a time before the internet made it easy for people to get together to talk about games so if the 2d version had a fan base, they have long since been supplanted by fans of the 3d version.

If Syndicate wasn't a critically panned shooter and people who bought it actually liked it, then it likely would have developed its own fanbase that could have supplanted fans of the older games, sort of what happened with the newer Fallouts, the old Fallouts still have their fans, but the general perception is 3 and new vegas amongst most gamers nowadays.

The late Jeff Gerstmann gave Syndicate a perfect 10/10 score. The game sold terribly, but I've met people who actually finished it, and many seem to have a soft spot for it.

In this regard, Syndicate is like Turok 3 and Crysis 3. Games which got decent reviews, sold dismally, and were judged based on hearsay because most people didn't play them. There are people who think Syndicate is full of dubstep because the internet told them that it is.

Like the TR reboot, modern Fallout displaced the old games by selling way more than them.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I'd like to point out that Transformers 4 was a significant shift in tone away from

Indeed it was, and thank fuck for that said I.

. But I also find it amusing how Michael Bay movies are often deemed racist, while Pacific Rim gets away with...

>Japanese girl who is REALLY GOOD AT MARTIAL ARTS.

Since Japan is the (primary) genesis point of at least three major arts world wide (Karate, Judo and Jiujitsu), I suspect that if you stood in a street in Tokyo and spat a few times, you'd eventually hit a martial artist. And since Mako had been in training to pilot a Jaeger, her proficiency is unsurprising. Also for what it's worth, in some discarded backstory, the Mori family were traditional sword smiths so there's a good chance that Mako could have been learning long before the Jaeger program as a sort of family tradition.

>ANGRY AUSTRALIAN WHO IS DEFINED BY HIS ANGRY.

This is less a problem with Pacific Rim and more an overall thing about movies with pilots; not for no reason does the Airforce joke "The difference between God and fighter pilot, is God can't fly a plane" exist in some form or another. Besides, if not for their atrocious but hilarious accents, I'd never have picked them as Aussies. The vernacular was surprisingly well structured though.

>African-American guy who is harsh, but gentle on the inside, and DIES SO THE WHITE PEOPLE CAN LIVE.

A quick, vital stat:

Idris Elba, born September 6, 1972 (age 42), London Borough of Hackney, United Kingdom. He's a Pom, and he dies side by side with the Australian, so the Japanese woman and the American, of Dutch decent (also played by a Pom) can save the city of Hong Kong including their buddy who's a Chinese Peruvian (played by an actor of German-Mexican decent) from total destruction. Pacific Rim gives approximately zero shits about who's what, but rather who's awesome.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

Syndicate 2012's story, by the same writer as Crysis 2, was criticised for vague reasons which seem to boil down to "WHY ISN'T THIS GAME LIKE THE OLD SYNDICATE GAMES!" (Yet nobody complained that Wolfenstein: The New order isn't like the old 2D Wolfenstein games for some reason.) Despite having almost identical game mechanics to Wolfenstein: TNO, Syndicate's game mechanics were criticised, too.

As a Syndicate fan, I can tell you the screens and the videos were enough to make me keep well away from the reboot. We have plenty of AAA manly FPS's, why bastardise a franchise to make another? I loved that team based isometric shooter. That's why I've backed Satellite Reign, a spiritual successor.

As for Wolfenstein? only a Wolfenstein fan can answer why they were unaffected by the change to FPS.

It just turns into immature "my game is awesome, your game is the cancer."

Please don't talk like that, its just vile.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

As a Syndicate fan, I can tell you the screens and the videos were enough to make me keep well away from the reboot. We have plenty of AAA manly FPS's, why bastardise a franchise to make another? I loved that team based isometric shooter. That's why I've backed Satellite Reign, a spiritual successor.

In a nutshell, Starbreeze felt that making a new Syndicate which was like the old Syndicate games was a waste of time because those games were good enough. (That's, I suppose, a diplomatic way of excusing the fact you're an FPS dev who makes FPS games out of every IP you touch.)

The thing about Syndicate 2012 is that it's a rather unusual FPS game. I've seen it criticised as generic - implying there are heaps of bloom-drenched, morally grey cyberpunk FPS games just waiting to be played. Comparing Syndicate to CoD, as some do, is absurd because Syndicate does not play like CoD. Besides Wolfenstein: The New Order, Syndicate feels very close to Chaser.

I understand why fans of the old Syndicate games were unhappy. But why can't a game like Syndicate be judged on its own merits?

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

I understand why fans of the old Syndicate games were unhappy. But why can't a game like Syndicate be judged on its own merits?

I would say as a Syndicate fan, I would find it difficult to treat it as a stand alone title.

For non-fans? I'd say as chasing those COD $$$$ is arguably the reason we have so many FPS's, a lot of titles will be compared to COD. with those games not being COD like, they lose straight away. as COD is COD