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

[Irick]

And who the frack would be so stupid that they would compare that sh*te Pacific Rim with Transformers?!
I think they would, no dought there. But WTF?!

Transformers is not good. But it's original. It's definately tranformers.
You can definately say it's got transformers in a unique premise. Not good, but it's transformers.

I'm not really sure i'd call the series transformers. It's more large scale hollywood action movie that happens to involve transformers and a lot of crass humor. I don't remember there being a lot of crass humor in the animated series. I remember there being a lot of silly humor, but that wouldn't really mesh with the whole 'take the writing seriously' vibe that the new movies put out.

There isn't a lot of focus on character development and each film seems to make sure that the characters are more or less set up for the next round of writing. Granted, I lost interest in the series after 1 and 2 because it really didn't do much for my tastes.

Pacific Rim is nothing but total and utter sh*te!
It's nothing more than a desperate, pretentious, retardly cretinous, blatant ripping off of anime and manga, monster movies,and loads of things, while pretending it's original!
That piece of crap has never seen a original thought or concept in it's entire firetrucking life!
To make things worse, it rips off the most retardly cretinous garbage that no one would ever want.

It's a love letter to the mecha genre of anime. In that, it is a great film. The cinematography is well done and the characters are not flat. We see development all the way through. Guillermo del Toro is a really good choice for this style of movie, if you look at his previous movies.

Also, could you cool it with the language? Just a personal request.


Alright, OP. Lets talk about popularity.


So, is new Transformers going to be influential on the conversation of directors in the future? ... probably not. It doesn't bring a lot of new stuff to the table, it's easy to produce with current technology. It speaks to a lot of people's childhood and it aims rather low for emotional resonance.

I don't see a lot of new Transformer fans participating in the critical process. In this way, it's mass culture. It's produced and consumed.

In that way, I don't see a lot of CoD/Syndicate/'generic FPS' game fans really... producing in the same way the fans of other games do. I've seen a lot of Bioshock fan art. I've seen a lot of Metro: Last Light lets plays. These people celebrate what they love in the game at a very personal level.

'Generic FPS' games tend to be rather unrelenting in their design. Single Player isn't extremely challenging, the story keeps it going along but isn't the focus. It trains you for the multiplayer mode, where the majority of the utility of the mechanics come to light.

Compare what you will to, for instance, Spec Ops: the Line. It has a lot of those generic T/FPS trappings, but the single player is the heart and soul of the game. It has a challenging narrative. It takes a risk on presenting a cohesive artistic vision. It is, in my opinion, an example of the Auteur theory at work within the video games industry. It's meant to step beyond what is expected of it and present something new.

So. To me it comes down to a very simple question of focus. Does CoD primarily want to tell me a timeless story that will be quoted from years to come, or challenge my world view? Bring into light the moral questions of life? I really don't think it does. I think it wants to give me a feel good story with passable writing and focus its resources on the highly competitive multiplayer aspects. The story is there, it's consumable and it lets me easily self-insert. This is mass culture, and it sells. It sells well.

But how important is it to us going forward? I think we learned more about map balance from CoD then we did story. The iterative process that they've gone through has allowed them to refine the feel of play for their style of game more and more. It's lasor honed to have mass appeal, and it feels good. It's not unexpected, people rage, but it's not unfair.

I've played a few CoD games, but I can't for the life of me remember anything about their story. I can remember, however, the way that the guns felt in CoD2.

Moving on to Crysis.
Crysis was a breath of Fresh air in the FPS monotony that we had been getting. It brought back the Farcry open Island. It was a tech demo, sure, but it was a tech demo with teeth and some weird plot thing about aliens. In Farcry and Crysis, the focus was always on the stories you made by interacting with the game. Emergent gameplay. They offered these well honed simple mechanics and a sandbox. You had to put them all together to complete your objectives. You could always do this with some straight up shooter bits, or you could throw an exploding barrel into the middle of a bunch of guards, setting them on fire, and hurling them into cards, setting them on fire, which would then explode, knocking down a hutt and revealing another three or so guys for you to shoot. Or, you could stealth. Or, you could go in guns blazing and not give a fuck.

Crysis 2 really cut down on what you could do. The levels where linear, there was no setting up for anything other than what the level designer had put into that linear section. The freedom wasn't there. It felt crippled compared to the emergent gameplay of the first Crysis. They probably were unfairly reviewed after that, because they just were not crysis games. They missed what made Crysis Crysis.

Now, I do think that we are hasty to dismiss some shooters. Take Farcry 2. I think, even through the studio and engine shift, it captured that emergent gameplay mechanic. The levels where too large and it took forever to do those stupid checkpoint missions, but... brush fire was a mechanic. I could kill a man by setting fire to an ama dump, which could be done on purpose or accident. The weapons got really silly really fast. I could easily die from my own exploding arrow, and the AI did what it wanted. This made little stories evolve out of each of my interactions. I don't think Farcry 2 got enough praise considering these well honed mechanics.

Battlefield to me is in much the same vein as CoD, though they seem to be going a bit less arcadey in their physics. The focus is mostly in honing the multiplayer to that competition-level sheen. The stories are easy, rarely challenging the perceptions of the player. Rarely commenting much on the social impact. I would love to see either of these franchises present something challenging to their player bases, like our treatment of veterans, the realities of trying to adjust to civilian life after a life of war. You know, even just in NPC dialog, but, these games really aren't meant for that.

They are a massive, iterative process on how to hone the mechanics of one style of FPS down to a competition level art. Which, in and of itself, is a massive undertaking. I'm not saying they are bad games, I'm just saying we're probably not going to remember them for their story. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. Doesn't mean it's not a good story. These sorts of judgments are inherently subjective. You may be looking for something I'm not. There is still something very special about a particularly well crafted piece of mass culture.

... but it's not going to speak to me. I'm not going to be talking about it's implications on the gaming industry. It's going to be massively successful, but it's not going to do much for the gamewright in me. I can't make it my own, I don't feel the need to spin their story through my lens. I can learn something from them, but I don't feel the need to celebrate them.

Is this hypocrisy? No. It's opinion.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

I have never heard anyone claim that Pacific Rim was anything more than a big dumb movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters. What I have heard (and said myself) is that its the greatest big dumb movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters ever. Sure its superficially similar to Transformers, but the difference is in quality and tone. Its like saying eating at Burger King and eating a meal prepared by the worlds greatest chef are the same thing because its just eating food.

 

[Belaam]

Yeah, all FPSes are pretty much the same design. As far as amazing new ideas, Call of Duty et al are essentially Madden. Assassin Creed games are pretty much there too. I don't get the snobbishness because frankly, I generally can't tell them apart.

As for the Syndicate rage, it was because the original Syndicate game (and to a lesser extent Syndicate Wars) were things of beauty. XCOM team sci-fi designs and modifications sent out into an RTS map with multiple venues of success and some dark humor missions (e.g. kill the scientist's mistress so he won't be as distracted from work, but don't do it when he's there as we don't want him traumatized). Taking over the world mission area by mission area was also a blast. The setting had some fun cyberpunk stuff and the "persuadatron" mind control gun led to a lot of bizarre scenarios. Building up a good team, where the loss of a good agent was a major setback in time and money; RTS around fun settings (kill politician who is giving a speech while he is talking or as he drives off); the goofiness of "every five citizens persuaded allows you to persuade a cop" allowing you to show up to missions with huge mobs of nearly useless cannon fodder; the tactical benefits of planning out your global conquest.

Losing all that for yet another FPS, particulary if we don't play many FPSs in the first place, pissed a lot of us off.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

I'm not really sure i'd call the series transformers. It's more large scale hollywood action movie that happens to involve transformers and a lot of crass humor. I don't remember there being a lot of crass humor in the animated series. I remember there being a lot of silly humor, but that wouldn't really mesh with the whole 'take the writing seriously' vibe that the new movies put out.

There isn't a lot of focus on character development and each film seems to make sure that the characters are more or less set up for the next round of writing. Granted, I lost interest in the series after 1 and 2 because it really didn't do much for my tastes.

So, is new Transformers going to be influential on the conversation of directors in the future? ... probably not. It doesn't bring a lot of new stuff to the table, it's easy to produce with current technology. It speaks to a lot of people's childhood and it aims rather low for emotional resonance.

I don't see a lot of new Transformer fans participating in the critical process. In this way, it's mass culture. It's produced and consumed.

In that way, I don't see a lot of CoD/Syndicate/'generic FPS' game fans really... producing in the same way the fans of other games do. I've seen a lot of Bioshock fan art. I've seen a lot of Metro: Last Light lets plays. These people celebrate what they love in the game at a very personal level.

'Generic FPS' games tend to be rather unrelenting in their design. Single Player isn't extremely challenging, the story keeps it going along but isn't the focus. It trains you for the multiplayer mode, where the majority of the utility of the mechanics come to light.

Compare what you will to, for instance, Spec Ops: the Line. It has a lot of those generic T/FPS trappings, but the single player is the heart and soul of the game. It has a challenging narrative. It takes a risk on presenting a cohesive artistic vision. It is, in my opinion, an example of the Auteur theory at work within the video games industry. It's meant to step beyond what is expected of it and present something new.

So. To me it comes down to a very simple question of focus. Does CoD primarily want to tell me a timeless story that will be quoted from years to come, or challenge my world view? Bring into light the moral questions of life? I really don't think it does. I think it wants to give me a feel good story with passable writing and focus its resources on the highly competitive multiplayer aspects. The story is there, it's consumable and it lets me easily self-insert. This is mass culture, and it sells. It sells well.

But how important is it to us going forward? I think we learned more about map balance from CoD then we did story. The iterative process that they've gone through has allowed them to refine the feel of play for their style of game more and more. It's lasor honed to have mass appeal, and it feels good. It's not unexpected, people rage, but it's not unfair.

My point is that I think these "mainstream" IPs are often quite intelligent, but they are they are unfairly deemed to be idiotic garbage.

For example, Spec Ops: The Line does very little narratively which Black Ops/Black Ops 2 does not. BO-BO2 were written by David S. Goyer, who wrote Nolan's Batman films, and they're quite similar thematically. People call these games "jingoistic". These are games where your character kills JFK. Where the villain was created by American greed and harrowing injustice. BO2 has anti-drone undertones. (And in Black Ops, you play a soldier who is insane, and led around by a memory implanted by sabotaged brainwashing. The game constantly hints something is wrong with Reznov. YOU are Reznov. It's all excellent mindscrew stuff. But Spec Ops gets praised while Black Ops is deemed to be just another mindless FPS.)

Crysis 2/3 explore themes around immortality, transhumanism, and what happens to soldiers who have sacrificed their humanity for the greater good.

Syndicate, which is not like CoD in any way, explores free will and how revolutionary causes lie to demonise their opponents.

Even Transformers 4 is filled with subtext. Fuel. War. Black ops. Genocide. The state of modern film. The ethics of modern technology. Living on the brink of destitution. Leadership. Sex jokes are replaced with sober reflection.

These works of art have meaningful things to say. But they just don't pretentiously preach at the audience.

 

[RA92]

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.

Stopped reading right there. The BF3 SP was bashed for being a CoD-like linear corridor shooter. BLACK gave you open levels to traverse any way you wanted, and you had to make sure you didn't get shot too much because no regenerating health. Other than excellent sound design there's barely any similarity - BF is vehicle-driven and BLACK doesn't even have MP. BLACK was the Burnout of First Person Shooters.

<youtube=cLElXvvnbbE>

 

[Ambient_Malice]

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.

Stopped reading right there. The BF3 SP was bashed for being a CoD-like linear corridor shooter. BLACK gave you open levels to traverse any way you wanted, and you had to make sure you didn't get shot too much because no regenerating health. Other than excellent sound design there's barely any similarity - BF is vehicle-driven and BLACK doesn't even have MP. BLACK was the Burnout of First Person Shooters.

<youtube=cLElXvvnbbE>

BF3 has very little vehicle focus. You spend 90% of the game on foot. And many of the game's areas are reasonably open. BF3 has a big focus on destructable environments. (Not that this is unique.) BLACK is a mostly linear FPS game, too.

BF3 and BLACK share obvious story similarities, but they're also based around the gimmick of your bullets destroying stuff.

edit:
Also, "CoD-like"? I find this term objectionable because Battlefield 3 has some very drastic differences to the CoD games. For a start, it doesn't have hitscan weapons. It has cinematic hand-acting? There were games which had this long before Modern Warfare. Half of Modern Warfare's stuff was arguably stolen from Delta Force: Black Hawk down. (Along with the Novalogic-owned logo IW used without permission.)

 

[RA92]

BF3 has very little vehicle focus. You spend 90% of the game on foot. And many of the game's areas are reasonably open. BF3 has a big focus on destructable environments. (Not that this is unique.) BLACK is a mostly linear FPS game, too.

BF3 and BLACK share obvious story similarities, but they're also based around the gimmick of your bullets destroying stuff.

You are mixing up the MP and SP aspects of BF3. BF3 MP was open and had destruction, while the SP was linear shite.

Black might have had linear bits, but it also had maps where it was easy to get lost.

 

[RA92]

BF3 and BLACK share obvious story similarities, but they're also based around the gimmick of your bullets destroying stuff.

they're also based around the gimmick of your bullets destroying stuff.

the gimmick of your bullets destroying stuff.

bullets destroying stuff.

Bullets destroying stuff in an FPS is a gimmick? Do you consider driving to be a gimmick in racing games?

 

[Ambient_Malice]

BF3 has very little vehicle focus. You spend 90% of the game on foot. And many of the game's areas are reasonably open. BF3 has a big focus on destructable environments. (Not that this is unique.) BLACK is a mostly linear FPS game, too.

BF3 and BLACK share obvious story similarities, but they're also based around the gimmick of your bullets destroying stuff.

You are mixing up the MP and SP aspects of BF3. BF3 MP was open and had destruction, while the SP was linear shite.

Black might have had linear bits, but it also had maps where it was easy to get lost.

I'm not mixing them up. I've never played BF3's MP. You can't get lost in BF3 because there are massive arrows telling you where to go. Regardless, BF3 has expansive environments. Such as the massive valley you have to fight across as the Russian troops land. Or the huge street with the overpass you have to move up on.

Also, you seem to hate BF3 for simply being linear. CoD didn't invent linear FPS design, you know.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

BF3 and BLACK share obvious story similarities, but they're also based around the gimmick of your bullets destroying stuff.

they're also based around the gimmick of your bullets destroying stuff.

the gimmick of your bullets destroying stuff.

bullets destroying stuff.

Bullets destroying stuff in an FPS is a gimmick? Do you consider driving to be a gimmick in racing games?

Older Battlefield games, such as Bad Company, were mostly set outdoors. This allowed for destruction of buildings. (Crysis 1 was like this, too.)

Battlefield 3 handles it differently because it is set inside building interiors a lot of the time. (Also, tech limitations - although BF4 improved upon this heavily.)

Being able to destroy a room full of office cubicles, plus the dividing walls, is unusual in an FPS game. It's a gimmick, arguably, which looks cool, but also has some gameplay purpose.

In Black, the destruction was obvious and cosmetic, with seams along break points of destroyable objects. Battlefield 3 is pretty much a loose remake of Black, which uses more advanced tech.

edit:
Let's have a moment to remember Red Faction. Good old Red Faction.

 

[RA92]

In Black, the destruction was obvious and cosmetic, with seams along break points of destroyable objects.

All destructible mesh in video games (except for the new Everquest possibly) have seams along break points. Now it's just a little less obvious because of higher poly-count. The chunks are pregenerated, not procedurally generated, so they take more memory but less processing power to be formed during runtime.

And right in the video I posted, there's cover being destroyed and both player and enemy being exposed during the firefight. Seems hardly cosmetic.

 

[RA92]

Also, you seem to hate BF3 for simply being linear. CoD didn't invent linear FPS design, you know.

My issue isn't with linear shooters. It's with linear shooters without agency. CoD is responsible for the proliferation of the 'led-by-the-NPC' linear shooters. For fuck's sake, the mission where you get in a jet in BF3, you take the back seat. Fuck that shit.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

In Black, the destruction was obvious and cosmetic, with seams along break points of destroyable objects.

All destructible mesh in video games (except for the new Everquest possibly) have seams along break points. Now it's just a little less obvious because of higher poly-count. The chunks are pregenerated, not procedurally generated, so they take more memory but less processing power to be formed during runtime.

And right in the video I posted, there's cover being destroyed and both player and enemy being exposed during the firefight. Hardly seems cosmetic.

I meant it was cosmetic in the sense the PS2 couldn't handle large scale destruction. It was more like the pillars being destroyed by gunfire in Conker's Bad Fur Day - pieces being chipped off a base model. I'm not knocking Black here. It was, and remains, a very cool game.

Also, you seem to hate BF3 for simply being linear. CoD didn't invent linear FPS design, you know.

My issue isn't with linear shooters. It's with linear shooters without agency. CoD is responsible for the proliferation of the 'led-by-the-NPC' linear shooters. For fuck's sake, the mission where you get in a jet in BF3, you take the back seat. Fuck that shit.

Granted, I hated the jet mission in BF3. I wanted to fly the jet. However, I don't think CoD is responsible for games where NPCs follow you around and regulate your progress.

GoldenEye had missions where Natalya had to be escorted everywhere. (Perfect Dark had Jonathan and Elvis. Remember Elvis using computers for you? The very first mission in PD has you escorting a hacker to hack a PC.)
Far Cry, from 2004, had missions where Valerie led you around.
Geist, from 2005, had "follow teammate - talk to teammate to unlock door" stuff.
I will admit that BF3 is so NPC dependent that a single bug can render a mission unfinishable because they refuse to open a door.

edit:
Also, modern CoD games tend to give the player more agency. It is tricky to make sure the player can't leave NPCs behind, since those NPCs are constantly driving the narrative. (To compare, the game BLACKSITE was riddled with NPCs doing EVERYTHING for you.)

Quake 4 was filled with NPCs doing stuff for/being escorted by you, and it was from 2 years before Modern Warfare.

DF: Black Hawk Down, from 2003, had no usable vehicles. You could only sit in them while NPCs drove. Cue humvee turret sections as your team yells dramatic dialogue.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Also Transformers doesn't have shit on Pacific Rim. Both are dumb action movies, but Pacific Rim is fun to watch, where Transformers looks like two junkyards having sex. While spouting racial and sexual epithets.

I'd like to point out that Transformers 4 was a significant shift in tone away from . 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.
>ANGRY AUSTRALIAN WHO IS DEFINED BY HIS ANGRY.
>African-American guy who is harsh, but gentle on the inside, and DIES SO THE WHITE PEOPLE CAN LIVE.

Okay a few things.
1. that Japanese girl had training from her father figure who was also a martial artist himself. So it's not just a case of Oh yeah the Japanese girl is obviously good at fighting.

2. Is the angry Australian thing actually a stereotype of Australian people? Because I have never heard that.

3. What?! When has that ever been a racist or stereotypical archetype for an African American?

Yeah, I've never heard that one either. And I've lived more than half my life in Oz...

As far as I know the main stereotypes about Australians are
1. Easygoing/laidback
2. Drunks obsessed with beer. (and tangentially related, every barman in London is Australian, apparently...)
3. Crocodile Dundee. (Which to some extent is similar to the first, but it's so Iconic to foreigners it is clearly a thing in it's own right.)
4. Everyone's from the outback (even though like 90% of the population is in the major cities)

And... A final thing, not about Australians, but Australia itself - Full of really scary dangerous animals.
(In spite of the fact it has basically no large land predators at all...)

I'm sure there's more if you dig deeply enough, but I really can't think of anything that would lead to 'Angry Australian' being a thing...

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Also Transformers doesn't have shit on Pacific Rim. Both are dumb action movies, but Pacific Rim is fun to watch, where Transformers looks like two junkyards having sex. While spouting racial and sexual epithets.

I'd like to point out that Transformers 4 was a significant shift in tone away from . 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.
>ANGRY AUSTRALIAN WHO IS DEFINED BY HIS ANGRY.
>African-American guy who is harsh, but gentle on the inside, and DIES SO THE WHITE PEOPLE CAN LIVE.

Okay a few things.
1. that Japanese girl had training from her father figure who was also a martial artist himself. So it's not just a case of Oh yeah the Japanese girl is obviously good at fighting.

2. Is the angry Australian thing actually a stereotype of Australian people? Because I have never heard that.

3. What?! When has that ever been a racist or stereotypical archetype for an African American?

Yeah, I've never heard that one either. And I've lived more than half my life in Oz...

As far as I know the main stereotypes about Australians are
1. Easygoing/laidback
2. Drunks obsessed with beer. (and tangentially related, every barman in London is Australian, apparently...)
3. Crocodile Dundee. (Which to some extent is similar to the first, but it's so Iconic to foreigners it is clearly a thing in it's own right.)
4. Everyone's from the outback (even though like 90% of the population is in the major cities)

And... A final thing, not about Australians, but Australia itself - Full of really scary dangerous animals.
(In spite of the fact it has basically no large land predators at all...)

I'm sure there's more if you dig deeply enough, but I really can't think of anything that would lead to 'Angry Australian' being a thing...

Perhaps "aggressive and vaguely anti-American" would be a better way of putting it.

Buck from Far Cry 3.
Hitman from Kangaroo Jack.

Those two come to mind. Buck is all laid back, except he's prone to sudden anger, and he's disdainful of dumb Yanks like Brody. (He's also rapey.)

I'm from Aus/NZ myself.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Also Transformers doesn't have shit on Pacific Rim. Both are dumb action movies, but Pacific Rim is fun to watch, where Transformers looks like two junkyards having sex. While spouting racial and sexual epithets.

I'd like to point out that Transformers 4 was a significant shift in tone away from . 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.
>ANGRY AUSTRALIAN WHO IS DEFINED BY HIS ANGRY.
>African-American guy who is harsh, but gentle on the inside, and DIES SO THE WHITE PEOPLE CAN LIVE.

Okay a few things.
1. that Japanese girl had training from her father figure who was also a martial artist himself. So it's not just a case of Oh yeah the Japanese girl is obviously good at fighting.

2. Is the angry Australian thing actually a stereotype of Australian people? Because I have never heard that.

3. What?! When has that ever been a racist or stereotypical archetype for an African American?

Yeah, I've never heard that one either. And I've lived more than half my life in Oz...

As far as I know the main stereotypes about Australians are
1. Easygoing/laidback
2. Drunks obsessed with beer. (and tangentially related, every barman in London is Australian, apparently...)
3. Crocodile Dundee. (Which to some extent is similar to the first, but it's so Iconic to foreigners it is clearly a thing in it's own right.)
4. Everyone's from the outback (even though like 90% of the population is in the major cities)

And... A final thing, not about Australians, but Australia itself - Full of really scary dangerous animals.
(In spite of the fact it has basically no large land predators at all...)

I'm sure there's more if you dig deeply enough, but I really can't think of anything that would lead to 'Angry Australian' being a thing...

Perhaps "aggressive and vaguely anti-American" would be a better way of putting it.

Buck from Far Cry 3.
Hitman from Kangaroo Jack.

Those two come to mind. Buck is all laid back, except he's prone to sudden anger, and he's disdainful of dumb Yanks like Brody. (He's also rapey.)

I'm from Aus/NZ myself.

Mmm... I can kind of see that being plausible... There might be some truth to the anti-american thing, though that seems to be widespread throughout most of Europe too... Still, that doesn't stop it being a thing...

Well, anyway, stereotypes can get to be quite odd pretty quickly.

Heard someone a while back imply Australian women were all pretty much tomboys...
Can't imagine what gives people that impression... XD

 

[Goliath100]

So essentially OP you have no perception of detail and now want to argue that it's actually all the same...

Why does this statement seem more true by the minute

... 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".

Your logic is like this:
"Why does game "x" get called bad when it's EXACTLY THE SAME as game "y"?
I can't wait for an answer, it's because people are hypocrites."
People have been more than happy to explain that it's because game "x" and game "y" is not the same, and there is differences in level-, esthetic-, mechanics-design and narrative.

For example, Spec Ops: The Line does very little narratively which Black Ops/Black Ops 2 does not.

Can you bother going in detail on this one because I'm not buying it for a second.

BO-BO2 were written by David S. Goyer, who wrote Nolan's Batman films, and they're quite similar thematically.

Why are do you even try this argument? "Person "x" made "y". "Y" is good. Therefore everything person "x" makes has to be good as well." And I can do the same argument in reverse: David S. Goyer wrote Blade: Trinity, a terrible movie. Therefore Cod:BO1/2 has to be terrible.

People call these games "jingoistic". These are games where your character kills JFK.

And that makes everything better because...? Have you heard of the "I have a black friend" defence? Because this is exactly the same argument.

Where the villain was created by American greed and harrowing injustice. BO2 has anti-drone undertones. (And in Black Ops, you play a soldier who is insane, and led around by a memory implanted by sabotaged brainwashing. The game constantly hints something is wrong with Reznov. YOU are Reznov. It's all excellent mindscrew stuff. But Spec Ops gets praised while Black Ops is deemed to be just another mindless FPS.)

Crysis 2/3 explore themes around immortality, transhumanism, and what happens to soldiers who have sacrificed their humanity for the greater good.

Syndicate, which is not like CoD in any way, explores free will and how revolutionary causes lie to demonise their opponents.

Even Transformers 4 is filled with subtext. Fuel. War. Black ops. Genocide. The state of modern film. The ethics of modern technology. Living on the brink of destitution. Leadership. Sex jokes are replaced with sober reflection.

These works of art have meaningful things to say. But they just don't pretentiously preach at the audience.

You do know what "accidental subtext" is? Because a lot of what you bring up is accidental subtext. There is also a difference between "having" a theme and "exploring" a theme.

 

[C. Cain]

Transformers is not good. But it's original. It's definately tranformers.
You can definately say it's got transformers in a unique premise. Not good, but it's transformers.

What are you even on about? Transformers doesn't have a unique premise by any stretch of the imagination. It's more or less the same premise the cartoon had thirty years ago (and that wasn't original, either). Just replace generic sources of energy with the AllSpark and you're set.

Pacific Rim is nothing but total and utter sh*te!
It's nothing more than a desperate, pretentious, retardly cretinous, blatant ripping off of anime and manga, monster movies,and loads of things, while pretending it's original!
That piece of crap has never seen a original thought or concept in it's entire firetrucking life!
To make things worse, it rips off the most retardly cretinous garbage that no one would ever want.

You seem to be a very confused person. Let me put it this way: Nothing is original. Everything in fiction has already been done in one form or another. You just have to look hard enough.

Take Star Wars, for instance. That was an original IP, right? Nope. Derivative as hell. According to your logic it was nothing more than a desperate, pretentious, blatant ripping off of Flash Gordon, old Samurai movies, the Hero's Journey (which already appeared in the Epic of Gilgamesh 4,000 years ago...), and loads of other things. And yet it is heralded as one of the most realised and original universes pop culture has ever seen.

How can that be?

Think of it as cooking: all the methods (from open fire to microwaves) have been used before. All the tools (from spoons to mixers) have been used before. All the ingredients (from vegetables to meats) have been used before. All the spices have been used before. It's the combination of all of them that makes a dish unique and original. Same goes for movies, the FPS genre, and fiction in general.