Supersoldiers

[MarsProbe]

Super soldiers are indeed overdone, but they're overdone for a very good reason: it's a theme that works. Yahtzee poses that super soldiers would often turn on their creators, which makes an excellent plot theme, and are generally stronger/faster/tougher then the average human, thus ramping up the difficulty.

*applause*

This. Plus, fighting a supersoldier is always more entertaning than the fighting the same bog standard soldiers for the majority of the game. Anyway, if there is scope in a game for supersoldiers, then why not use them? Can't say it ever crosses my mind what will become of the supersoldiers once the war is over. After all, it's not reality, it's just a game. Though if you really want to be that nitpicky...

 

[Smokescreen]

I don't get this whole spoilers thing?

It's a video game, not a book or movie where it has a proper and key story line. The story in a video game isn't important to me, it's just a glorified add on to attach to the real reason people play video games, the actual game play!

Fixed in bold.

Other people care about such things and respecting their enjoyment of the medium is a pleasant courtesy that you might not care about, but I'm glad most people do.

Joker just wants to cause mayhem.

This is the reason why Yahtzee's criticism of Joker's use of super-soldiers in Arkham Asylum falls flat. The Joker is crazy and doesn't care about anything else but what he considers funny; that he doesn't/wouldn't have a plan for them after he conquers Gotham is kind of the point.

That said; calls for innovating the storylines we participate in as gamers do not fall deafly upon me. I agree that much more could be done.

 

[Zydrate]

The guy knows his audience (referring to the last sentance of the article).

 

[matumba]

Take that rugby player idea but replace oranges with beer, and rugby team with Association fans, BAM! Next Left4Dead.

 

[jbeannie]

i think they also had super soldiers in the warriors video game, and this may or may not be related to the super soldiers in metal gear solid, and i think there was also super soldiers in fallout 3, also this is somewhat non-related but yahtzee if you read please review world series of poker for the gamecube or maybe all systems, I've heard this is one of the worst games of all time, i also heard it is impossible to win at this game, so, I think if you reviewed this game it would be a funny video.

 

[Samoftherocks]

While I understand that supersoldiering and the inevitbale pitfalls involved have become a storyline cliche, I submit that The Joker is the one (and probably the only one) villain for which such a supersoldier project does make sense to implement.

The difference between The Jokers and most if not all other SS plots is that the usual creator of such a scheme is someone whose only known scheme is the SS project in question. Basically, the usual villain du jours entire body of work as we know it involves only this project; the one project important enough to make a game/movie/book/etc about.

The Joker has thousands of various schemes under his belt! He's done about everything that a supervillain such as he can do, and, honestly, if you offered the Joker the means to create such an army of SS, do you think he wouldn't take it? Hell, he might have found the whole thing innovative, and even if it didn't work, he still gets to test Batman for the umpteenth time.

Bottomline: Take away the Joker, supersoldier is a cop out, but I could buy the Joker's involvement with this one, especially considering some of the other details of his scheme (buy it, play it, love it).

 

[Ganthrinor]

the video brought in more traffic than usual, so I win again.

Jolly Good, Sirrah!


Super-Soldiers became passe in the mid-to-late 80's, shortly after thier introduction to mass media through various bad movies. Power Armor only slightly less so in the mid-to-late 90's and the introduction of HALO only accentuated this.

Whatever happened to the Chinese Method of "Drown your enemies in the blood of your conscripts"? For later difficulty, you can run into the "voluteers" that won the raffles for a firearm and a half-clip of ammunition!

 

[Aqualung]

First of all - I'm going to be giving away a very minor Arkham Asylum spoiler in this article, so if you're one of the three very stupid people who haven't bought it yet, close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears until the end of the page.

... :[ [sub]Fucking Batman...[/sub]

 

[The Magical Hobo]

Love the first scenario, but being a rugby player I'd be one of the ogres in stripey shirts.

 

[inhuMANATEE]

I can't say, with good conscience, that any of those ideas don't have merit.

 

[CuddlyCombine]

Have you ever read Red Dwarf? The TV series is great, but you'll need the actual book for this, specifically Better Than Life. Look up the parts about GELFs (Genetically Engineered Life Forms) and GELF sport eradicating normal human sport. Crazy stuff like boxers who had their brains in their shorts so they could pummel each other for hours. [American] football linesmen who secreted a foul stench. [The rest of the world] football goalies who were nothing more than an 8 foot by 16 foot rectangle of flesh (though the team that fielded that goalie mysteriously lost.)

Ultimately they suffered the same fate you propose with these super soldiers. What do you do with them in the offseason? An entire revolt is staged as they fought for human rights. (Well, actually, GELFs were eventually engineered to replace just about everything, and a guy came home and shot his chair when he found it sleeping with his wife.) The enemies may be different, but the end result is the same.
I was hoping for Petrarchan sonnet.

My God, that series sounds genius. I think I'm in love. Do you recommend buying this?

As for the EP, I love the idea of Wal-Martians. Yahtzee sure knows how to crack me up.

 

[JesterRaiin]

Hmmmmmmmmmm...
This whole "supersoldier" dillema was pretty good covered in Batman:Venom comix.
The plan was perfect : to create an army of superstrong, fearless, tireless, command obeying man-freaks, and - hell - it went 100% ok.

 

[k-ossuburb]

I like the "Hitman" idea of training your little killing machines from a very early age and only choosing the genetically superior babies to enter into your program. I can't remember if it was hinted that the assassins in "Hitman" were clones or not, I'm almost positive that they were just a load of highly trained masters of stealth and infiltration that had fired their first gun and had their first kill by the time they were 10 --or younger, who knows? What I mean is that your "Super Soldiers" don't need to be great hulking masses of muscle but instead just be a hell of a lot smarter and more capable than the average soldier. So much so you'll only need one of them to take on an entire army.

Throwing genetics-gone-awry out of the writing pot might leave a little more creativity but I have fears that it may get a little too "Marvel" with things involving mutation from radiation or a science experiment gone horribly wrong.

Maybe you could take a Frankenstein approach and stitch together bits of deceased wrestlers with robotic limbs and give them all brains from deranged psychopathic serial killers and keep them in line with "Battle Royale"-style explosive collars or just give them a pre-ordained lifespan akin to "Blade Runner" so you don't have to worry about them realizing that they could actually turn on you because by the time their severely damaged and half-rotted brains had caught onto that fact they'd be dead anyway.

Maybe this idea has been overdone so many times it's impossible to come up with anything that hasn't been done before, maybe if the concept of what a "super soldier" actually is (or isn't) was rethought we might get something original like a bunch of hyper-evolved gorillas who want to take over the world because us humans are killing the planet or something. I know that's been done in "Planet Of The Apes" but hell, maybe they could be hyper-evolved dinosaurs that had been living underground. I don't see a rule set in stone that all "super soldiers" have to be human, all I can gather from the name is that they need to be superior to the average soldier is there really a rule-book that says that they can't be giant Nazi chickens?

 

[HentMas]

video games and movie storyes in general aside, the concept of a super soldier in the "batman" universe works fairly well (at least better) because the "goal" of the "Joker" is to create as much caos and trouble as he posibly can, so he doesn´t concern himselve with the "after", his twisted mind is just that way, why would he want to control a super soldier?? all he wants is to create a world where rules dont apply anymore, at least thats how i came to understand the character over the years

i do understand that "Super Soldiers" is not the most creative writing, but seing that the goal of the Joker is just to create caos its just the thing he would do.

 

[HentMas]

but I have fears that it may get a little too "Marvel" with things involving mutation from radiation or a science experiment gone horribly wrong.

well... to be fair DC comics almost always point out that most of the super villians gain their powers because of a mutation or a science experiment that goes horribly wrong, while the super heroes are mostly just that way because they were either born with those powers or they have something that enhances their natural abilities

instead "Marvel" universe takes the other point, where mutation and experiments are left and right but it´s more common that the "villians" dont have super powers, just tools and weaponry (king ping, dr. octopus etc)

or at least thats how i see both companies, and the philosophy they are trying to portray

 

[Kiutu]

First Marvel Ultimate Alliance game comes to mind. One, good guy supersoldier (Captain America) and second level has unruly faield super soldiers.

 

[Raithnor]

Whatever happened to the Chinese Method of "Drown your enemies in the blood of your conscripts"? For later difficulty, you can run into the "voluteers" that won the raffles for a firearm and a half-clip of ammunition!

See Total War series of games or almost any RTS.

Re: Super-soldiers

It's the poor man's killer robot. Unless you have hyper advanced AI, a Robot isn't going to be terribly effective (See ED-209) plus you have materials and manufacturing costs.

I think a lot of it stems from "Let's not reinvent the wheel.", the super-soldier creators figure it's just easier trying to make man a better killing machine than he already is. This could also be applied to Game Designers as well as Game Villains.

Where a lot of these plots go wrong is in the mental conditioning stage, so you end up with the Frankenstein-like slavering maniacs who are out for blood. (Although for a video game that constitutes a plot point, if the did have kill switchs to control the super-soldiers you really don't have a game. Or the super-soldier is you, ala Halo.)

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

While Yahtzee, as ever, writes a good article, I feel I should point out that this:

- In the near future, in the light of increased steroid abuse and that one guy with the false legs who can run really fast, the Olympic committee creates a third, separate Olympics - the Anything Goes Olympics, in which players can use as much drugs and body augmentation as they want. Then the genetic engineers get involved, and the games eventually become a splice-off between each country's science teams, creating mutants ideally suited to each sport. Swimmers with dolphin tails, goalkeepers with hands the size of cars, etc. One fateful year, a large amount of psychosis-inducing drugs intended for the Greco-Roman event somehow finds its way into the rugby players' half-time oranges. Now it's up to YOU to stop a rampaging mob of seven-foot ogres in stripey shirts from eating the entire audience.

...was ripped virtually wholesale from the second Red Dwarf novelization, Better Than Life, which recounts how humanity fought a war against their own GELFs (Genetically Engineered Life Forms) when they wanted the right to vote. The GELFs started out as genetically engineered sportspeople who got their own field of sports (which was so popular it wiped out normal sports within a couple of years) before branching out into genetically engineered living cars, furniture etc. The difference is, the GELFs were treated like a joke rather than a serious threat and mankind basically wiped them out.

Re: Super-soldiers

It's the poor man's killer robot. Unless you have hyper advanced AI, a Robot isn't going to be terribly effective (See ED-209) plus you have materials and manufacturing costs.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but... isn't Robocop himself basically a super-soldier?

 

[myogaman]

Red Faction II had super soldiers. The guy who made them was like "Awesome...wait...fuck." Then he tried to kill them all but a few escaped and joined the Red Faction. After murdering the squishy creator, one of the super soldiers declares himself leader of Red Faction and wants to start a never ending war (Metal Gear, anyone?). Of course you and ...like 2 others are against this and in the end barely win. Thusly, the super soldiers live life in peace after a long useless conflict caused by their existence.

I just thought it was a good take on super soldiers.