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Nope, the game shows you the horror of white phosphor and then FORCES you to use it, how else is the hero going to get PTSD?

I think the podcast told me hold to deal with the civilians, I just shot the air and they fled. The sniper thing was also mentioned in the podcast.

This is the part of the game where I quit "Hey it's about morale choices in war" then "Lol nope."

 

Either you're giving me a choice, which makes it impactful, or you're just ramming it down my throat, which could be interesting in it's own way, but wasn't done so here and just ruined the entire effect the game seemed to be going for. At least to me.

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You've convinced yourself that the game is "about moral choices in war" and then when it doesn't give you a choice you've decided that the game has failed. But I think the fault is yours for reading the game as being about moral choices in war. I don't think it's a game about moral choices in war and in fact I think it's a game about other games, which are about moral choices in war, and specifically it's a game about how those kinds of games are bullshit. Spec Ops is one of the first games to call out the bullshit macho military power fantasy "you have to make the right choice" genre by showing that, narratively, that's a crock of shit, but because people seem so keen on reading the game as if it's another entry into the "YOU CAN MAKE THE CHOICE" game genre, they feel like the game shits on them when it turns out you don't have a choice. But that is the point. Games that give you the choice are the ones pulling the bullshit. Spec Ops is honest.

 

"Either you're giving me a choice, which makes it impactful, or you're just ramming it down my throat, which could be interesting in it's own way, but wasn't done so here and just ruined the entire effect the game seemed to be going for. At least to me." I agree that they weren't doing the first option, but why don't you think they're doing the second option - ramming the choice down your throat in an interesting way? To me it seemed like the entire game, from the opening credits with the "Special Guest: [Your Steam name]" to the very end, was one entire "ram the lack of choice down your throat in an interesting way" experience.

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Either you're giving me a choice, which makes it impactful, or you're just ramming it down my throat, which could be interesting in it's own way, but wasn't done so here

I read that as saying that it wasn't done interestingly, not that it wasn't ramming it down his throat.

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I read that as saying that it wasn't done interestingly, not that it wasn't ramming it down his throat.

This, also your explanation about what "SpecOps" was "about" reminded me of those Inception jokes everyone like so much for about a year or two. "It's about the... etc. etc. BRAUUUUM"

 

I just wasn't interested. The game is shoving "look how horrific this is!" directly into your face, and then thirty seconds later obviously forcing you to do that horrific thing. It's so blatantly, lazily manipulative that I just got bored.

 

Yes, war is horrific. Yes, I know other video games let me enjoy blowing the shite out of stuff. What I meant was that there was some sort of message being rammed down my throat, one I didn't need. I was more interested when the game was showing me the questionable line between good and evil, "bad" and "good" guys. To suddenly have it be "oh aren't you horrible!" or, whatever it was trying to convey rather turned me off. I'd have vastly preferred it just presenting me with the situation and letting me question what "my" part was in it all, rather than trying to be so overt about something.

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My point is that people who think Spec Ops is about how horrific war is tend to find it to be a shitty game, whereas people who think that Spec Ops is about how games about war are typically pretty stupid tend to find it to be an amazing game. I don't see why we need to saddle it with shit if there's another way of reading it that makes it much better and more interesting. You're right that if you read it your way, the game is obvious, blatant, and lazily manipulative. So why not read it some other way? If having a more nuanced reading is just an Inception joke in your eyes then I guess I'd rather spend my time making Inception jokes rather than assuming all art must be what I might unreflectively think it is on the surface before I think about it at all.

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My point is that people who think Spec Ops is about how horrific war is tend to find it to be a shitty game, whereas people who think that Spec Ops is about how games about war are typically pretty stupid tend to find it to be an amazing game.

Yet Chris Remo, whom you called out earlier, thought that theme exactly was stupid. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was along the lines that, in trying to make a game about how war games are stupid, they ultimately just made a stupid war game. If you think games about war are dumb, why aren't you willing to not make one?

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Because it's not a game about war, really.

 

 

I've written more about Spec Ops than any other game this past year, I think, and I often feel like I should probably just sit down and put my thoughts into essay form, but in lieu of that (or maybe at least until I do that) and to save me the effort of reiterating everything I've said elsewhere, I'll link this article, which is in some ways apotheosis of the kind of reading that you and others attribute to the game, and a response I wrote to the article on the SomethingAwful forums, which themselves have a great thread on the game in which I have made a lot of posts, and I'll also link to the Penny Arcade thread on the game where I've also posted a lot. In both threads the discussion picks up around December 2012.

 

Much more focused, polished, and probably interesting pieces on the game are this Magical Wasteland piece on it vs. No Russian (be sure to read the comments or at least just the first one by some dude named Kevin, which I like) and Tom Bissell's review.

 

Also, although I don't agree with it 100%, the Errant Signal video about the game says some stuff that I'm broadly in agreement with, so that's another good starting point in terms of thinking that the game isn't a piece of shit:

 

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I'm way into everything Tycho is throwing down here and on the other thread. The fact that this "I wouldn't choose this!" refrain is so prevalent should maybe give people a chance to think about it, because I think it illustrates one of Spec Ops main points. Modern military shooters are a strange exploitation of a real thing, and the idea that you would kill all the right people, for all the right reasons, and be the conquering hero is a bummer in the context of a real thing that most American's never see. Maybe it shapes people's attitudes towards the US's role as the world's enforcer, the righteousness with which people are killed based on faulty or no information, and the MMS are effective propaganda? 

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Splinter Cell: Conviction That was a fun episode of 24!

 

Speaking of Spec Ops, it - and discourse here - has really shaped my approach to video games to the point that I rarely choose to "spare" characters when the game is generous enough to afford me that option. It's just silly. I've killed every last remaining one of their comrades, why would I suddenly decide to spare them? I refuse to buy into the game's moral contrivances. You'd think it'd be dumb to craft a somber, realistic scenario with the moral depth of an 8 bit arcade game and yet that's where we are for the most part.

 

Still, the gameplay is quite fun, excepting the occasional weird cover-related pathfinding bugs I ran into. Figuring out fun ways to stealthily wreck shop is where the game shines. Unfortunately it wasn't until the third act of the game that I felt properly fluent with the controls. Could be the awkwardness of mapping a controller based system onto mouse and keyboard.

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Ah man, just finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I think that was literally the best sci-fi game I've played since Half-Life. Absolutely amazing, and unlike a lot of games nowadays it just gets better and more epic right up to the very end. I am a total asshole for not playing it until now, talk about missing out.

 

One thing I didn't expect was how Metal Gear Solid-esque it is for huge swathes of the game. While a lot of it involves navigating open city hubs, even more time is spent in isolated facilities that are easily on par with the likes of Shadow Moses and Big Shell in terms of size and feel (in some ways you could imagine them being inspired by them, actually). And in these sections, the games' extremely refined stealth mechanics — patrols, alert timers, balanced-feeling enemy awareness, reliable cover system, etc — are about as good anything MGS has thrown at me.

 

This game is so beautiful, and features some of the best cityscapes I've ever seen; I was further delighted to see the perpetual night setting change up during the later half of the game, along with wildly different environments to what was seen earlier. Its soundtrack is an absolute killer too. The only technical fault I was really surprised made it to release was the relatively stiff conversation animations, considering how good the cutscene and in-game animation is.

 

Possibly my absolute game of the generation. I can't think of a single other game that I've been as hopelessly addicted to, burning through 30–40 hours in a couple of weeks. The

really is a completely accurate depiction of what the game delivers, minus the pre-rendered graphics.

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I recently finished Force Unleashed (the first one). I needed to clear my hard drive and this thing was occupying 30GB. I figured that if I beat the game, I can get rid of it and would never have to re-download this massive game on my crappy internet connection (Canada).

I really didn't like the main game. Unresponsive combat, bad port full of bugs, cheesy storyline... etc. I almost uninstalled it without trying the DLCs, and a good thing I didn't! The DLCs are hilarious-awesome (especially the Tatooine one). They assume you chose the evil ending and completely throw all canon out the window. The best part has to be

when you fight old Obi-wan and when you defeat him (by throwing him into Millennium Falcon's engine no less), Obi-wan comes back more powerful - in ghost form - and you fight the ghost! I don't remember how it ended because I couldn't see the screen through my tears of laughter.

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I happened to recently replay Force Unleashed after it first coming out, and the experience was the same: at first a sense of 'what the hell is this', then an appreciation of the great sense of freedom and power, then a gradual frustration with unresponsive controls and annoying boss encounters. But storywise it's a great Star Wars yarn, deserving of being included into canon.

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I just got around to playing Proteus, and it might have the most profound effect on me more than anything I have ever played. I just about went through every emotion, I was smiling, laughing, stunned, and at the end, crying. I'm getting shudders just thinking about it. To think that the game is completely sensory. It's astounding.

 

For a game with no story, objectives or characters, it is the most powerful use of interactive space I have ever seen. I don't think I have ever had such a vivid video game memory as realising what was happening in the end, and thinking:

 

No, I don't want to go. I am not ready to go. Not like this. I don't want to leave here. 

 

And then I saw the lights, and I felt shivers and elation.

 

I wish "walking games" was a real genre, and if becomes one, I will buy every one as daring as Proteus. Jesus christ  I am still shaking.

 

Also, I if you are going to play this, please make sure it is with the lights off and with headphones.

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Mass Effect 3: I was totally planning on thinking the fans were fools, but they were right, and the cupcake prank is surprisingly astute. Enjoyed everything up to that final 10 minutes, though, particularly the Geth stuff. 

 

Geneforge 1: Boy, there is something about revealing some isometric map, and hit n run turn based combat that scratches some itch in my brain. I can't stop myself. My main complaint is that by the end I had 110% stun resistance but all the mobs could still chain stun me to death, forcing me to refine my cheap hit n' run tactics. Maybe tweaking the system is part of the fun. 

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Dead space 3: all 20 fucking hours of it. I've had mixed feeling about this game through out. But that final chapter has solidified this as the worst video game ever made. Not game play wise. Just video game bullshit and horrendous story.

If you've got half hour spare I'd recommend checking it out on YouTube, it's exactly what Chris and jake were talking about on the podcast this week, upping the anti to an absolutely absurd degree

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No, it's a really well put together, we'll polished game. There's some really nice environments and set pieces, but..

All the psychological horror form the other games has gone (messages from dead wife etc) the terrible story is just played completely straight.

They throw about a billion enemies at you in this game so all the tension and horror is gone, Isaac Clark has become just another video game space marine who can kill a 1000 space zombies without breaking a sweat

Hopefully tomb raider won't be as bigger disappointment

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Oh, right... It seems most triple AAA companies are too afraid to make anything "not a shooter", I can't remember the last "horror" game I played from a big company that wasn't a shooting gallery with jump scares. 

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It seemed kind of unavoidable. I saw a GDC talk a while back on the art direction of Dead Space 2 and it explained a lot about the direction these games have been evolving toward. To quote the art director from Dead Space 1 and 2:  "There was also one other piece of important feedback, coming from our bosses, which was, thankfully very, very supportive, but also in the modern market telling us that, hey, we really need to sort of move this up a little bit. Sold fine; making a sequel was never really a question when we asked to do it. They were like "yes absolutely", but in the modern world the top 5 to 10 games are getting all the money and we need to sort of move out of the lower level. Those are all fine games but they tend to be more niche and they don't really break out and the theory was maybe there's just only so many people who wanna be scared that much. So our big challenge with Dead Space 2 was still please those people, still bring them along, create a dead space 2 that they're gonna enjoy and it sorta pays off to our core fans, while expanding it beyond the core horror."

 

It's kind of the reality of big publishers and how they function. It seems frustratingly short-sighted to me.

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Exactly. Having a business model that's AAA or bust seems so ridiculous to me. Even Hollywood has things like Fox Searchlight Pictures or Warner Independent Pictures which fund smaller movies that will hopefully do well in a niche big enough to support their budget but much too small to produce a blockbuster. But with EA, a pretty great horror game like Dead Space needs to turn into the next Halo because everything needs to turn into the next Halo. Then you get massive studio closures and cyclical firings when the game finishes and there's not another massive AAA ready to be made to support the whale of a studio that was built up to ridiculous proportions. The industry gets fewer interesting games because everything gets homogenized to appeal to the greatest number of people, but the safer, more boring games are paradoxically even more risky because they have to sell so much to break even. Basically, eww. I'm glad companies like Double Fine and Telltale and the entire indie game system exist to provide a counterbalance to this sort of thing.

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Warner Independent Pictures

Who what now? (They closed down in 2008, sadly.) A lot of folks in Hollywood have been saying that since the financial crisis it's been pretty much a AAA business model. They just want Transformers, and it's impossible to get smaller/mid-sized films made. Recently things seem to have been changing, but maybe that's just my impression. (And: Thank goodness for Fox Searchlight!)

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Frankly, I don't even know what AAA means now anymore, it's seems like an empty buzzword like "casual" or "hardcore". I guess a "AAA" game means "we can charge 60 bucks for it. Why? Because it's AAA? Why? Because it's 60$! It HAS to be AAA!"

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In this comversation i think it just means (what they imagine will be) a hugely popular title, with a massive budget. (Film equivalent: Transformers.)

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I just finished the first episode of Kentucky Route Zero, and I would have to say that this has been my favourite adventure game since The Dream Machine. It has such a striking art style, and such a wonderfully ambiguous plot. So great. You should all check it out.

 

Don't be idiots. Play this game.

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I think tiple-A used to mean a publisher's priority game for that quarter. To identify the game that they'd be betting most of their resources on, used by either people within the company, or by analysts. I heard that a million years ago, so I can't remember.

 

Around the time the latest Devil May Cry came out, I decided to buy Bayonetta. I heard it was the evolution of those games I liked so much, and playing it I CAN SEE WHY people would say that.

I thought the combat was enjoyable and pretty good, pretty difficult. It didn't quite grab me the same way DMC 4 did. I got up to the last mission but stopped playing, cos they were recycling boss encounters so much, and all the cutscenes and dialogue is 100% pure flaming garbage- I'd rather play some kind of survival mode or challenge mode than play whatever the final boss is, but it seems like there isn't one.

There's some cool design ideas in how the fighting works, in the middle of a katamari ball of just random, unrelated nonsense.

 

Also- I've never played Devil May Cry 1, and watching GiantBomb's playthrough of it: WOW. All those concepts I like so much in DMC4? Turns out they were in the first game. A lot of the stuff I thought Bayonetta added? In Devil May Cry 1. That depressed me a lil bit

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