Homo-novus?
You can all go like lambs to the slaughter, but I’ll hold on to what life I’ve got with teeth and claws, and I’ll take more than a few of your Homo Novus with me to Hell!
Had some really fun Deathmatches in MWLL. Almost won 2 as well
Okay, so I finished Spec Ops: The Line.
MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR SPEC OPS THE LINE AND METAL GEAR GAMES FOLLOW. STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED.
FINAL WARNING.
Highlight below this line to see the spoilers.
[color=’#151515’]Okay, I’m pissed off at this game. It’s made me feel like a complete monster because of the infamous white phosphorous scene. Here’s the thing- why couldn’t I stop the shelling at the very end when you see the civilians in the trench by the MG? I knew those were civilians. I could tell because they weren’t armed.
I didn’t fire the shell anywhere near them. I waited a good twenty seconds for Walker to realize those were civilians. Finally, I realized I didn’t have a choice, got the shell target as far away from the civilians as possible as to still hit the MG nest, and fired. Kaboom, I was catapulted into a fundamental disconnect as I pulled the trigger to continue the game. The WP drifted, outside of player influence, into the mass of civilians and burned them all to death. As the squad looks in horror on the scene of the civilians, there is a perfectly placed mother and daughter corpse, clutching each other in their final moments, eternalized in agony. I felt both a mix of horror and annoyance at the game’s refusal to allow me to decide not to fire the shell at a crucial moment. I could have just had Largo snipe the last guy, right? WHY DIDN’T I GET A CHOICE? The loading screens CONSTANTLY berate you for this forced decision, as if it’s MY fault.
“The US military doesn’t condone the killing of innocent civilians. But this isn’t real, so why should you care?”
“Collateral damage is acceptable to a certain degree, if the circumstances justify it. Are Walker and Adams really worth it?”
“This is all your fault.”
“Do you even remember why you came here?”
“How many Americans have you killed today?”
This happened again later, after Largo died and the crowd started stoning me. I waited, forty seconds, trying to push my way out, refusing to fire on the crowd. Then the stoning started and I was like “fuck this” and opened fire. What choice did I have, if they were going to stone me to death? It’s unfairly manipulative of the game’s script to force these circumstances. Even if I’d fired above the crowd’s head, the squadmate is scripted to shoot fleeing civilians with his LMG. So where is the choice, Spec Ops? (This sequence I don’t have as much beef with, to be fair- in a way, this WAS my decision. But the aforementioned WP sequence is far far more manipulative.)
The reason Metal Gear Solid games have effective deconstruction of their genre is that the deconstructive elements still can react to the player. You can slaughter your way through MGS4 with highly destructive military hardware, and Snake will vomit as Liquid Snake’s quote from MGS1 rings in his ears: “YOU ENJOY ALL THE KILLING, DON’T YOU?” And in that circumstance, the decision WAS the player’s, and it is right and proper to bring on the guilt. But in the same game, you can be a stealth Ghandi and tranq-dart your way through the game, completely non-lethally.
Spec Ops did a good thing with the story in terms of trying to rip the hell out of Modern Warfare style games where slaughter is cheap and delt in spades. But in the process, the story is completely divorced from the player’s input at crucial points. This sort of thing is exactly why I’m having trouble writing my own RPG, “Parallel.” There’s a boss fight I just wrote, where the boss is in fact a former classmate of one of the protagonists, and this boss tears the shit out of the party’s modivations for going into the parallel universe in the first place, trying to be heroes. Playing Spec Ops made me realize players will HATE a sequence like this, because the story is inherently out of the player’s immediate control other than predetermined story beats controlled by short dialog branches.
Berating a player for making a choice that was compulsorily required by the circumstances the game forced them into isn’t fair, right, or just. Genre deconstruction shouldn’t necessitate telling us “STOP PLAYING OUR GAME, YOU BASTARD.”
that’s
the
fucking
point
the
game
is
trying
to
make
I’m not saying the point didn’t need to get made. I just wish it was more subtle. There was already plenty of great touches- [color=’#151515’]how close combat execution animations get more and more violent and how combat dialog gets progressively more unhinged as the game goes on, the ending sequence with Conrad basically calling Walker on his bullshit, etc.
But as it stands, the game is very, very heavyhanded. If your storyline beats make Kojima’s dialog feel subtle, then there’s a problem. (And considering how the Colonel in MGS2 tells Raiden to “Turn the game console off, NOW,” that’s a high bar to surmount.)
Again, though, it’s not bad. I do wish the squad control had more flexibility though- my squadmates would often get downed by bullets because they kept using awful cover. I would have liked at least some kind of move to/ recall feature like HL2, at least. Also, the soundtrack was totally fucking awesome. Lots of great use of didactic music in some areas.
I [COLOR=’#151515’]know you wish there was more choice involved, but the point was that you have no choice. At the beginning of the game, it’s set up to make you think you have a choice in the matter, but it becomes apparent rather quickly that the situation is out of your control. In my mind, that’s what the game is all about.
I agree with you that the gameplay was occasionally frustrating. There was one particular moment involving a juggernaut that I thought was atrocious (you probably know the one I’m talking about).
Oh, with the [color=’#151515’]blue strobing flashing and the manniquins? God, that part pissed me off. The other one where a juggernaut is painted by Walker’s mind as being Lugo taking the player to task about not saving him wasn’t as frustrating as the gameplay sequence immediately after it.
Also, plot hole:
[color=’#151515’]If Conrad had been dead the whole time, who the fuck was running the 33rd? Why were they carrying out such atrocities, instead of just trying to get the hell out of dodge? Was the Radioman actually running the show, then? I realize some of the 33rd became a different faction, and were wiped out, but it still seems a bit odd.
Yep, that one.
Oh, according to the Extra Credits analysis, [color=’#151515’]you can actually disperse the crowd by firing into the air. I was just being a hothead.
…Great, now I feel worse.
I was pretty pissed off at the white phosphorus scene too. I even tried to replay the game up to that point and see if there was a way to skip that scene, like the game just giving you an hidden option to rappel down to encampment and traverse it stealthily or something. But nope.
The only part of the game where the choice is forced on you is with the white phosphorous. Every other part that feels like a choice has at least two outcomes, some have three. But like Jethro said, that’s the point of the game. I never felt like I was forced though, any more than in any other game. I didn’t even think that SPOILER:that large group was civilians. It didn’t even occur to me.
Anyway, I’ve been waiting for VtMB to go on sale on Steam but it hasn’t so far so I downloaded it. It’s pretty cool.
More BM and MWLL, but mostly STALKER today. For the “Turn off the Brain Schorcher” quest, Skulking around the road at night near Pripyat, killed a bunch of Monolith guys who attacked me, got a really powerful SVD and found a suit of Duty armor so I ditched Ghosts set that I was using.
EDIT: Getting closer and closer to this thing at 12 in the morning (in-game) and I’m not sure it was such a great idea to enter this area at sunset.
Played some Dwarf Fortress during a road trip today.
Absolutely nothing happened. The only thing I even did was pick out all the socks (and other clothes, but mostly socks) that were starting to get worn and atom-smashed them.
Was trying to take a screenshot of the big antennaes in the background with the binocs, heard a weird and creepy sound, zoomed out and saw this and it scared the shit out of me, accidentally hit my screenshot key because I was going to anyway
Granted, it looks like he’s giving a hug but walking around here at night and seeing that come out of nowhere was pretty scary.
And I think I know what game I’m going to buy next.
That’s SOC, right?
Yep
I had SoC since release but never really gave it a chance until now, and I love it so much I ended up buying CS and CoP for almost 7$ bucks, of course thanks to holiday sales.
If you do get it, I recommend you play mostly vanilla (excluding purely GFX mods) and if your up for a challenge, on master difficulty, because even though it’s easier to die enemies are also quicker to go down though. It’s really hard sometimes but the firefights are really satisfying too thanks to good AI and probably the ballistics system.
God, Stalker is fantastic. I really don’t care at this point if it’s a new team or not, I just want another Stalker game.
Took a break from Fallout and am playing Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Getting nothing but hints for quests is kind of refreshing after having so many games with arrows pointing you exactly where to go.
Really? My STALKER obsessed friend insisted that I not play the vanilla game, and go instead with the Oblivion Lost mod in place of the main game. There is a lot of cool stuff in OL, to be fair…