This quote speaks to what I care most about

"All the technical snafus make a mockery of the game's humourless reverence for the real-life fighting men it seeks to honour. Based on what you see in this game, Tier One soldiers are not elite warriors but barely competent morons who will throw a grenade into a corner for no reason and then run to stand next to it. Viewed against this laughable backdrop, the game's queasy paean to American superiority in the face of irrational foreign savagery is horribly misplaced. If it were any more competent, the tub-thumping jingoism might be offensive rather than simply tragic."

Players or non-players, how are you feeling about this? Games can probably do war right. This one trying to get at Preacher's home life is nice. But it apparently does a shit job and, in doing so, disrespects and belittles and dehumanizes the very people it is trying to praise.

I guess that's just what happens when you simplify warfare into pot shots from cover, people into black and white, and stories into 9/11 freedom ain't free parables. Boo.

When will people stop expecting competent AI from NPC companions?

Can't say I'm surprised.

I don't understand what all the fus is about. This game is a slightly broken Call of Duty game with CG cut scenes, that's it. The fact that anyone could get upset over this game is stupid. Ignore the bull shit marketing, and just take the game for what it is.

I will say I find it funny that people think this game is shit and yet Call of Duty gets praise and good reviews year after year even though the two games are as similar as you can get without violating some kind of copyright law.

Not surprised this, as far as I'm concerned it played as bad during their expo. I came away thinking they should just give up.

That extract sounds more like them whining about American foreign policy and nationalism than it does the quality of the game (and I can understand getting a little annoyed about that, considering I'm not American, but whatever)

Then again, i have never taken Eurogamer seriously anyway.

The Medal of Honour was a fine modern warfare (heh) FPS, and one I'd argue had a better setting and was more interesting than MW2.

The Medal of Honour Deux is probably a totally decent single player game with the same issues that plague all it's contemporaries, only without nonsensical crap the MW series embraced in the last couple of games.

Meh I thought it looked fine from the quick look. Seems like a decent action game which some people want, I'll pick it up on sale.

The game looks competent if boring and humorless. But the reviewer seems to be reading a bit much into the action. "American superiority?" Honestly. Where was this language with COD or Battlefield? And is it really necessary for a simple FPS? Everyone needs to calm down about this game. It isn't worth getting this upset about. I've learned my lesson and have chilled about yelling day and night about the hypocrisy that comes with the reaction to this game (you know, minus this post). Now other people need to chill.

I think it's more to the point that adult humans who are clearly capable of giving at least some level of nuance, perspective, or levels of anything more than just "shoot the terrorist/bad guy who happens to be Arab this decade" and then also "boo yah!" and maybe a little of "oh my ex-wife!", made this game.

Quick look of it the game seemed pretty bland. So no surprise.

I found my old copy of Call of Duty 2 with all those discs today. Now that was a campaign. Good times. 
 

The problem seems to be a lot of people seem to misinterpret what "realism" in video games actually means. It's not saying a game is going to realistically depict something; just that it is going to LOOK realistic. It means the game is going to take what the thing in real life would look like, and recreate it to the best of the graphical engine's ability. If they actually made a realistic war simulator, you would probably be spending half the game buried in a trench, get shot once, and spend the rest of the game in a war hospital while you wait to heal (I've never been in a war, so I'm sure it wouldn't happen exactly like that, but you're probably not gunning everybody down, taking bullet after bullet, and hiding around the corner while you wait to magically heal).

If you judge every shooter on how it depicts war, pretty much all of them are going to fail, but that's not the point of the shooter. The shooter is basically just a power-fantasy: letting people feel strong by allowing them to gun down a whole bunch of enemies (there is also a bit of the hero fantasy in there as well). Also, I'm sorry, but if you're putting a mark against the game because the technical limitations make the game do things that wouldn't be done in real life, then you should quit reviewing right now.

@Tim_the_Corsair:

I think the rest of the world is well beyond the "little annoyed phase".

@Claude said:

I found my old copy of Call of Duty 2 with all those discs today. Now that was a campaign. Good times.

Thought of this when I seen you picture.

@Claude said:

I found my old copy of Call of Duty 2 with all those discs today. Now that was a campaign. Good times.

Thought of this when I seen you picture.

@MiniPato said:

When will people stop expecting competent AI from NPC companions?

This is a good point, for some reason developers seems to have problems making good friendly AI. The Halo series is a good example, the enemy AI is often praised for being pretty good, but the friendly AI is often idiotic and drives off cliffs...

@FlarePhoenix said:

If you judge every shooter on how it depicts war, pretty much all of them are going to fail, but that's not the point of the shooter. The shooter is basically just a power-fantasy: letting people feel strong by allowing them to gun down a whole bunch of enemies (there is also a bit of the hero fantasy in there as well). Also, I'm sorry, but if you're putting a mark against the game because the technical limitations make the game do things that wouldn't be done in real life, then you should quit reviewing right now.

"The shooter is basically just a power-fantasy." No it isn't. Spec-Ops isn't. Bioshock isn't. Portal isn't. COD4 isn't. Far Cry 2 isn't. A trend does not make an association fact.

And it is fine to let people feel strong by gunning down things. It's boring, but it's fine. Just do something with it so it doesn't leave a bad taste. Be extreme like Bulletstorm. Be subtle like Half Life. Be extravagant like Halo. Be meaningful like Deus Ex. Be doubtful like COD 4. Don't have me gun down "terrorists" who show no humanity, no weakness, no interesting characteristics while at the same time trying to make me care for your main character by giving him a family. It's lazy storytelling.

The association specifically between power fantasy and modern war is dangerous and untrue. Modern war is still mostly boredom interlaced with sheer terror. The Hurt Locker got that. Anything that shows different, that shows soldiers as gung-ho ubermensches, is disrespecting soldiers, war, and its players.

Don't buy it.

@Village_Guy said:

@MiniPato said:

When will people stop expecting competent AI from NPC companions?

This is a good point, for some reason developers seems to have problems making good friendly AI. The Halo series is a good example, the enemy AI is often praised for being pretty good, but the friendly AI is often idiotic and drives off cliffs...

It's a fair point but on the other hand A.I. is still in an integral part of games so you can't ignore it either.

@eroticfishcake said:

@Village_Guy said:

@MiniPato said:

When will people stop expecting competent AI from NPC companions?

This is a good point, for some reason developers seems to have problems making good friendly AI. The Halo series is a good example, the enemy AI is often praised for being pretty good, but the friendly AI is often idiotic and drives off cliffs...

It's a fair point but on the other hand A.I. is still in an integral part of games so you can't ignore it either.

Of course, of course. I wasn't implying we should ignore friendly AI, my point was maybe more of a question about why it seems more difficult to make friendly AI.

Friendly AI is usually either tightly scripted or kinda uneven in their intelligence it seems?

@Village_Guy: I imagine the toughest part of friendly AI is making sure it doesn't do all the work for the player, it kind of has to be dumb; enemy AI can just attack with no regard for anyone else.

You know, watching Halo over the weekend..
 
..that was some great fucking AI. When did just about all AI start sucking dick?

@Kierkegaard said:

@FlarePhoenix said:

If you judge every shooter on how it depicts war, pretty much all of them are going to fail, but that's not the point of the shooter. The shooter is basically just a power-fantasy: letting people feel strong by allowing them to gun down a whole bunch of enemies (there is also a bit of the hero fantasy in there as well). Also, I'm sorry, but if you're putting a mark against the game because the technical limitations make the game do things that wouldn't be done in real life, then you should quit reviewing right now.

"The shooter is basically just a power-fantasy." No it isn't. Spec-Ops isn't. Bioshock isn't. Portal isn't. COD4 isn't. Far Cry 2 isn't. A trend does not make an association fact.

And it is fine to let people feel strong by gunning down things. It's boring, but it's fine. Just do something with it so it doesn't leave a bad taste. Be extreme like Bulletstorm. Be subtle like Half Life. Be extravagant like Halo. Be meaningful like Deus Ex. Be doubtful like COD 4. Don't have me gun down "terrorists" who show no humanity, no weakness, no interesting characteristics while at the same time trying to make me care for your main character by giving him a family. It's lazy storytelling.

The association specifically between power fantasy and modern war is dangerous and untrue. Modern war is still mostly boredom interlaced with sheer terror. The Hurt Locker got that. Anything that shows different, that shows soldiers as gung-ho ubermensches, is disrespecting soldiers, war, and its players.

Don't buy it.

You have every right not to buy those games. I don't like Shooters, so I don't like them often. However, you need to stop telling other people they shouldn't buy them. It's not really up to you. Also, with very few exceptions, the shooter is just a power fantasy. It's pretty much designed to give a bunch of people, who would never see anything close to combat in their real life, the feeling that they are out on the battlefield defending America from evil.

No, it's not disrespecting soldiers and war. That's like saying car racing games are disrespecting car racers because even though your car gets totalled, you can still use it as long as you restart the race. All you're doing is desperately trying to find ways to attack a genre of games you don't like. As I said in my original post, the realistic shooter is only trying to look realistic; anyone who thinks otherwise has totally missed the point.

@MiniPato said:

When will people stop expecting competent AI from NPC companions?

They make you follow the AI 90% of the time in modern shooters. The player is constantly directed to look at the AI, you often can't even open doors yourself. So it is kind of incredible that they still make such comically bad AI.

@Claude: Damn dude, you're old!!!

@FlarePhoenix: I played and enjoyed COD4. It speaks to the ambiguity and ultimate terror from all sides of war. It's not the best story, but it goes for unease rather than glamor most of the time. The bombing mission was gut wrenching and terrifying in how humans just became white specs to destroy.

Not every soldier is a hero. Not every war is right. Not every enemy is evil. That's how the world works. Games don't have to work that way if they are fantasy. If they interlace whack-a-mole with real missions in the Philippines and Somalia, though, that's a problem. It lessens reality. It makes appreciation of bravery appreciation of killing wantonly. It's wrong.

My hope that this genre either dies a quick death or starts taking responsibility continues.

This game isn't terrible but it kind of is in just how generic it feels.

Hopefully Black Ops 2 will not be as stupid at the 1st one (at least it wont have Australian accent Alaskan man)

I'm not surprised.

What DOES surprise me is how great of a quote that is from Eurogamer. MEANINGFUL JOURNALISM? WHAT IS THIS?!

@Claude said:

I found my old copy of Call of Duty 2 with all those discs today. Now that was a campaign. Good times.

Call of Duty Motherfucker.

The game is getting pretty mediocre reviews from allot of places, it seems like another generic modern FPS, with quite a few bugs.

I'm really enjoying it so far. It's a more tactical Call of Duty, which is exactly what I want out of it. It's a little over the top when it comes to glorifying war, but is Call of Duty much better?

The bugs do suck though.

@MiniPato said:

When will people stop expecting competent AI from NPC companions?

Exactly! Why do gamers expect NPCs who look like people to act and behave like people? Player entitlement at its finest.

@Video_Game_King said:

@MiniPato said:

When will people stop expecting competent AI from NPC companions?

Exactly! Why do gamers expect NPCs who look like people to act and behave like people? Player entitlement at its finest.

I'm not saying people don't deserve better, but I'm just saying so many games of every genre have shit companion AI that it seems like a losing battle to expect better. I honestly can't think of any game that has good, independent NPC companions, so when I see an AI hide in front of cover or run towards a grenade, I'm hardly surprised by their stupidity because such behavior is so commonplace in games. The most I expect these days is for NPCs to be unintrusive, not intelligent.

@MiniPato:

It could be one of those self-feeding situations where our expectations dictate reality and expecting more in a vocal manner might get us more.

@Village_Guy said:

@eroticfishcake said:

@Village_Guy said:

@MiniPato said:

When will people stop expecting competent AI from NPC companions?

This is a good point, for some reason developers seems to have problems making good friendly AI. The Halo series is a good example, the enemy AI is often praised for being pretty good, but the friendly AI is often idiotic and drives off cliffs...

It's a fair point but on the other hand A.I. is still in an integral part of games so you can't ignore it either.

Of course, of course. I wasn't implying we should ignore friendly AI, my point was maybe more of a question about why it seems more difficult to make friendly AI.

Friendly AI is usually either tightly scripted or kinda uneven in their intelligence it seems?

I always kind of think it's to balance the game out. If the friendly AI is too good than games might be made too easy. That and programming A.I. is really difficult that's why zombies became so popular for a while in games since what is expected of their AI is pretty simple. The AI, even friendly, in Halo is really great. Sure, their driving isn't any good, but that's a really complicated thing to program, if you consider how the AI has to change how they control something and how they interact with the environment. It's impressive that Halo was able to do it at all, and to do it so well (excepting some friendly AI playing not so well). The Enemy AI use vehicles really well, so one has to think that it's intentional, at least to a certain point.

@Village_Guy: I was just making statement really but anyway, If you consider enemy AI in most games say, first person shooters, they're generally programmed to do one thing in particular and that's to kill you by whatever means necessary, as for friendly AI they've got to help you do whatever it needs to be done without being too dumb to feel useless but just about enough to help without taking the achievement away from the player. Not to mention that friendly AI follows the player for the most part so they have to deal with navigating the environment, an aspect that trips up most AI.

Honestly, I just think people are happy enough if the friendly AI is somewhat competent to begin with as opposed to them being super smart.

Also why didn't I get a notification for this? Hmm.

@Thompson820 said:

@Village_Guy: I imagine the toughest part of friendly AI is making sure it doesn't do all the work for the player, it kind of has to be dumb; enemy AI can just attack with no regard for anyone else.

That, and you have a unpredictable player running around them who they have to react to. An enemy AI isn't going to share your cover point, and if he runs into your field of fire you are actually happy. However, it is surprising that games still get released with such terrible friendly AI. Either make it good or remove it from the game.

I didn't expect more. Video games are complicated things; you could have the most emotionally wrenching story ever produced, but put it in yet another blown out summer movie blockbuster-esque military shooter and it won't matter in the least. It would be like editing Bad Boys 2 and cutting in scenes of Saving Private Ryan. If you're trying to show respect to things that happen in the real world, much as it seems EA's marketing team would have you believe they were trying to do with MoH Warfighter, you have to go for it all of the way. Simply having cutscenes in between missions attempting to tell an emotional narrative in contrast to a game that is just as overblown as (insert whatever military FPS you want here) is not how you achieve that goal.

War is a bad thing. A video game about the realisms of war should not be something anyone looking for a good time would want to play. Video games are about fun though, and something like that wouldn't sell thousands (or millions) of copies. This is why things like MoH, Battlefield, and Call of Duty exist. It's kind of gross on multiple levels really.

@Village_Guy said:

@eroticfishcake said:

@Village_Guy said:

@MiniPato said:

When will people stop expecting competent AI from NPC companions?

This is a good point, for some reason developers seems to have problems making good friendly AI. The Halo series is a good example, the enemy AI is often praised for being pretty good, but the friendly AI is often idiotic and drives off cliffs...

It's a fair point but on the other hand A.I. is still in an integral part of games so you can't ignore it either.

Of course, of course. I wasn't implying we should ignore friendly AI, my point was maybe more of a question about why it seems more difficult to make friendly AI.

Friendly AI is usually either tightly scripted or kinda uneven in their intelligence it seems?

I think there have been a lot of good examples of friendly AI. Look at Alyx in the Half Life 2 episodes. In Gears 3 your allied AI was almost too good. They tended to kill more enemies than I did. The question really is, how effective to you want friendly AI to be? Gears 3 was annoying because the AI would end a battle before you even had a chance to catch a sweat. The challenge in making AI isn't making them seem "good". If I wanted I could make an AI that kills every player every time. The challenge is making the AI look like they are helping out when really they are doing mostly nothing you don't want them to do. And enemy AI design is based around making the AI feel intelligent but not a great shot. The AI needs to be smart but not too smart. It needs to make mistakes or it will beat the player too easily. Now what they are saying about this game makes it seem like there is just some poorly designed AI in place. In the end, what makes a good AI is not that it kills the player easily or protects the player easily. It's that it feels like fighting a human opponent who just happens to be a terrible shot. It's an illusion of the enemy being good. Imagine if every AI in Call of Duty was as intelligent and skilled as a player online. You would never be able to progress unless you were one of the best players in the world. No one wants "good" AI in the sense that it never does anything wrong. Good AI is in fact AI that makes it seem like they are highly intelligent while they are nothing of the sort. Now this isn't true in all types of games, but in shooters where you are fighting a dozen enemies at once it is.

@Village_Guy said:

@eroticfishcake said:

@Village_Guy said:

@MiniPato said:

When will people stop expecting competent AI from NPC companions?

This is a good point, for some reason developers seems to have problems making good friendly AI. The Halo series is a good example, the enemy AI is often praised for being pretty good, but the friendly AI is often idiotic and drives off cliffs...

It's a fair point but on the other hand A.I. is still in an integral part of games so you can't ignore it either.

Of course, of course. I wasn't implying we should ignore friendly AI, my point was maybe more of a question about why it seems more difficult to make friendly AI.

Friendly AI is usually either tightly scripted or kinda uneven in their intelligence it seems?

i mean the best example i could give for good friendly AI was republic commando but at the same time they could play the whole game for you so i guess they were a little bit to tweaked

In other news, medal of honor allied assault (2001) and the expansions are great games. Anyone else remember how amazing they were at the time? Its funny how the COD series essentially copied the formula from medal of honor allied assault and now things are reversed. I wish they would drop trying to make a campaign that is basically a 5-6 hour copy of call of duty and battlefield and go back to the roots of the series. Namely, making really great well paced WW2 action games.

Did that reviewer also get pizza? IT MAKES  A HUGE DIFFERENCE!

Eurogamer?  I don't put much stock in what they have to say.
 
GameInformer giving the game a 5/10 is quite disconcerting, however.

@Spoonman671 said:

Eurogamer? I don't put much stock in what they have to say.

GameInformer giving the game a 5/10 is quite disconcerting, however.

You look down on Eurogamer, but you think GameInformer is credible? Dafuk

It would be funny if the reviewers giving MoH2012 real shit grades were the same people who gave 9/10 reviews to MW3.

I'm still trying to work out how a game that is trying to keep its contents based somewhat in reality is considered to be disrespectful to soldiers, but a game in which you detonate a nuke above America to interfere with a Russian invasion after shooting up an airport is totally awesome you guys!

And don't even get my started on the clusterfuck that was MW3!

I have no doubts that Warfighter is generic and probably distinctly average, but the hypocrisy of many of the complaints against it is hilarious.

@Spoonman671 said:

Eurogamer? I don't put much stock in what they have to say.

GameInformer giving the game a 5/10 is quite disconcerting, however.

The gameinformer review was fair I thought. The reviewer did a great job of reviewing the game for what it was and not bringing in anything else. Compare this quote:

"The globetrotting campaign tours terrorist hot spots like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines, but the weak narrative thread barely holds these disparate missions together. To help deliver authenticity to the experience, Danger Close enlisted real Tier 1 soldiers to write the story, but rather than give us insight into moral, emotional, and physical tolls combat takes on soldiers and their families, the game falls back on heavy-handed tropes that paint war in the most simplistic hues."

to the quote in the OP.

This thing is getting crushed by reviews. Did not expect that and from what I've seen it looks like a competent shooter. Oh well, ill play my psn plus trial then buy it ok the xheap when they've hopefully fixed the bugs

I had hopes for this game, but after playing it for a while, I will definitely agree it just isn't as good as Battlefield 3 [in terms of multiplayer]. The worst part are the maps; If Danger Close ever gets a second shot at this, they should definitely look at what DICE has been doing for their DLC packs, because that stuff is actually quite good.

As an aside, about first-person war games...

I'd like to see a game with plenty of civilians everywhere, and part of the game is trying to kill the enemy while killing as few civilians as possible. This would open up lots of interesting multiplayer tactics, like hiding in buildings full of innocent people to prevent being hit by an airstrike or artillery fire. Trying to represent emotional struggles in tactically-focused games is just dumb anyway, and more than anything else was the low point of the campaign (which was middling at best in all other regards). They needed to focus on the mechanics; the sheer number of choices that should be available to the player ought to have been accentuated.

Use a UAV to scout the position? Use the robot harass the enemy? Call in artillery or fast air to soften up the position? Go in light, or go in mechanized? Take a single squad, or a full platoon? Ground assault, helicopter fast rope, or amphibious landing? If you set up a firebase, is it a machine gun crew or a sniper team? Wait for tank support, or go in quietly at night? Will you try to minimize civilian casualties, or complete the objectives at any cost?

I think the biggest issue is that these titles need to be less about scripted events and become more scenario based. They should give you a mission, and a variety of tools to complete said mission, instead of a totally linear roller coaster ride. Modern soldiering is about having a wide variety of tools, many of them quite complicated, and making them work together to achieve the desired effect. We've explored the simplest of these relationships a lot, that of the magazine with the assault rifle. Why not test players with more complicated stuff, like properly operating a LRF to bomb an enemy position, or organizing a combined attack with different fireteams. Once you open up this pandora's box of concepts, you can build interesting war games all the way up to the level of a Colonel or Area Commander.

I think people would love to learn how to do these things, these real things, and it's just publishers that are afraid they won't 'get' it. If ArmA gets more popularity and a lot more polish, more people would see what I mean.

@Solh0und said:

Did that reviewer also get pizza? IT MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE!

The game was a 5/10.......until the pizza came, and now it's a 7/10. Fuck you, integrity.

The amount of non-white people being gunned down by white people with superior firepower in the QL was kinda fucked.

Was the intention to make me feel sympathy for the 'terrorists'?

@SomeJerk said:

It would be funny if the reviewers giving MoH2012 real shit grades were the same people who gave 9/10 reviews to MW3.

How would that be funny?