Combat Vets On CoD: Black Ops, Medal of Honor Taliban 93
An anonymous reader writes "Thom 'SSGTRAN' Tran, seen in the Call of Duty: Black Ops live action trailer and in the game as the NVA multiplayer character, gets interviewed and talks about Medal of Honor's Taliban drama. '... to me, it's a non-issue. This is Hollywood. This is entertainment. There has to be a bad guy if there's going to be a good guy. It's that simple. Regardless of whether you call them — "Taliban" or "Op For" — you're looking at the same thing. They're the bad guys.'"
Gamasutra published a related story about military simulation games from the perspective of black ops veteran and awesome-name-contest winner Wolfgang Hammersmith. "In his view, all gunfights are a series of ordered and logical decisions; when he explains it to me, I can sense him performing mental math, brain exercise, the kind that appeals to gamers and game designers. Precise skill, calculated reaction. Combat operations and pistolcraft are the man's life's work."
Bad guys and good guys (Score:5, Interesting)
This is Hollywood. This is entertainment. There has to be a bad guy if there's going to be a good guy. It's that simple.
Is it? I just saw the Chan-wook Park movie Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. It is a South Korean thriller movie. The main person are a deaf guy and his sister, who abducts a child who later dies in their custody. A lot of the movie is about the father, who seeks a very gruesome revenge. The main characters are certainly not good guys, and the way the father seeks revenge does not make him one either. This was very different from the good guy-bad guy-movies that I have seen from Hollywood, and is one of the few movies that have managed to stir up some strong feelings inside me while watching. All in all a very different movie (seen from a western perspective, I come from Norway). This is a movie, not a videogame, but I think the same could apply to a video game. The whole good guy-bad guy-thing should not be written in stone, and perhaps many game developers should think of new dynamics instead of having a very clearly defined good guy (often played by you) and clearly defined bad guys.
Wait... So let me get this straight (Score:3, Interesting)
Creating a series of games where you star as a member of an invading army in a war of dubious legality mowing down hordes of brown people is not offensive to anyone.
Having a level in said game that allows you to play as aforementioned brown person is however completely indefensible.
That's the story according to our "free and unbiased" media. This level of adherance to state/miliary propaganda doctrine is normally only achievable through extreme violence. Seriously, the media coverage on this "controversy" is stuff that pravda would have been proud of.
Re:Random thoughts on those two games (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2414-Facing-Controversy [escapistmagazine.com]
This link contains a discussion on gaming controversy, and provides a detailed look at what happened to Six Days in Fallujah.
Re:Random thoughts on those two games (Score:3, Interesting)
"It's hard to square serious reflections on war with mowing down vast waves of infinitely respawning Taliban with a big machinegun."
This is true, but on the same note, one of the things that ruined Black Ops for me was the fact that even in as a comical portrayal of the cold war the AI was just so bad it wasn't even fun- not only did it have the infinitely respawning hoardes mechanic, but your AI and their AI would just run right past each other literally bumping into each other without so much as flinching because the AI was possessed into pursuing the mission, and the enemy AI was possessed into pursuing you even though it hadn't yet seen you. That's before you factor in situations where the AI is firing at you a split second before you're even visible, such that on Veteran it's insta-death if you so much as turn the corner. This kind of AI as seen in Black Ops is the kind I'd expect to see from a high school AI project, not from what's now seen as the largest AAA release of the year by a major studio.
For me MoH was the better game, it wasn't a serious portrayal of course, but it had the more mature, consistent storyline, it had far superior graphics throughout, the AI was at least passable. Black Ops was just a joke, bar the jungle levels the levels looked rather dated- especially Cuba, the storyline was terrible, the AI was horrendous, and Veteran difficulty, whilst I completed it as I have with every CoD, was just mind numbing rather than a fun challenge.
For me CoD peaked with CoD4: Modern Warfare, since then it's got progressively worse, CoD5: WaW was pretty good but not quite MW, and MW2 was pretty poor (nuclear weapons in multiplayer, really? what 5 year old did they bring in to think that one up?), Black Ops is really the bottom of the pit for the series so far, compared to MW2 even the multiplayer looks to be severely lacking.
MoH was at least a refreshing change in that the game modes in multiplayer, particularly Combat Mission was a nice addition over CoD's tired old skilless spray and prey fest, which is fun sometimes, but gets dull. The singleplayer graphics, playability, and storyline, was at least on par with CoD5: WaW but was certainly no MW that's true.
If anything my complaint with MoH is simply that there wasn't enough of it, there just wasn't enough content- the campaign was done in 5 hours, and the Combat Mission multiplayer mode had a miserable 3 maps only. At least with Black Ops you get a fuck ton of content I suppose, but it's the first time a CoD game has come out and rather than being hooked on the multiplayer constantly post-campaign I'm now busy playing games like Assassins Creed: Brotherhood and fucking around with EA's Create. MoH at least had me hooked to multiplayer for a few weeks, Black Ops I gave it a couple of evening's worth and just haven't wasted my time with it's monotony since. It's a shame, I think Activision's CoD studios know it's a guaranteed money spinner either way now, and just don't even bother to try hard anymore like they clearly did with MW and WaW.
Here's hoping EA doesn't give up on the new style MoH franchise after one try and continues to build it up, if they improve it and CoD continues to decline they may well be producing their own MW quality game and giving Activision a reason to care about game quality again rather than rush shit out for the sake of getting their yearly release out there.