So the latest iteration of the call of duty juggernaut recently rolled into town. A sequel to 2010 game Black Ops. Some people like FPS games, some don't. I'm not really itnerested in a snooty discussion about whether the genre is boring or beneath some people, I enjoy it.

Unfortunately what I don't enjoy is the thought of a nation of adolescent boys playing this game. I don't feel society is embiggened by the notion that parents will be using this game in particular to babysit kids they probably shouldn't have had. The campaign, for that is what I'm really discussing here, is a combination of extreme linearity, terrible wooden ai, and utterly gratuitous nasty unpleasant murder wank fantasy, overseen by a villain whose immunity to both bullets and reason is matched by his scene chewing.

MW1 exploded the franchise commercially speaking and it's campaign, for a video game, was quite repsonsibly handled. It did not revel in the guts and the glory, it didnt' seek to wank off the likes of Michael Bay. It made, in its own way, a point and was quite fun to play with genuinely enjoyable moments.

Not so here. The story is convoluted and jumps between the past (ie the eighties) and the future (ie 2025 as an amusing excuse for some wierd tech) featuring characters crossing over the black ops franchise. There are plot twists that are, in hindsight, telegraphed but abysmally handled when confronted. The game has a habit of taking control out of your hand anytime anything interesting happens and at least one character is introduced for no reason only to die, slowly and explicitly right in front of the camera by having their throat cut. I found that quite repulsive - the graphics are...graphic.

This is an example of the tone of the game. The set pieces are littered with needless gore and unpleasantness as though you were playing an FPS designed by the guy from the Saw movies. Activision must know that a significant swathe of their audience are people under 18 and yet it markets this odious crap to them. Had it at least been a decent story handled well isntead of gung ho yankee doodle dandy cowboys riding into town and shooting the fuck out of everyone while the bad guy tortures everyone else then fine. Perhaps it's irony and i've missed the point.

It saddens me really. I don't dislike FPS games nor do i mind action and adventure. But this to me feels like crossing a line. Or perhaps...

I kinda get the feeling that the under-18's don't give a shit about the solo campaign, it's all about the deathmatch for them.

On the other hand, I don't give a shit about the deathmatch, and I'd cheerfully pay £20 to just get the campaign. But that option doesn't exist, so back to Borderlands 2 goes I.

Probably true, but they will still end up playing the campaign. Their parents won't care. In fact their parents are more likely to play the campaign, see what it's like, and still not care.

Even though individual sales staff risk a hefty fine for selling to minors it happens so often and is so easily circumvented (staff don't give a fuck these days, as is the problem with everything) that age ratings are sop to make the publisher feel responsible. Half the success of CoD is down to the kids that whine at mummy to buy it.

The sad thing is they are capable of being enjoyable good games. I never had any issues with how they handled the WW2 stuff, and in some ways I'd liek to see them revisit that. Rather than ever more unpleasant ways to set stuff in a modern context. I'm honestly not sure I have the energy to finish the campaign given how gratuitous it is.

Quote from: Ladybird;600535I kinda get the feeling that the under-18's don't give a shit about the solo campaign, it's all about the deathmatch for them.

On the other hand, I don't give a shit about the deathmatch, and I'd cheerfully pay £20 to just get the campaign. But that option doesn't exist, so back to Borderlands 2 goes I.

Indeed, Borderland2 ftw, I've been playing the ba-jeeeeeezus out of that game.

I love shooters, but there have been very few I've enjoyed the single-player for in recent years (STALKER, Painkiller, and Borderlands), and honestly I'd rather pay just for the multiplayer if the single-player is going to basically be an interactive movie (the only series I'll forgive for that is Half-Life, but at least in that there's some puzzle-solving, however simple).  

The only real 'game' part of CoD is the multi, and then you're dealing with a company who would rather sell discrete installments and have people keep up with the competitive side that way rather than maintain a base client over time (like Team Fortress 2).

But yeah, I'm not going to pay 60 usd nearly every year to play the Madden of FPS games, or for a 6-hour singleplayer game.

Also, Duty Calls.

Quotehonestly I'd rather pay just for the multiplayer if the single-player is going to basically be an interactive movie (the only series I'll forgive for that is Half-Life, but at least in that there's some puzzle-solving, however simple).

The only real 'game' part of CoD is the multi

This.

QuoteThis is an example of the tone of the game. The set pieces are littered with needless gore and unpleasantness as though you were playing an FPS designed by the guy from the Saw movies. Activision must know that a significant swathe of their audience are people under 18 and yet it markets this odious crap to them. Had it at least been a decent story handled well isntead of gung ho yankee doodle dandy cowboys riding into town and shooting the fuck out of everyone while the bad guy tortures everyone else then fine. Perhaps it's irony and i've missed the point.

On the same note:



...and the blog it came from. It also has this 10/10 rant about Kickstarter, and more stuff, and most of it is true.

So, I suppose,

Except that CoD's multiplayer is utterly broken.

Even if it worked online as it should, the basic mechanics reward the worst most lone wolf twat kind of gameplay and teh whole thing becomes a clusterfuck of explosions and grenades that unless you're a 12year old twitch monster you gots no chance.

Oh good. "What about the children!?!?!?" hysteria used to malign video games. Again. Despite a complete lack of any evidence that video games have any negative impact regarldess of content, and tons of evidence that they are ultimately positive.

Fuck that noise. Fuck it with a bloody chainsaw from an FPS game.

Quote from: Doctor Jest;603842Oh good. "What about the children!?!?!?" hysteria used to malign video games. Again. Despite a complete lack of any evidence that video games have any negative impact regarldess of content, and tons of evidence that they are ultimately positive.

I don't really think of the children all that much, but there are types of violence I find puerille and distasteful as an adult. (OTOH, I have no problem with the likes of Brutal Doom)

Quote from: Doctor Jest;603842Oh good. "What about the children!?!?!?" hysteria used to malign video games. Again. Despite a complete lack of any evidence that video games have any negative impact regarldess of content, and tons of evidence that they are ultimately positive.

Fuck that noise. Fuck it with a bloody chainsaw from an FPS game.

Please don't try and paint me as a Helen Lovejoy type, you would be quite wrong.

The hysteria regarding violent/gratuitous media is seductively superficial. Unfortunately it isn't that simple. If games didn't have an effect, in one way or another, they wouldn't sell. CoD isn't popular because it's a well made game. it's popular, like GTA, because it's vicarious.

But the real issue, with respect to this, is the campaign. Even though there's blood in the multiplayer it is relatively clean. CoD's campaigns are increasingly pro-establishment fearmongering 'wogs stop at calais' nonsense. I love an action movie as much as the next person, but I don't need Michael Bay trying to influence my politics on behalf of the military industrial complex (I love the way in one of the shitty Transformers movies there was a weaselly politician type called 'Mr Galloway').

TLDR: I don't want 12yo kids in my online game when the game is rated 18, and I don't want 12yo kids babysat by a campaign mode that shows a young woman, right up close and in slow motion, have her throat slit in as graphic a fashion as the game engine allows.

There's a fine line: MW1 was on the correct side of the line, since then it has become inreasingly unsubtle, gratuitous and unpleasant. It also remains the best campaign.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;603970The hysteria regarding violent/gratuitous media is seductively superficial. Unfortunately it isn't that simple. If games didn't have an effect, in one way or another, they wouldn't sell. CoD isn't popular because it's a well made game. it's popular, like GTA, because it's vicarious.

Mmm, maybe - that's certainly the first draw. It'll sell the player the first game.

But the reason people keep on coming back to these franchises is because they are good, well-made, entertaining titles (Or at least, they are to their target market). The mechanics of a CoD deathmatch are simple and easy to learn, so it's an easy game to learn to play and compete in, and competition against other humans is always fun. To learn to actually play well, takes a long time, but you can always see what you've done wrong. That, more than anything, is the key to it's success; it's doing the same things that every other popular deathmatch game has done. It's also got BARS THAT YOU CAN INCREASE, which a certain type of gamer loves.

In other words, it's the video game inequivalent of cocaine, but cut with speed and ecstasy instead of baking soda and powdered horse shit.

Is it for you, GW? No, but we've had this conversation before. You keep on buying things that you won't like, and getting upset because you don't like them.

That's hardly true at all. I'm not gifted with prescience so I can't know what something will be like until I play it.

Unfortunately most games these days on consoles turn out to be crap. Either through design or lack thereof.

CoD isn't something I 'keep' buying knowing that I don't like it. The first couple of the recent (ie modern warfare) CoD games were decent (even though MW2 started the trend of ridiculous amounts of death from above).

Unfortunately Black Ops is a real step back. It doesn't bring enough at a time when change is needed. The campaign is poorly made and the online is unbalanced and unplayable. Assuming that it would be that way is fatuous.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;604412That's hardly true at all. I'm not gifted with prescience so I can't know what something will be like until I play it.

Unfortunately most games these days on consoles turn out to be crap. Either through design or lack thereof.

CoD isn't something I 'keep' buying knowing that I don't like it. The first couple of the recent (ie modern warfare) CoD games were decent (even though MW2 started the trend of ridiculous amounts of death from above).

Unfortunately Black Ops is a real step back. It doesn't bring enough at a time when change is needed. The campaign is poorly made and the online is unbalanced and unplayable. Assuming that it would be that way is fatuous.

It's not so much "assuming it will be crap", but "assuming that it won't be the right purchase for you at that price". Like it or not, CoD is basically a casual-multiplayer focused series with tacked-on single-player these days, and it's evidently not a style of multiplayer you enjoy.

So that leaves the single-player stuff, and that part of the franchise is going in a direction you don't seem to like. Is it worth paying new release prices on the off-chance this title is different? Probably not. Single-player mode won't go anywhere if you wait for the (Rarer for CoD games, but ultimately inevitable) sale at your video game retailer of choice.

I totally get that the videogame industry has gone in a nasty direction over this console generation, but... that's why I'm more selective about games I buy, now, than I was before. Fool me once, shame on, er, shame on the publishers. Fool me, umm... I can't get fooled again.

Sadly Far Cry 3 is even worse.

It seems to wallow in the mire even more so.

SPOILER



I got to the part where you have to beat the shit out of your own brother to 'fool the bad guy' and switched off. It's not a cut scene, you have to input the commands (simple button presses).

This is after you get to watch the bad guy burn someone to death in a metal container. Presumably to motivate you to want to kill him.

It's also not a very good game at all. This is evidenced by the trailer shown at E3 where they decided to take the cut scene with the 'mysterious sexy tribal priestess' writhes on top of you topless.

That's what they went with for the mass sell. never mind that the gameplay they chose spoiled what happens to the game's poster boy, the second antagonist, cliche psychopath called Vaas (he's very "don' you know ah'm loco essey?")

It's a very weird game. You get the sense it wants to be subversive, but it comes off as a complete misfire and you feel like you just heard someone tell a really bad joke and get zero laughs.

This is the last game i'll probably buy for the 360 (i might get borderlands 2 which at least has cell shaded sense of humour).