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[Warm Machine]

The game doesn't lecture you. It just asks you to think about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Should you do something just because the game forces you to? They are direct questions in an abstract setting.

It also is a game that the more terribel the character has made his situation, the more outrageously violent the weapons get. Instead of getting that powerful feeling by manning incredible firepower you get even more disgusted by what you are capable to doing to the enemy physically. They also stick you in situations where victory is thin and pulling fof the victory became hollow because you would have to grind on more. That I found was the more interesting bit of game design.

 

[antitrop]

The game doesn't lecture you. It just asks you to think about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Should you do something just because the game forces you to? They are direct questions in an abstract setting.

I think the WP scene in Spec Ops is a direct reference to the famous "White hot vision" mission from CoD4.

When you're done with that scene in Call of Duty, you feel like a badass God of Death from above.

When you're done with the scene in Spec Ops, you feel like a villain.

 

[Mutanthands]

They only make em because people like me like playing them.

ErikB, it would seem the game has touched a nerve by being critical of your genre of choice. Care articulate your thoughts a bit more? Do you feel games are not a proper venue for this type of criticism? Is the genre beyond analysis and criticism?

 

[NZNova]

Please don't respond to ErikB, he already shit up a thread about this specific point and we could do without it happening again...

 

[ErikB]

ErikB, it would seem the game has touched a nerve by being critical of your genre of choice. Care articulate your thoughts a bit more? Do you feel games are not a proper venue for this type of criticism? Is the genre beyond analysis and criticism?

Mostly I already think I am a terrible person for playing video games because my mum said I was, and I'd rather the games themselves didn't get in on the act.

 

[Grief.exe]

Horrible gameplay.

Great story and effect that it has on you.

Good game.

Sorry but i don't believe for a second you got "sick" for playing this game, guess you are exaggerating to give some extra impact to your post.

There are more graphical disturbing games. Related to this, i feel like Spec Ops wasn't as effective because
of how tame the depiction of violence was. It needed to be more graphic and crude.

Didn't think I would ever here this one, its pretty bad at times.

Fixed some of your spelling mistakes.

 

[vidcons]

You and me both - now that was a game that I actually felt dirty just by playing. The blurring out of dead body's faces hit me harder than any scene in Spec Ops, since it's such a simple but eerily plausible touch. It's like watching a disaster unfolding on LiveLeak.

It's spectacular how easy it is to have the character kill civilians without ever shoving the idea in their face that what they're doing is bad.

Like, why did Spec Ops need to have these moments where they explicitly tell us how gross the characters are. I don't like being mistaken for stupid. I appreciate Dog Days developers for assuming I'm intelligent enough to know that killing people is wrong and also really exciting, from a fiction stand point.

Dog Days is really good.

 

[antitrop]

Horrible gameplay.

The gameplay is only "horrible" if you don't turn it down to Easy.
There are legitimate complaints that can be made at the game's balance, but at worst the gameplay is average.
Nothing about the gameplay is "broken", and it's at least serviceable enough to not ruin the overall experience. Certainly not the high point and nobody has ever claimed such.

If you played the game on Medium or higher I'm not saying you "played the game wrong", but I will argue that you did yourself a disservice.

 

[WickedLaharl]

Please don't respond to ErikB, he already shit up a thread about this specific point and we could do without it happening again...

I was going to say that after reading this thread I felt a tinge of deja-vu.

As for spec ops I felt the gameplay was simple and satisfying but the story is what makes the game well worth playing.

 

[statham]

I really enjoyed the game and thought the gameplay was decent. I didnot expect the ending, I just thought something has to explain why I'm killing american soldiers.. the ending was like whoa.

 

[Warm Machine]

Yeah, The WP scenes brilliance was showing you the aftermath of the action. Something that other games cover up.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

I think the WP scene in Spec Ops is a direct reference to the famous "White hot vision" mission from CoD4.

When you're done with that scene in Call of Duty, you feel like a badass God of Death from above.

When you're done with the scene in Spec Ops, you feel like a villain.

IIRC the Spectre mission was supposed to show how people can do terrible things due to detatchment from the trouble they're causing and how, in a sense, fighting modern wars has been turned into a videogame.

But then they threw that shit out the window and went full Tom Clancy.

 

[ErikB]

In part, I think taking aim at the mildly embarrassing fact that you are wasting your time playing video games instead of doing something more productive is a bit of a soft target, and I think it might be more of a challenge to make a game about why wasting your time playing video game instead of doing something more productive makes you totally awesome and not a potential Adam Lanza. And certainly more life affirming for most gamers.

 

[Johnny Cage In The Shower]

People constantly talk about the "story" and the "message" behind this game "the physiological effects of war" blah blah...

But I don't hear many pointing out the great art direction it has, the environments look really great.

You really feel like you are at a place where at one time the world's richest people enjoyed all the luxuries a Hotel or a condo etc. had to offer, and now is all engulfed by sand.

I know it's weird, but it kinda is a tourist advertisement for Dubai. I want to go to big ass hotels with big ass roof top clubs, pools and party rooms.

 

[antitrop]

Here are some of my favorite screenshots I took last time I played through on Steam:

 

[CHEEZMO™]

People constantly talk about the "story" and the "message" behind this game "the physiological effects of war" blah blah...

But I don't hear many pointing out the great art direction it has, the environments look really great.

You really feel like you are at a place where at one time the world's richest people enjoyed all the luxuries a Hotel or a condo etc. had to offer, and now is all engulfed by sand.

I know it's weird, but it kinda is a tourist advertisement for Dubai. I want to go to big ass hotels with big ass roof top clubs, pools and party rooms.

One of the reasons I went through it again on Easy was so I could just stand around and stare at shit. Beautiful game. Impressive sense of scale, too.

Some of the hotel interiors are amazing.

 

[antitrop]

People constantly talk about the "story" and the "message" behind this game "the physiological effects of war" blah blah...
But I don't hear many pointing out the great art direction it has, the environments look really great.
You really feel like you are at a place where at one time the world's richest people enjoyed all the luxuries a Hotel or a condo etc. had to offer, and now is all engulfed by sand.
I know it's weird, but it kinda is a tourist advertisement for Dubai. I want to go to big ass hotels with big ass roof top clubs, pools and party rooms.

This game has some phenomenal art design:

The scale of the environment is impeccable, as well:

 

[volpone]

My most 'distressing moment' was definitely the PTSD flashes during one of the gunfights. Now that made me feel really uncomfortable.

 

[firehawk12]

For anyone who has finished the game but may not have seen everything:

Spoiler

the "real" ending is the best ending.

 

[Johnny Cage In The Shower]

One of the reasons I went through it again on Easy was so I could just stand around and stare at shit. Beautiful game. Impressive sense of scale, too.

Some of the hotel interiors are amazing.

Yeah, it looks like lotta research has gone into the interiors of the game.

There were times I felt like, fuck plowing through with this "war". I'm just gonna remove this corpse from this big ass Arabian Jacuzzi, fill it up with hot water, and see if that tilted 80 inch flat screen still works, chill here with my team, put on Netflix, smoke a cigar, sip on some champagne and take in the view from 100 stories high.

I say they should make a Sims Dubai type of game using this engine and environments.

 

[hey_it's_that_dog]

In part, I think taking aim at the mildly embarrassing fact that you are wasting your time playing video games instead of doing something more productive is a bit of a soft target, and I think it might be more of a challenge to make a game about why wasting your time playing video game instead of doing something more productive makes you totally awesome and not a potential Adam Lanza. And certainly more life affirming for most gamers.

The message is about violence and its portrayal in an entertainment medium. It's not about "wasting your time playing video games." You're seeing things that aren't there because you (apparently) have issues.

 

[snoopeasystreet]

The game doesn't lecture you. It just asks you to think about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Should you do something just because the game forces you to? They are direct questions in an abstract setting.

It also is a game that the more terribel the character has made his situation, the more outrageously violent the weapons get. Instead of getting that powerful feeling by manning incredible firepower you get even more disgusted by what you are capable to doing to the enemy physically. They also stick you in situations where victory is thin and pulling fof the victory became hollow because you would have to grind on more. That I found was the more interesting bit of game design.

That's fine and all but it's still a video game. In order to consume this message and see the narrative, you have to do what it tells you to. Through it's mechanics, the game is saying "complete x objective in order to receive the next bit of story as a reward and we'll also give you some achievements/trophies along the way" while the story is then saying "why are you doing this? you know its pretty bad, right?". There's this huge dissonance between aesthetics and mechanics. Now the argument could be made that this dissonance is what drives the game and if you have a problem with the aesthetics condemning you, then you could turn the game off and that's a valid a response to the game. I guess it sort of is and isn't.

Putting down a book or turning off a film are the only form of consumer agency in those mediums, this isn't true in games. Making a linear game with only only one win state to each interaction means that the game part of the game is telling the player "do this or lose". Telling the player that they're losing when they're actually interesting is interesting but there's no pay off to it if that's all you can do. They should have taken advantage of the medium and presented the players with alternate options to the situations that weren't explicit objectives or even ever presented to the player. If they did that, they'd could say "you did these things because the video game told you to, even though you had these other options available to you". That's a more interesting commentary on gaming than "why did you continue down this linear path even though you're only making things worse?", I went down that linear path because it was the only path I could go down not because I'm a bad person or that I straight up trust everything an objective marker tells me.

But yeah, I do think Spec Ops is an interesting game even though I'd probably consider it a failure at what it tries to do.

 

[volpone]

In part, I think taking aim at the mildly embarrassing fact that you are wasting your time playing video games instead of doing something more productive is a bit of a soft target, and I think it might be more of a challenge to make a game about why wasting your time playing video game instead of doing something more productive makes you totally awesome and not a potential Adam Lanza. And certainly more life affirming for most gamers.

I really don't know where you are pulling this message from, because it definitely isn't in Spec Ops.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

This game has some phenomenal art design:

Do you have a screenshot of the sand dune in The Battle chapter? When you come out of the hotel and get down to the road, turn around and just at the scale of the wall of sand. I didn't even notice it until my second playthrough cos they put that shit behind you.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

The message is about violence and its portrayal in an entertainment medium. It's not about "wasting your time playing video games." You're seeing things that aren't there because you (apparently) have issues.

He hasn't even played the game

he got banned last time for being a dumbass in a Spec Ops thread

he got banned the time before that for being a dumbass in the RE6 thread

stop talking to ErikB

 

[antitrop]

My most 'distressing moment' was definitely the PTSD flashes during one of the gunfights. Now that made me feel really uncomfortable.

Ya, that's good shit.

 

[volpone]

Ya, that's good shit.

Oh god, looking at that shit again is giving me PTSD.

 

[ErikB]

He hasn't even played the game

he got banned last time for being a dumbass in a Spec Ops thread

he got banned the time before that for being a dumbass in the RE6 thread

stop talking to ErikB

Man, you guys really hate it when someone disagrees with you.

 

[Johnny Cage In The Shower]

This game has some phenomenal art design:



The scale of the environment is impeccable, as well:

Yeah I loved that club level, when you go to the rooftop to meet the Radio DJ, really cool sea creature graffiti/murals on the walls, then once you get to the roof top, the glass ceilings and stuff, really nicely done. Also loved the aquarium near the very end.

Also sense of "height" looks cool, right before you stalk and creep up on those snipers and start a huge gun fight, that level has some nice sense of height. then when you go out on the makeshift bridge/ zip-line, you can see that "artificial palm tree islands" far in the distance, that was a nice touch too...

 

[CHEEZMO™]

I say they should make a Sims Dubai type of game using this engine and environments.

All of my fucking money.

Also Konrad's penthouse is swish as fuuuuuuck.

 

[ErikB]

But I don't hear many pointing out the great art direction it has, the environments look really great.

You really feel like you are at a place where at one time the world's richest people enjoyed all the luxuries a Hotel or a condo etc. had to offer, and now is all engulfed by sand.

I know it's weird, but it kinda is a tourist advertisement for Dubai. I want to go to big ass hotels with big ass roof top clubs, pools and party rooms.

That is what I was hoping for when I bought the game. Sadly, the lecture on playing power fantasy games instead of facing the real world rather killed the buzz.

 

[Owensboro]

Spoilers and such: You have been warned.

I blew through this game on easy after the $5 sale simply because I remember being there so much talk about it. Around 4 months before I bought and played it, I re-read The Heart of Darkness (something I hadn't read since high school) and watched "Apocalypse Now" for the first time ever. My thoughts on those are for a different thread, so lets stick to the game.

I have the strangest set of reactions to this game, partly liking and partly disliking a lot of it. For one, it feels like there are just to damn many "kill box" rooms. For a game that is trying to have a serious story and make you feel bad for killing people, it makes you kill a lot of people. It also doesn't help that I tried to beat the "White Phosphorus" moment without using it, and must have died 15+ times until I realized the snipers on the roof indefinitely respawn. I would set the camera to the upper right building, shoot one, and watch as he fell but another enemy magically spawned and ran to his exact spot. I used every bullet in the gun I had, killing countless snipers, and more kept spawning. That realization made me very angry. I didn't want to use the White Phosphorus. I didn't want to burn people to death, but the game was actually making me do it. There was no way around it. It made the resulting scene of walking slowly through the burned, mutilated bodies of soldiers and seeing the civies lose impact because I legitimately had a gripe: I didn't want to do it. I've read some things since then where the designers said they wanted the player to get angry, but I wasn't getting angry for committing some war atrocity, I was getting angry because I had no choice.

In retrospect, I ended up coming to the conclusion I think most people ended up with: It's an interesting piece that's not particularly a great "game" (meaning the shooting gets boring, repetitive, and makes me wish I had around 50%-60% less enemies to shoot). The fact that it made me have actual emotional moments throughout is pretty damn commendable.

....Whew.... I'm glad I got that out of my system. Sorry.

People constantly talk about the "story" and the "message" behind this game "the physiological effects of war" blah blah...

But I don't hear many pointing out the great art direction it has, the environments look really great.

You really feel like you are at a place where at one time the world's richest people enjoyed all the luxuries a Hotel or a condo etc. had to offer, and now is all engulfed by sand.

That's probably because in the end, the story is what affects you the most. Hell, I didn't remember anything about how pretty it is as a game until you brought it up. There are a bunch of views throughout that are pretty amazing.

Oh god, looking at that shit again is giving me PTSD.

Hahaha. Yeah, that part is great. It's a wonderful "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON" moment.

 

[antitrop]

This shit right here... I took A LOT of screenshots of this game.

 

[volpone]

Man, you guys really hate it when someone disagrees with you.

To disagree would imply you have posited some kind of sound counter-argument at any point within this thread.

Logical fallacies would be too polite. Some of what you're saying is straight up false.

 

[Jintor]

My most 'distressing moment' was definitely the PTSD flashes during one of the gunfights. Now that made me feel really uncomfortable.

The statue room? Amazing. I wish they had more of it.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

The biggest issue this game had was that firefights were too frequent and you fought too many enemies, given that the shooting wasn't up to par with the best shooters out there. This, of all games, should have been one to make use of a bit more realism in the game-play. Not as much time spent in combat and more time exploring the ruins, perhaps even talking to civilians or other characters, would have been better.

 

[antitrop]

Gentleman, welcome to Dubai.

 

[Jintor]

I have the strangest set of reactions to this game, partly liking and partly disliking a lot of it. For one, it feels like there are just to damn many "kill box" rooms. For a game that is trying to have a serious story and make you feel bad for killing people, it makes you kill a lot of people. It also doesn't help that I tried to beat the "White Phosphorus" moment without using it, and must have died 15+ times until I realized the snipers on the roof indefinitely respawn. I would set the camera to the upper right building, shoot one, and watch as he fell but another enemy magically spawned and ran to his exact spot. I used every bullet in the gun I had, killing countless snipers, and more kept spawning. That realization made me very angry. I didn't want to use the White Phosphorus. I didn't want to burn people to death, but the game was actually making me do it. There was no way around it. It made the resulting scene of walking slowly through the burned, mutilated bodies of soldiers and seeing the civies lose impact because I legitimately had a gripe: I didn't want to do it. I've read some things since then where the designers said they wanted the player to get angry, but I wasn't getting angry for committing some war atrocity, I was getting angry because I had no choice.

I definitely think it fails in that specific area, but I can't think of how else to do that scene. In a sense, the designers need to force your hand to make you perform that action, because the fact that it's Walker's (or the player's) hand on the trigger is important. But it felt so... artificial it takes a lot of the sting out of the rest of the game.

 

[ErikB]

To disagree would imply you have posited some kind of sound counter-argument at any point within this thread.

Logical fallacies would be too polite. Some of what you're saying is straight up false.

Unless one genuinely wants ones games to tell you what a piece of shit you are rather than giving your ego a big up, I think one needs to be very careful about giving Spec Ops too many props.

Especially if you are a nerd who plays video games.

 

[antitrop]

Unless one genuinely wants ones games to tell you what a piece of shit you are rather than giving your ego a big up, I think one needs to be very careful about giving Spec Ops too many props.

Please do me a personal favor and stop shitting up the thread.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

Sticking with setting talk; I also loved how bizarre and surreal some of the environments were. The beached ship graveyard is a great example of this, as is the whole idea of having a refugee camp in a skyscraper.

 

[antitrop]

We're Delta Force and we're here to rescue you.

 

[volpone]

I'll agree that the shooting was frustrating and drawn-out at times. I remember being truly furious during the final shootouts of the game because of how many game-overs I was experiencing. But you know what? This game is still a better shooter than Uncharted 3. Seriously. Fuck that overrated mess.

 

[antitrop]

Also Konrad's penthouse is swish as fuuuuuuck.

Sure is:

Going down?

 

[saveweyard]

Unless one genuinely wants ones games to tell you what a piece of shit you are rather than giving your ego a big up, I think one needs to be very careful about giving Spec Ops too many props.

Especially if you are a nerd who plays video games.

I'd rather the developers thought me intelligent enough to ponder such questions in video games than them ignore it and just throw explosion after explosion in my face.

So yeah, I will give Spec Ops all the praise in the world. One of the best games of this generation.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

We're Delta Force and we're here to rescue you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa-q-ztyZZw

 

[volpone]

Unless one genuinely wants ones games to tell you what a piece of shit you are rather than giving your ego a big up, I think one needs to be very careful about giving Spec Ops too many props.

Especially if you are a nerd who plays video games.

You're a strange one mate.

Also I enjoyed the attempt at parody in your post. One was most amused.

 

[ErikB]

Please do me a personal favor and stop shitting up the thread.

In the end I am not sure there has ever been a game made that has less respect for its players, but I guess if you just want to be left alone to enjoy it...

 

[Jintor]

Erik, you're working off thirdhand made-up information with no basis in critical reality. You have no leg to stand on. Please stop posting until you can argue rationally.

 

[ErikB]

I'd rather the developers thought me intelligent enough to ponder such questions in video games than them ignore it and just throw explosion after explosion in my face.

Can anyone play video games without having considered this and made their peace with it?