grimshawish
Banned
lololol what the actual
Totillo has always been good. There's just some weird obsession with hating on Kotaku.
Agreed. Stephen Totilo is a talented writer.
just quoting for emphasis.It's a hyperbole filled puff piece, it isn't journalism. This piece contains about as much journalism as a typical episode of Entertainment Tonight.
Edited for sloppy writing. And sorry if I insulted you, Entertainment Tonight.
Thanks for that. Made my day.
As interesting as the settings and situations are in Halo and Black Ops II, theyre practically irrelevant to those who enjoy these games. Shooters engage people as a presentation of conundrums that last as long as a quick exchange of gunfire and that are eligible for a painless do-over after any failure.
There's obviously an audience for the film, probably a large one. They are content, even eager, to sit in a theater and watch one action figure after another pound and blast one another to death. They require no dialogue, no plot, no characters, no humanity. Have you noticed how cats and dogs will look at a TV screen on which there are things jumping around? It is to that level of the brain's reptilian complex that the film appeals.
In that case the article fails in my eyes. When I read reviews, the general concensus of "buy or not" is exactly what I'm looking for. I hate reviews that don't take a clear stance on things.
I will reply with another reviewer:
There is a reason why videogames are not taken serious.
Film crit hulk lost me with his diatribe against people who disliked mass effect 3 and its ending
Forget that Halo 4 is a science-fiction heroic epic, set to begin a second multimillion-selling trilogy, as we control Master Chief, the armored space Marine (and possible species savior), in gunfights on strange new worlds. Forget that Call of Duty: Black Ops II is the nth annual military shooter and possibly the biggest moneymaker of any piece of new entertainment of the year. These trappings dont make these games fun. The shooting does.
One game bellows barely intelligible space opera; the other spits out well-chewed Tom Clancy mixed with James Bond. One is sci-fi and allows the odd romance to flicker between our faceless supersoldier hero and the voluptuous, artificially intelligent female hologram who tells our supersoldier where to go to find the next aliens to shoot. The other game is a mélange of American anxieties about the backfired partnerships of the cold war and the continuing drone warfare of today.
In one level of Black Ops II, set in the 1980s, the Afghan mujahedeen turn their guns on their American friends...
As interesting as the settings and situations are in Halo and Black Ops II, theyre practically irrelevant to those who enjoy these games.
Someone once said that video games were really just about cleaning, about finding the right tools to scrub enemies from a scene. In Halo games the vacuum, mop and dust rag have been the gun, the grenade and the melee. Recent versions have added equipment like jetpacks or, in Halo 4, a floating sentry turret and glide jets, among other things. The typical encounter has involved approaching an enemy force and maybe tossing a grenade to make it scramble or drop its shields, then shooting it to soften it up further, then running in to punch it, then hanging back to heal rapidly.
The best experience involves cranking the difficulty to Heroic and engaging a set of enemies, trying new strategies repeatedly and scavenging weapons or equipment from the battlefield until the right solution is found, and the enemies are dusted. These phases of stressed decision-making are training for the more unpredictable encounters with rival players in the competitive multiplayer mode. A good minute of Halo combat is like a good minute in the gym: The rest of your life is momentarily forgotten while you sweat it out, and then youre happy that the challenge is done, and that you are in some way improved.
The big development in Black Ops II is that its story-line campaign now presents choices....
The end of my Black Ops II story line was radically different from the end of a colleagues. Small decisions made huge differences. This is the soul of video games.
Halo and Call of Duty are ultimately more poker than movie, less video, more game. Online they enrapture hundreds of thousands of players every night. The players dont show up for the love story or for cameos by scandal-engulfed military officers. They show up for the excitement of solving problems in combat.
Their Fallout New Vegas review cost them credibility.
No offense to Totilo but no, this is not great or even good.
Let me break it down a little:
Ok, this looks like a strong thesis statement for a persuasive piece. Moving on a bit:
Ok, so we just said "forget these trappings, let's focus on the shooting", then we spend multiple paragraphs recapping the backstory we were just told was meaningless.
Wait...they're interesting? "One game bellows barely intelligible space opera; the other spits out well-chewed Tom Clancy mixed with James Bond." So which is it? If these are interesting why you call one barely intelligible and the other well-chewed?
We're almost to the bottom of the first page and the thesis of what looked to be a persuasive piece hasn't really been addressed at all.
Moving on:
The fuck? Someone once said this? Who? And how is this not a silly analogy. Cleaning, really? And now we're on to a list of new features in Halo 4. Ok...Halo now has "glide jets." Cool.
Finally, more than halfway through the piece, we reach what appears to be the actual point of it. We've spent an entire page on plot and feature summary without revisiting what was ostensibly the thesis of the piece. Next paragraph:
The fuck? We're back on story shit again? You already told us the story was irrelevant - twice! This goes on for THREE PARAGRAPHS, ending with:
Is it? The soul of video games is affecting the storyline in a well-chewed, irrelevant story? What happened to "these trappings don’t make these games fun. The shooting does."?
It's like he forgot what the piece was about and halfway through began writing the exact opposite piece.
Finally we end with:
But but...the piece spent most of the time talking about story shit and had practically nothing about problem solving. We just said that making story decisions is the "soul of video games." Now we're back to players don't show up for the story, they show up for combat?
What is this even about?
It has the classic persuasive essay structure of an opening thesis and conclusion that wraps up and restates the thesis, but everything in between contradicts the thesis rather than supporting it. This is like C material on a writing assignment in 11th grade English. You could probably write an interesting piece about shooters are compelling because of their problem solving elements but this sure as hell isn't it.
That said the piece as presented is just not good writing.
No offense to Totilo but no, this is not great or even good...
No offense to Totilo but no, this is not great or even good.
Let me break it down a little: