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Call of Duty: World at War

djbhammer

By djbhammer
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mushashi

mushashi

Posted
Posted
GTA characters are violent criminals doing it for themselves. Nazis were "just following orders", I've heard.

The main protagonist in GTA games may kill people, but they always have redeeming qualities or 'good' reasons for why they commit their acts of violence. If players choose to run over innocent bystanders or kill policemen doing their job, that's the player's choice in those games.

So what are the chances of a game depicting the victory of the North Vietnamese against the Americans? or North Korea beating back the UN-backed South Korean forces during the Korean conflict? slim to zero.

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Floshenbarnical

Floshenbarnical

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Even though playing as a side that beat your country may be more interesting and original, most people want to play it. I don't understand this idea of "That depicts my country in a bad light, it must be shit/ wrong", I personally would love to see the cliché turned on its head with you taking over the world with acts of terrorism and genocide, I think it would be refreshing and interesting. I don't think that's any more controversial than 12 year olds being able to suffocate people with plastic bags in Manhunt and drunk-driving on GTA IV resulting in you ploughing down the pavement killing 50 people.

BTW Chase I love your review, I think it is succinctly written and the points are well structured, thought-out and relevant. The only thing I thought you could have included was that the cover system is a festering heap of wank. Oh, and I have found loads of building interiors in Northwood, practically one on every street!

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Kinketsu

Kinketsu

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Posted
Even though playing as a side that beat your country may be more interesting and original, most people want to play it. I don't understand this idea of "That depicts my country in a bad light, it must be shit/ wrong", I personally would love to see the cliché turned on its head with you taking over the world with acts of terrorism and genocide

You want to play a game where you recreate incidents of terrorism and genocide? Personally I'd find a game where you play a Nazi actively carrying out the Holocaust or a Japanese soldier taking part in the Rape of Nanking absolutely horrifying. Press L2 to hold her down, press R1 to bayonette her?

These types of games have to be slightly classier than that as they're dealing with real life events from our recent history, not General Blarg vs the Space Marines. And it's got nowt to do with depicting your own country in a bad light. But they'll really court some media coverage if someone makes a Nazi apologist game.

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Chadruharazzeb

Chadruharazzeb

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Posted
Even though playing as a side that beat your country may be more interesting and original, most people want to play it. I don't understand this idea of "That depicts my country in a bad light, it must be shit/ wrong", I personally would love to see the cliché turned on its head with you taking over the world with acts of terrorism and genocide

Nobody is suggesting that, for the love of sanity. It was just mooted that there could be a war game where you play as "the other side" for a change.

I have used Germany in Winning Eleven a couple of times.

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Tom*

Tom*

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I swear, every single avenue of WWII has been explored time and time and time including the Japanese/Pacific setting.

Like Rudi said, there's loads of settings that haven't been covered, and the most famous (to us) have been done to death. Which is a bit unfortunate as everyone is getting fed up of WWII games (me too a bit) because two franchises milked the same scenarios too much. I'm getting bored of the gameplay of SP CoD more than the setting though - all the scripting. Games like Brothers in Arms and Company of Heroes have great gameplay and it doesn't matter if the setting is familiar. A WWII Flashpoint or something could be good.

As for playing as the other side, you wouldn't have to be a Nazi Concentration Camp guard (which I doubt anyone would want to play as), just a regular german army person. In CoH: Opposing Fronts' German campaign all the cutscenes are about the characters wanting to go home and protect their families, while criticising Hitler and basically being the same as allied soldiers just on the opposite side of the war - they aren't totally good but aren't completely evil either. Don't remember that game causing any controversy. Even if that's too hard to sell, at least let you be Chinese, or part of the Resistance in Belarus, or in Finland etc instead of another paratrooper in Normandy on D-Day again.

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Jamie John

Jamie John

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Posted

post-3265-1213705119_thumb.jpg

To be perfectly frank, I don't think I like the idea of playing a game that lets me burn alive Japanese soldiers. Now I'm reminded of it, it always felt a bit morally wrong to be shooting German's in the face in COD3 - even if they are just a bunch of polygons, they're still representations of people that existed in reality. True, its possible to decimate entire cities belonging to dozens of various nations in a game like Civ IV, but the sense of spectacle and realism that the COD games feed off brings the scenarios smack bang in front of the player, as obviously does the first-person viewpoint, and your actions in the game seem a hell of a lot more tangible, especially when the characters you're killing are screaming in anguish. Mowing down an entire garisson of Germans with a mounted gun in 3 was one of the rare times in playing video games where I identified the violence I was committing as not being entirely fictitious or restricted by the medium, and I truly didn't like what I was doing.

Games like COD 4 on the other hand I have no moral misgivings about whatsoever as they aren't explicitly based on any real modern day war; even if it has very obvious allusions to the Middle East conflicts, I'll happily gun down leagues and leagues of Arab baddies if I know they're not members of any real country or organisation. If the game saw me killing thousands of Iraqi or members of Al-Quaeda however, I just plain wouldn't play it, and moreover I don't think the developers would ever have the daring to even contemplate making it in the first place due to the moral outrage it would arouse, and quite rightly too. GTA as well: although it's perfectly within my abilities to murder an entire hightstreet's worth of pedestrians with a machine gun, because they're simply nameless, un-specified representations of people in general, I don't at any point feel bad about it, nor do I not know that what I'm doing is entierly made-up and has no bearing on reality, certainly not in the same way the WWII 'simulators' do, and therefore doesn't affect me.

Hmm.

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Jamie John

Jamie John

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Being a bit shocked by what you're doing and also enjoying it are not exclusive ideas.

In fact, it reflects killing in real warfare to some extent, it seems.

That's the thing though, I only feel shocked by what I'm doing in the WW2 games, and although I do enjoy them, the fun can quickly turn to dubiety bordering on apprehension depending on the intensity and proximity of that I'm doing.

By contrast, I never feel 'shocked' in this sense in the other games I mentioned - I enjoy myself and the killing is entertaining and fun; I don't bear a second thought to the meaning of my actions because the people I'm slaughtering don't pertain to be real, only allude to.

And I really don't think that the majority of "real" soldiers find killing people fun. Movie stereotypes and a minority of army types with a questionable psychology, but you need to only read a Wilfred Owen poem to see that the men certainly didn't like what they were doing.

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Rudi von Starnberg

Rudi von Starnberg

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Nah, read an honest autobiography of any war of the 20th century. The overwhelming response to the war is that it's horrible and traumatising but when a human figure gets between the backsights there's a fierce joy and satisfaction involved.

The two things aren't contradictory, and it needs to be acknowledged if war as a human experience isn't watered down to shallow, GCSE philosophy 'IT IS BAD' 'IT IS GOOD' nonsense.

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Meh

Meh

Posted
Posted
post-3265-1213705119_thumb.jpg

To be perfectly frank, I don't think I like the idea of playing a game that lets me burn alive Japanese soldiers. Now I'm reminded of it, it always felt a bit morally wrong to be shooting German's in the face in COD3 - even if they are just a bunch of polygons, they're still representations of people that existed in reality. True, its possible to decimate entire cities belonging to dozens of various nations in a game like Civ IV, but the sense of spectacle and realism that the COD games feed off brings the scenarios smack bang in front of the player, as obviously does the first-person viewpoint, and your actions in the game seem a hell of a lot more tangible, especially when the characters you're killing are screaming in anguish. Mowing down an entire garisson of Germans with a mounted gun in 3 was one of the rare times in playing video games where I identified the violence I was committing as not being entirely fictitious or restricted by the medium, and I truly didn't like what I was doing.

Games like COD 4 on the other hand I have no moral misgivings about whatsoever as they aren't explicitly based on any real modern day war; even if it has very obvious allusions to the Middle East conflicts, I'll happily gun down leagues and leagues of Arab baddies if I know they're not members of any real country or organisation. If the game saw me killing thousands of Iraqi or members of Al-Quaeda however, I just plain wouldn't play it, and moreover I don't think the developers would ever have the daring to even contemplate making it in the first place due to the moral outrage it would arouse, and quite rightly too. GTA as well: although it's perfectly within my abilities to murder an entire hightstreet's worth of pedestrians with a machine gun, because they're simply nameless, un-specified representations of people in general, I don't at any point feel bad about it, nor do I not know that what I'm doing is entierly made-up and has no bearing on reality, certainly not in the same way the WWII 'simulators' do, and therefore doesn't affect me.

Hmm.

Oh my god.

Debut Teaser

SD | HD

It's going to be terrible.

You all know that, right?

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Dave White

Dave White

Posted
Posted
I thought COD4 was pretty terrible so I don't have much hope for this one.

I don't understand why everyone is so forgiving of infinite spawns, blatant trigger points and the like.

the singleplayer wasn't terrible, and the multiplayer untouchable on a console.

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