Initial reactions to Modern Warfare 2
Nov. 19th, 2009 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayPlayed about two hours of the single-player campaign last night, and found it extremely unpleasant. It was an unusually harsh reaction, and I think it's worth examining the experience in detail.
Opening movie is a montage of images and sound-bites, overlaid with a tough-guy narrator. It sketches in (very briefly) the events of the first Modern Warfare game. Apparently, the Big Bad you took down in that game has become a martyr to Russian nationalist extremists. Mr. Narrator says, essentially, "Whenever you take down one bad guy, a worse one takes his place." So, all my actions in the first game had a net negative effect, is that what you're telling me? That improving the world is impossible? You're already creeping me out, and we haven't even gotten into gameplay yet.
Then there's a short training/evaluation sequence. I actually liked this bit. It introduced the basic gameplay quickly and efficiently, and even raised the notion that civilians exist, and you shouldn't shoot them. My performance in the course made the game suggest I play on Normal difficulty, which seemed like a good idea.
First actual mission was quite daunting. I'm in Afghanistan, but they've not given me any narrative context, just a bunch of almost laughably cliched he-man patriotic talk. My first task is to use a grenade launcher to protect a bridge-layer, by shooting at a bunch of nigh invisible-specks on the other side of a river. Oh, and the training sequence hadn't taught me about this weapon. I died a *lot* before getting past this bit.
Once the bridge was built, I manned a turret on top of an APC, which drove through the city on rails. This was interesting and tense, as we weren't allowed to shoot until the bad guys revealed themselves. Eventually, of course, they did, and there followed a tense, moving firefight. I was still dying a lot, but it generally felt like dying was my own fault for getting cocky, and I was making progress and enjoying myself reasonably well.
After this mission ended, I got placed into the shoes of a new character, in the middle of a secret mission somewhere in Russia. Again, no narrative context provided. An NPC partner was present to give me directions and support, and it was a pretty cool, fun stealth mission. Some of the drama was what I call "empty calories", essentially on rails with little meaningful player input -- but that's Call of Duty for you. There were cryptic references during the mission to a crashed satellite, and an "ACS Module", but no explanation of their significance.
Mission 3 was the one you might have heard about in the news. I got a bit of narrative context this time, though still quite light. My character was being placed deep undercover, to get close to this game's Big Bad. The briefing, while terse, makes it clear that, while I will do Bad Things, they will result in Greater Good.
The mission itself is a brutal terrorist massacre of civilians. I won't describe the aesthetics of that section at length, because Tom Chick has written it better than I could, and you can read it here.
The game doesn't force me to shoot the civilians, so I don't. But I can't help them, either. I am at times tempted to shoot the horribly wounded, to put them out of their misery, but I don't. Once, I try shooting Makarov in the back of the head. After all, he's the Big Bad, he's right in front of me with his back turned, and I have a loaded gun. But that fails the mission; I can't continue unless I let him live. My suspension of disbelief about the story takes a major hit. But this is still brutal and disturbing. Eventually, we run out of civilians to kill, and a large number of cops show up. I don't want to fight these guys either. if there was ever a circumstance where wanton use of police violence was justified, this is it. But the NPCs on 'my side' are (by design, no doubt) insufficiently competent to get through this on their own; to progress, I have to slaughter large numbers of cops.
As we prepare to make our getaway, Makarov turns around and shoots me in the head, killing me. He knew I was an American plant all along. By leaving my body there to be found, he ensures that America will be blamed for the massacre. He wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't been here in the first place. My actions have demonstrably made things worse, again.
The next mission has another character following up a clue to try and get a new lead on Makarov. This takes us to Brazil. Stage one of the mission is chasing down an armed, fleeing informant, through a civilian neighborhood. My squadmates yell at me "Non-lethal takedowns only! We need him alive!" The only obviously non-lethal verb I have is a melee gun-butt attack, but the target is moving so fast that that doesn't seem feasible. But then a squadmate advises me to shoot him in the leg. I do, and he goes down. A brief cutscene suggests that we are torturing him for information, as my squad pursues his boss. I am squicked by the implied torture; it's not as bad as the terrorist mission, but in such close proximity, it reinforces my lack of sympathy for my own commanders.
Phase two is located inside a 'favela', which is something halfway between a slum and a shantytown. There are some civilians there at the beginning, but they clear out quickly. But the place is *full* of enemy 'militia'. The favela is a twisty maze; though I have a goal indicator on my HUD, I can't move in anything like a straight line here, and am always encountering dead ends and switchbacks. All the while, I am under constant gunfire. The enemy are constantly moving, and routinely flank me. I die a *ton* in this section, and it *doesn't* ever feel like my fault; it feels like the game is just being arbitrarily brutal here. Immersion also takes a hit. The walls and doors are thin enough that bullets fly right through them, but I have no way to open a locked door. The enemy can, though. The best I can do is to shoot through a closed door in hopes that an enemy is behind it; if so, he will graciously open the door on his way to ragdoll death. I have at least one NPC squadmate who is theoretically helping me, but it's easy to lose track of him in this maze, and I have no tools to help relocate him when that happens. Eventually, I stumble upon a semi-workable strategy -- run through the maze, shooting blindly, in the hopes of reaching another checkpoint before I get killed. This works often enough that I proceed.
At phase three of the mission, I'm on my own. Radio chatter from my squadmates tells me that our target is trying to escape, and I should hurry after him and capture him. They encourage me to not let myself get pinned down for long, to use my flash grenades, and to keep running forward. That advice would have been useful in phase two. In phase three, it gets me killed over and over and over again. I can only conclude that my squadmates secretly hate me. In phase two, the enemy moved constantly; in phase three, they are almost all set up in groups of snipers that don't move. If I try to run-and-gun, I die horribly. The only way I can progress is to move extremely slowly and methodically, picking the enemy off one at a time as they get revealed, and frequently ducking back into cover to heal up.
I should, at this point, mention the healing mechanic. Like many games these days, you don't have a health meter, per se. Some HUD element lets you know that you're taking damage, and if you don't do anything about it, you die. But if you get to cover and stop taking damage for a few seconds, you miraculously heal up, faster than Wolverine. This is hardly unique to this game, but it is one more element that hurts immersion. This is especially so in a gameplay situation like this phase, where you can't stick your nose around a corner without getting hit, frequently hard enough to send you scurrying back to cover before having time to even see where the shooter is, much less shoot back.
I eventually reach the target. I expect there to be some clever bit of gameplay here to capture him. There isn't. My squadmates reappear and take him down. I feel like the difficult struggle to get here was for nothing. I mean, even "Press X to Capture" would have felt more empowering than this.
And now, a cutscene introducing the next mission. It's Red Dawn, almost literally, as the Russians invade America. America is caught unawares, apparently due to some sort of not-clearly-explained sabotage to our spy satellites, involving their ACS Modules. Wait a minute! Those were the McGuffins in the one mission I actually *enjoyed*! Was the intelligence from that mission not decoded in time? Or, horrible thought, was that mission actually carrying *out* the sabotage? Either way, it retroactively kills any sense of achievement from having performed that mission.
It's getting towards bedtime now, so I don't actually play the "Wolverines!" mission (yes, they actually called it that). I'll get back to it in a few days, since this is homework, but I'm really not expecting to enjoy it. The game seems determined to rob me of any sense of fun or accomplishment.
I can't help but feel that some of Infinity Ward's writing staff is trying to make a statement about the futility of war. But in a game genre which is fundamentally *about* warfare, about shooting vast numbers of depersonalized enemies, I'm not sure it's possible to really convey such a message. The player can't help but identify with their avatar. Calling attention to the fact that the avatar commits atrocities just makes the player annoyed and defensive (assuming they notice in the first place). After all, I didn't really *choose* to commit atrocities; they're written into the game script, and I can't progress without following that script. My only interaction verbs are violent ones -- heck, I can't even open a door by any means other than killing someone! In this context, an anti-war message is simply incoherent.
Opening movie is a montage of images and sound-bites, overlaid with a tough-guy narrator. It sketches in (very briefly) the events of the first Modern Warfare game. Apparently, the Big Bad you took down in that game has become a martyr to Russian nationalist extremists. Mr. Narrator says, essentially, "Whenever you take down one bad guy, a worse one takes his place." So, all my actions in the first game had a net negative effect, is that what you're telling me? That improving the world is impossible? You're already creeping me out, and we haven't even gotten into gameplay yet.
Then there's a short training/evaluation sequence. I actually liked this bit. It introduced the basic gameplay quickly and efficiently, and even raised the notion that civilians exist, and you shouldn't shoot them. My performance in the course made the game suggest I play on Normal difficulty, which seemed like a good idea.
First actual mission was quite daunting. I'm in Afghanistan, but they've not given me any narrative context, just a bunch of almost laughably cliched he-man patriotic talk. My first task is to use a grenade launcher to protect a bridge-layer, by shooting at a bunch of nigh invisible-specks on the other side of a river. Oh, and the training sequence hadn't taught me about this weapon. I died a *lot* before getting past this bit.
Once the bridge was built, I manned a turret on top of an APC, which drove through the city on rails. This was interesting and tense, as we weren't allowed to shoot until the bad guys revealed themselves. Eventually, of course, they did, and there followed a tense, moving firefight. I was still dying a lot, but it generally felt like dying was my own fault for getting cocky, and I was making progress and enjoying myself reasonably well.
After this mission ended, I got placed into the shoes of a new character, in the middle of a secret mission somewhere in Russia. Again, no narrative context provided. An NPC partner was present to give me directions and support, and it was a pretty cool, fun stealth mission. Some of the drama was what I call "empty calories", essentially on rails with little meaningful player input -- but that's Call of Duty for you. There were cryptic references during the mission to a crashed satellite, and an "ACS Module", but no explanation of their significance.
Mission 3 was the one you might have heard about in the news. I got a bit of narrative context this time, though still quite light. My character was being placed deep undercover, to get close to this game's Big Bad. The briefing, while terse, makes it clear that, while I will do Bad Things, they will result in Greater Good.
The mission itself is a brutal terrorist massacre of civilians. I won't describe the aesthetics of that section at length, because Tom Chick has written it better than I could, and you can read it here.
The game doesn't force me to shoot the civilians, so I don't. But I can't help them, either. I am at times tempted to shoot the horribly wounded, to put them out of their misery, but I don't. Once, I try shooting Makarov in the back of the head. After all, he's the Big Bad, he's right in front of me with his back turned, and I have a loaded gun. But that fails the mission; I can't continue unless I let him live. My suspension of disbelief about the story takes a major hit. But this is still brutal and disturbing. Eventually, we run out of civilians to kill, and a large number of cops show up. I don't want to fight these guys either. if there was ever a circumstance where wanton use of police violence was justified, this is it. But the NPCs on 'my side' are (by design, no doubt) insufficiently competent to get through this on their own; to progress, I have to slaughter large numbers of cops.
As we prepare to make our getaway, Makarov turns around and shoots me in the head, killing me. He knew I was an American plant all along. By leaving my body there to be found, he ensures that America will be blamed for the massacre. He wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't been here in the first place. My actions have demonstrably made things worse, again.
The next mission has another character following up a clue to try and get a new lead on Makarov. This takes us to Brazil. Stage one of the mission is chasing down an armed, fleeing informant, through a civilian neighborhood. My squadmates yell at me "Non-lethal takedowns only! We need him alive!" The only obviously non-lethal verb I have is a melee gun-butt attack, but the target is moving so fast that that doesn't seem feasible. But then a squadmate advises me to shoot him in the leg. I do, and he goes down. A brief cutscene suggests that we are torturing him for information, as my squad pursues his boss. I am squicked by the implied torture; it's not as bad as the terrorist mission, but in such close proximity, it reinforces my lack of sympathy for my own commanders.
Phase two is located inside a 'favela', which is something halfway between a slum and a shantytown. There are some civilians there at the beginning, but they clear out quickly. But the place is *full* of enemy 'militia'. The favela is a twisty maze; though I have a goal indicator on my HUD, I can't move in anything like a straight line here, and am always encountering dead ends and switchbacks. All the while, I am under constant gunfire. The enemy are constantly moving, and routinely flank me. I die a *ton* in this section, and it *doesn't* ever feel like my fault; it feels like the game is just being arbitrarily brutal here. Immersion also takes a hit. The walls and doors are thin enough that bullets fly right through them, but I have no way to open a locked door. The enemy can, though. The best I can do is to shoot through a closed door in hopes that an enemy is behind it; if so, he will graciously open the door on his way to ragdoll death. I have at least one NPC squadmate who is theoretically helping me, but it's easy to lose track of him in this maze, and I have no tools to help relocate him when that happens. Eventually, I stumble upon a semi-workable strategy -- run through the maze, shooting blindly, in the hopes of reaching another checkpoint before I get killed. This works often enough that I proceed.
At phase three of the mission, I'm on my own. Radio chatter from my squadmates tells me that our target is trying to escape, and I should hurry after him and capture him. They encourage me to not let myself get pinned down for long, to use my flash grenades, and to keep running forward. That advice would have been useful in phase two. In phase three, it gets me killed over and over and over again. I can only conclude that my squadmates secretly hate me. In phase two, the enemy moved constantly; in phase three, they are almost all set up in groups of snipers that don't move. If I try to run-and-gun, I die horribly. The only way I can progress is to move extremely slowly and methodically, picking the enemy off one at a time as they get revealed, and frequently ducking back into cover to heal up.
I should, at this point, mention the healing mechanic. Like many games these days, you don't have a health meter, per se. Some HUD element lets you know that you're taking damage, and if you don't do anything about it, you die. But if you get to cover and stop taking damage for a few seconds, you miraculously heal up, faster than Wolverine. This is hardly unique to this game, but it is one more element that hurts immersion. This is especially so in a gameplay situation like this phase, where you can't stick your nose around a corner without getting hit, frequently hard enough to send you scurrying back to cover before having time to even see where the shooter is, much less shoot back.
I eventually reach the target. I expect there to be some clever bit of gameplay here to capture him. There isn't. My squadmates reappear and take him down. I feel like the difficult struggle to get here was for nothing. I mean, even "Press X to Capture" would have felt more empowering than this.
And now, a cutscene introducing the next mission. It's Red Dawn, almost literally, as the Russians invade America. America is caught unawares, apparently due to some sort of not-clearly-explained sabotage to our spy satellites, involving their ACS Modules. Wait a minute! Those were the McGuffins in the one mission I actually *enjoyed*! Was the intelligence from that mission not decoded in time? Or, horrible thought, was that mission actually carrying *out* the sabotage? Either way, it retroactively kills any sense of achievement from having performed that mission.
It's getting towards bedtime now, so I don't actually play the "Wolverines!" mission (yes, they actually called it that). I'll get back to it in a few days, since this is homework, but I'm really not expecting to enjoy it. The game seems determined to rob me of any sense of fun or accomplishment.
I can't help but feel that some of Infinity Ward's writing staff is trying to make a statement about the futility of war. But in a game genre which is fundamentally *about* warfare, about shooting vast numbers of depersonalized enemies, I'm not sure it's possible to really convey such a message. The player can't help but identify with their avatar. Calling attention to the fact that the avatar commits atrocities just makes the player annoyed and defensive (assuming they notice in the first place). After all, I didn't really *choose* to commit atrocities; they're written into the game script, and I can't progress without following that script. My only interaction verbs are violent ones -- heck, I can't even open a door by any means other than killing someone! In this context, an anti-war message is simply incoherent.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-19 07:40 pm (UTC)In other words, "the (game) world would be a better place if you didn't play this game". "Or the previous one."
Odd message for someone trying to _sell_ games.
I felt similar sense of frustration with the (horde) wrathgate quest in WoW. I knew it was a bad idea. I didn't do many of the quests unless egged on by guildmates. And once was definitely enough. Why would Blizzard want me to not play a part of their game where they put in tons of work?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-19 11:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-20 03:41 am (UTC)Most of the 'make some plague, or plague delivery system' ones. Mostly, even my Rogue got uncomfortable with those quests (and in fact many of the Forsaken quests in general).
With my current Druid I am just following my (their) instincts. If a quest sounds like a bad idea, or like a set up, or morally questionable (their morals, not mine), I skip it.
***
As an aesthetic choice, I didn't like the cut scene, but that is just because in most other things Blizzard avoids breaking the world illusion. And I don't like feeling there is nothing (even futile) I can do about a bad situation.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-20 03:36 pm (UTC)Sadly, my completist nature doesn't let me do that :-) Though I was disturbed that there were a few quests in TWotLK that made torture seem like something that worked easily and reliably.