Comments on: Angry Driver: The Saboteur Dated, Detailed

By: TariqOne

TariqOne — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:46:18 +0000

Cool art direction.

And yeah. Gadzooks, man. Simplistic historical perspective aside, if I have to kill one more Nazi in a game I’m going to totally freaking batshit.

By: Adventurous Putty

Adventurous Putty — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:04:16 +0000

People, have some heart. There’s zeppelins; no matter how bad the game is, that little bit of steampunk-esque retrofuturism should be enough to inspire plaudits.

By: Alaric

Alaric — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:31:31 +0000

Haha! I’m with you, Paul! Any game where I get to defeat Daley, Stroger, and various other Blagojeviches gets my vote! =)

By: The Sombrero Kid

The Sombrero Kid — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:59:53 +0000

looks brill and ahem I’ve been badgering you to cover this for months :P

By: Paul Moloney

Paul Moloney — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:52:35 +0000

I think games should have Illinois Nazis instead.

I hate Illinois Nazis.

By: JuJuCam

JuJuCam — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:59:45 +0000

Remember when every Star Wars game was a graphically updated reiteration of the same battles as the last Star Wars game? There were some deviations, but mostly it was the iconic original trilogy battles over and over and over again.

Then the first KOTOR came out and we had a taste of a whole universe that anybody who didn’t read Star Wars novels hadn’t heard of before. We discovered there was more to it than tangling AT-AT’s up in tow cables at the Battle of Hoth.

WWII from a gamer perspective is like that. We need to see more of it than Normandy and trenches.

It occurs to me that another thing that attracts me to this game is that the strong Noir aesthetic brings with it a potential for intrigue and mystery. I have absolutely no basis to believe that this type of plot will be present besides how the game looks, so I guess I’ll have to wait till it’s released before I cast judgement on that element. But crucially, I’m not turned off simply because it’s “just another WWII game”.

By: TeeJay

TeeJay — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:26:27 +0000

Player, Attack Thyself – Why Japanese gamers love avenging Pearl Harbor

http://www.slate.com/id/2096112/

By: Chemix

Chemix — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:46:41 +0000

I agree that TeeJay is right on why most developers do what they do, albeit I don’t think it’s too much to ask for them to do something out of the ordinary; with that sort of thinking, we’d still be playing pong, but NEXT GEN pong, with HDR lighting on glass balls with fully realized reflections of the other objects in the game: the black background, and 2 ridiculously detailed bars that bounce the balls back and forth.

In the case of this game though, it may be a little too much to ask, as the game is taking an artistic deviation (which is akin to Flower and Prince of Persia among others), which is further made different from the known seller by not only having color increase with your violent acts, but being desaturated all the way to black, white, and bloody red. This stands against a strong heavy use of gray, green, and brown filters that pervade almost all WWII games since “realism” was introduced. I’d like more, but they’re taking a step out of line, and we should encourage them to take more.

Nazis are generic bad guys that were under an ideology that everyone can agree was immoral to everyone except the Nazis, and furthermore and more importantly, the Nazis, in their 1930′s-40′s form, are dead, and neo-nazis don’t make up a significant sales fraction. Germans (99.9% of which are not Nazis) are a significant sales faction however (until games get officially banned in Germany and piracy skyrockets there, more so if already) and are thus distinguished from Nazis in video games by a general lack of civilians, non-combatants, or limiting the scope of the game to some evil Nazi project ran by hard core Nazis to kill all non-Nazis (Wolfenstein, yeah, you, I’m looking at you).

By: tim

tim — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:45:44 +0000

I think Nazis are ‘zombie’ enemies because it’s easy to do. Expressing pathos can be hard in a game, especially since most games require some sort of action to play, and killing things is a very effective action.

Also, I understand people who wish WWII games were more than just American, British or Russians, but really – even if you play as Chinese or any other nationality, it’s going to be the same game. Except you won’t be in France. Perhaps a Hitman-style game playing as a member of the French Resistance would be different…..but I doubt it.

By: feighnt

feighnt — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:16:03 +0000

mister yuck: not all gamers are the same. there are plenty of people who watch *movies* just for some dumb fun, an escape from life, but there are plenty who like something deeper. same goes for games and gamers, even increasingly more-so these days.

By: feighnt

feighnt — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:11:29 +0000

i’m inclined towards what Alaric said… minus such a strong antipathy towards WWII setting for games. it is certainly a cliche, BUT, as some people – alaric included, i think – pointed out, there’s a lot that could be told in the WWII setting which ISNT. the problem isnt that we’re saturated with the WWII setting, but that we’re saturated with games about US 101st paradropping behind enemy lines in normandy, or US troops landing on the beaches of said province, followed by wandering and fighting around french farms till the game ends. frankly, i’d love to play a game where, say, you were part of the Ethiopian forces fighting against Italy, or a game depicting the battle in Greece… or, you know, how about a game that deals with ITALY at all (it’s as if Italy wasnt involved in the war, it’s been so forgotten!). why not have a game with a decent narrative which is about Spanish Anarchists fighting in the resistance in France (as there were many Spanish refugees in France, including many Anarchists, after the Republicans lost the Spanish Civil War, who went and fought in France) or why not a game where you’re playing, not as an American or Brit, but as a chinese soldier – Nationalist or Communist or otherwise – against the Japanese in mainland China? the big problem with WWII games (or, most fps’ers, anyway) is that they’re only willing to depict a tiny portion of the war.

i understand TeeJay’s point, but, in all honesty, i think it boils down to an argument as to why it would be a little bit more *difficult*, but that’s no real excuse frankly – with some sensitivity and creativity, they could do a game about another aspect of WWII, or one of the many other wars which could be fruitfully depicted in games. i mean, it’s not like they’re not doing this to some degree anyway – Modern Warfare spent most of the game fighting against middle eastern forces. has there been a vast ouctry against this game… and hasnt this game been successful? i’m sure some were offended, but the game handled things well enough to preemptively defuse some of this.

the problem, really, is that people are thinking the *must* depict your opponents like robots, or super-evil semi-humans. no need for that at all, and there are plenty of games out there which have you fighting against people who *arent* necessarily stereotypically hideous villains. furthermore, while WWII (or, the invasion of France, anyway) is similarly overused in *cinema*, you’ll also note that there are a greater degree of movies which break the typical inhuman depiction of germans during that era as being universally monsters – or, for that matter, which dont depict the “heroes” as being necessarily utterly altruistic and courageous. *and* there are also plenty which have a lot of excellent, gripping action all the same! so, frankly, i fail to see an excuse. and, hell, as someone pointed out, World at War actually had the decency to try to mix things up a bit, morally speaking – and with some success!

By: Mister Yuck

Mister Yuck — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:37:30 +0000

Alaric has just discovered that there are no such things as good guys and bad guys in the real world. Soon he will discover that people play video games to escape the real world.