By John Walker on November 16th, 2010 at 5:20 pm.
One of my main criticisms of the mediocre Medal Of Honor was the lack of feeling involved. Indeed, I felt similarly playing the Modern Warfare games, whenever it became apparent that my actions weren’t exactly crucial to progress (I followed behind on No Russian, without firing a shot). This is something “T2DMrBungle” discovered when playing Call Of Duty: Black Ops, specifically the first mission, played on the disturbingly named “Hardened” difficulty level. It’s a fifteen minute video during which he doesn’t fire his gun once. It’s below.
As he narrates near the beginning, if you don’t have time to watch all 15 minutes, skip to around 13:50. I think this is perhaps the point where people should maybe be asking to have slightly more of a role in their games?
16/11/2010 at 17:25 Seth says:
Oh come on.
When I was (when I still do) level design for FreeSpace 2 we always, always do self-playing checks whereby we park the player in a corner and see if the level wins itself.
I guess this at least requires you to move forward to hit the scripted events, but…jeez.
16/11/2010 at 20:17 bob_d says:
This was very clearly a deliberate design decision. There’s a lot of debate about “how challenging do you make a game?” Games where you spend endless hours redoing particular sections until you “get it right” are niche products, honestly. You want a game like this to be accessible, to not trap players in a particular level and prevent them from continuing. Now there are different approaches to that, but this is the tutorial mission – it’s absolutely vital that players be able to get through it with a minimum of difficulty. I suspect you really can’t do that on any other level.
I detect a certain amount of nerd elitism as a response to this approach, though (“That’s not the way games are supposed to be!”). As a heavily scripted, linear, cinematic-style shooter, the player isn’t exactly having a huge impact on the virtual world. (On the other hand, if an RPG had a similar level of player superfluousness, it couldn’t avoid being highly problematic.) What does it matter if the fundamental goal of the game is to give the player a complete experience that they can surf through if they find it fun and engaging?
16/11/2010 at 20:32 Chris D says:
@ bob_d
I’d have to question the effectiveness of a tutorial where you succeed without doing anything. You’re not learning anything other than which keys to press. Surely some kind of feedback as to whether you’re doing it right is desireable?
16/11/2010 at 20:42 imirk says:
Yes it is just the first level, but it is the first level of the “hardened” difficulty, if the rest of the game is much much harder than the first level you experince wouldn’t you rage quit over the percieved difficulty spike, and I’d assume (dangerous word there) that if you did change the base difficulty level it is not because you think you might have trouble or get stuck, or if you were you change it to fluffy bunny not hardened. But what do I care I didn’t buy it and wont unless all of my friends buy it and I want to play at LAN parties, but we’re all still using MW for that.
17/11/2010 at 02:25 Casimir's Blake says:
As an aside, between this atrocity about CoD’s level design, and your post about Freespace 2: I’ve finally convinced myself that I MUST go and buy a joystick, and play through both games ASAP. Because, yeah, it’s 2010 and I haven’t yet. I’ll just go hang my head in shame now.
(Seriously, it’s hard to find the time when you’re finishing an album…)
17/11/2010 at 02:38 Wraggles says:
Well there are sections of the game that won’t progress until you dash forward while your allies sit back and don’t shoot anything and you come under fire from 14+ constantly re-spawning bad guys to get to a set of 3 barrels out in the open. Seriously, on hardened, without needing to fire a shot, that section, made me rage quit for 2 days b4 coming back.
See, their level design is bad in both ways.
17/11/2010 at 03:58 GHudston says:
@bob_d
There’s accessibility and then then there’s watching a story unfold without any direct input from yourself. The latter is usually called a “film”. I think that most people who play games actually want to be involved in some way.
As a side note, my reCAPTCHA actually has “lol,” as one of the words.
17/11/2010 at 22:00 SevenSixTwoX39 says:
I think all this video shows is that they made the AI teammates powerful enough to beat the easiest level on the second-hardest difficulty. Not really sure what this proves.
17/11/2010 at 23:50 bob_d says:
@GHudston: There’s a world of difference between “doesn’t require you to do anything” and “doesn’t allow you to do anything” though.
16/11/2010 at 17:25 Canadajezus says:
Don’t mind us we’re just pretending to make a game.
16/11/2010 at 22:18 Zogtee says:
When I played this part, I was surprised and a bit impressed that I did so well. Especially with the driving, I’m usually terrible at that. Now I understand what was going on and I don’t think I’ll bother “playing” through the rest, because seriously, fuck this crap.
18/11/2010 at 03:01 GoodPatton says:
Yet another CoD piece? Oh ho! Dick joke. So the CoD movie is a direct to DVD Release? God this is lame, was actually considering picking it up whenever it went on sale, now am not!
16/11/2010 at 17:25 Doeke says:
I spend 10 seconds looking a steam message before realizing that the notification sound came from the video.
16/11/2010 at 17:50 Mut says:
Heh, same here!
16/11/2010 at 19:33 Dzamir says:
Hahahahah! Same here :D
16/11/2010 at 22:45 zebby says:
hehe, yeah I did the same.
16/11/2010 at 17:25 Chris says:
Eh. While you definitely can’t get through the opening of MW2 without taking part, I almost never played COD4 because of the demo. That level, in the sinking ship, made me feel like everyone around me was doing everything for me. No matter how fast you ran, there was always someone in front of you shooting and leading you along and I felt like all I did was just run. Figured the whole game was like that. So, yeah, this doesn’t surprise me too much. If anything, I’m glad they made the friendly AI a little more helpful this time around than in previous games.
16/11/2010 at 19:49 PFCskinner says:
The ship level wasnt the demo level… the demo was warpig… where you definitely had to fire your weapon…
16/11/2010 at 19:50 Navagon says:
In CoD4 the only keys you need are forward and sprint. Mouse look takes care of the rest. Your only part in the game is to advance the action. Not take part in it. The only exceptions are the sniper mission and the end getaway sequence.
Both this and MW2 look like the same kind of shit to me. I might be wrong. But it doesn’t look like I am.
16/11/2010 at 19:57 PFCskinner says:
you wont get very far on any difficulty above easy without crouching or lying down now and again
16/11/2010 at 21:38 Navagon says:
Those aren’t needed to advance the game though. They’re just helpful. Just like how shooting things is helpful. And leaning (where possible).
Most FPS – you know – actually require shooting. CoD single player really is just too damn casual. The less said about the multiplayer the better.
16/11/2010 at 17:26 Jymkata says:
I’m not a fan of war games in general, and COD isn’t exactly famed for its realism, but this is probably as close to realism as this series gets.
I mean, considering that war FPS’ are treating you as a soldier in an army, they have a fairly individualist agenda.
16/11/2010 at 17:27 Mike says:
The thing is that CoD calls into question this idea of player involvement. Are you here to be challenged in CoD, or are you here to play soldier? If it’s the latter, you actually have a contribution to make in order for the game to be fun – you have to play the ‘role’, you have to shoot and duck and pretend it matters. If you can do it, you will get more out of it.
I think there’s a big section of gamers who like that form of entertainment, where there’s imagination involved and they have to help suspend their disbelief. I know that it’s not something that many people like, but a lot of linear shooters are made a lot stronger when the player contributes a little effort. I watched a younger relative play CoDBlOps at the weekend, and although it was heavily scripted, it’s presentationally flawless. He was getting into it because he wanted to believe he was a soldier.
Some games intend to do all the work, such as STALKER, and these games we often call ‘immersive’. But I think there’s something to be said for games which encourage a contribution from the gamer too.
16/11/2010 at 18:17 Bhazor says:
So… it’s a good thing when games require no input?
16/11/2010 at 18:24 Face says:
@Mike: Yes, but that’s the opposite of what this game is encouraging.
18/11/2010 at 13:10 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Watch the show and play along, eh? Like an interactive theme park ride.. interaction is optional, but you are urged to because it helps it feel more real.
16/11/2010 at 17:27 Colthor says:
But if you let players’ input matter they’ll just muck up the story or the setpieces, won’t they?
16/11/2010 at 17:27 Vinraith says:
When you set out to make a movie instead of a game, you end up with a movie instead of a game.
16/11/2010 at 19:37 7rigger says:
Nail. Head. Vin just hit it.
16/11/2010 at 19:44 FunkyBadger says:
Save us from “more cinematic experience”.
17/11/2010 at 03:10 Wulf says:
Smart Vin is smart. Unsurprised Wulf is unsurprised. Fed-up-of-memes brigade is fed up, but I digress, this was never funny.
Anyway, I tend to play games where the designers set out to create worlds and experiences rather than just movies, this is very important to me, and I’ve actually stressed that in the past. A film wants to tell you a story, but it’s different from, say, a book, or a storyteller telling tales to children in front of a fireplace. With the vast majority of films, you can just shut your brain off and let it happen, almost like a drug. But when you have something that tries to create a world and/or experience, it then involves people.
I think that’s very important, in fact, for a game, I think that’s one of the most important things it can do. Writing, setting, atmosphere, and consequences are all part of that, consequences are a very important aspect for player involvement, and even RPGs are forgetting that, these days. This is why I cling to developers like Obsidian, really, because they realise exactly what I’m talking about, here. The sad part is though that most gamers don’t want what I or Vin want, they want this, they want BLOPS, they want a polished, perfect AAA game.
Emergent gameplay, ambitious worlds, and cleverness (in dialogue, world, setting, and so on) that might go over the head of the players isn’t something that’s desired, in fact, it’s even shunned and made fun of. Some games even try to encourage players to think, to involve themselves in a world, and it completely fails. A great example of this is Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation, where he wondered why the soda of the Fallout Universe didn’t actually do much to quench thirst. That’s because the soda of our bloody Universe isn’t actually designed to hydrate, but there’s more to it than that. The pre-war society in Fallout was capitalism and corrupt government gone crazy, it was capitalism completely out of control and unchecked, no one cared what horrible chemicals they put in their food, no one cared how quickly it would kill the consumer. CHIN UP, they’d say, because these companies are your family, and you don’t disrespect family.
For that reason, I always avoided pre-prepared goods in the Fallout Universe like the plague, instead I cooked my own food, and I acquired water or other pure liquids which did quench thirst. It’s logical, it’s intelligent, and it requires the player to use their imagination, it makes you a part of the world. See? Something as simple as that makes the person a part of the world. You have two sorts of people there, you have people who’ll see something they aren’t familiar with, people who’ll encounter something strange and exotic… and the one group? They’ll balk at it, won’t they? They’ll yell, scream, and rail against it, it’s not familiar, it’s not easy to understand, and lordy, it might actually be challenging on some level, it might require some creative thinking, it might actually require the gamer to have a bloody BRAIN, and they’d throw a fit over that. The other group? They’d embrace it, love it, and make sense of it all, coming to understand it, and making that world theirs, and making their place for themselves in that world.
And this is why you have two sorts of games, as well, you have more ambitious games, which try to provide a world and experiences, and these might be buggy but that’s because usually people like me can overlook bugs if the game provides an incredibly compelling experience, one with a believable world, one I can really put myself into, you get those sorts of games, and then you get the film-games, the AAA shooters, the games-on-rails, where you don’t really have to think. Everything is familiar, nothing is challenging, you just shut your brain off and blunder through it. I actually really despise that sort of game, and I tend to strongly dislike it when games of my favourite genres invite that sort of thinking in too. It’s why I disliked Dragon Age, which threw out the fantastic in favour of the more familiar, gritty approach, it was Lord of the Rings with grit and bling, there was no imagination there, there was nothing inspiring there, and there was nothing to pull me into that world. In fact, the only thing that required one to have a brain in Dragon Age was the RPG system itself. The world, the setting, the storylines? All completely unchallenging, I felt.
And things are going to continue to go this way. Of course, eventually likely one is going to win, and then all the developers of the other sorts of games are just going to die off. And with how developers like Obsidian are being treated, I can see who’s winning this battle, and it makes me feel sad for the future of gaming, where everyone is a couch potato, and anyone with passing gust of creativity to their soul will have evacuated the scene, looking for other hobbies that might hopefully challenge them. It’s like my own, personal mini-apocalypse, and we’re seeing it right now, with games where you can just shut your brain off and watch as it plays itself.
17/11/2010 at 04:34 Ateius says:
I see Wulf is still out on his one-man crusade to convince the rest of us that there really are only two types of games: the “ambitious” buggy mess and the deep-as-a-puddle but polished to a mirror shine console port, with absolutely no middle ground whatsoever.
Who knows? If he keeps shouting long enough, one day he might succeed. Then it will be my turn to despair, because I prefer my ambitious, open-world, immersive games to go through some semblance of QA before release. But hey, that’s just me.
On the topic of the video: Call of Duty has always been heavily scripted and has usually (though not always; I recall the first game was fond of frequently making you work alone) kept you within spitting distance of NPC allies. Sometimes, like in the opener to Modern Warfare, it’s fairly obvious that you’re largely along for the ride and the NPCs will do most of the work. But in this video, it’s quite clear that they meant for the player to be shooting. The fact that the player can just hide behind a box for several minutes is hilarious.
17/11/2010 at 05:47 Vinraith says:
because I prefer my ambitious, open-world, immersive games to go through some semblance of QA before release.
I’ve never seen a non-buggy game of the type you describe. I’d certainly like to, can you suggest some?
17/11/2010 at 16:46 Ateius says:
I did say “middle ground” somewhere in there, didn’t I? I’m not going to hold out for completely bug-free, but maybe doesn’t eat my savegames would be a nice start.
You know, baby steps.
17/11/2010 at 23:08 Vinraith says:
I’m still genuinely interested in some examples of “acceptable stable” deep and ambitious games. I’d like to play them, after all.
20/11/2010 at 10:08 Chris says:
Define “acceptably”? I mean, I played through STALKER: ShoC unpatched and freaking loved it. Yes, it crashed in the Red forest, but you didn’t need to go near the helicopter, so I stayed away after that. Everyone seems to describe this as a “buggy mess.” For me it was a wonderful, atmospheric experience with the odd problem (and no degrading armour, which was a misfeature).
I’m replaying KOTOR at the moment, and it just CTD’d for no particular reason. Is that unacceptable?
16/11/2010 at 17:28 SirKicksalot says:
It’s the tutorial mission. Shit gets real later.
What matters to me is that the illusion and scripting are perfect. I feel I have to shoot those people, and when I try to flank I’ll never face a NPC that’s immortal until he throws a bottle in the fire to signal the rest of the talibans…
16/11/2010 at 18:26 Mark says:
I’m playing COD:BLOPs through on single player at the moment. To play devil’s advocate, this is the first level, so of course they’re going to go easy on you; secondly, I’d like to see this guy try this on Veteran.
However, leaving all that aside, the level design is boring, the scripting is worse, the direction (guiding the player as to what to do) is sometimes astonishingly poor, and, to top all that off, it feels less interactive than Modern Warfare 2 did. IW made an art out of scripted, exciting set pieces. Treyarch just aren’t as talented as them.
@SirKicksalot:
I have come across points in BLOPs where enemy AI is invulnerable for a few seconds while an animation plays out. That maybe part of the reason why I felt that bullets didn’t feel like they were impacting enemies the same as they were in MW2. It’s really illusion shattering.
16/11/2010 at 20:09 Skurmedel says:
This problem has been present in pretty much all the Call of Duties, you could sit at certain places and shoot an infinite amount of enemies. Only when I moved forward did the story progress and the enemies stopped spawning. I became aware that behind the scenery enemies spawned infinitely; like knowing the secrets of a magic trick.
You can/could shoot people locked into scripted animations, but it wouldn’t do anything. If I see some guy assaulting a friendly NPC I would of course react, but when my bullets didn’t do anything the whole illusion waned. This scene could have been much more satisfying if killing the enemy would’ve saved the NPC.
I think Call of Duty is way to scripted for me to ever enjoy it. I had trouble with the scripting in Call of Duty 4, where at least death was imminent if I did not respond. But often I felt like a camera travelling through a movie, there is a lot of shit going on, but what I do doesn’t matter one bit. Mostly the mechanics of the game boiled down to “avoid grenade, snipe dude A”, it is very shallow. If I want to feel part of a war I would go fire up Band of Brothers which delivers a much more satisfying illusion. Or at least Red Orchestra.
16/11/2010 at 17:30 JohnArr says:
It’s a roller-coaster guys! Just put your hands in the air and scream!
16/11/2010 at 17:47 Okami says:
The funny thing is, it looks like you can actually throw your hands in the air while playing and still complete the mission :)
16/11/2010 at 17:53 Vinraith says:
@Okami
Nope, gotta hold down that “w” key to keep moving forward. Hooray for player agency!
16/11/2010 at 18:04 Tokjos says:
You can hold down w without using your hands! :)
16/11/2010 at 18:19 Bhazor says:
Well a rollercoaster that cost £40-£60.
16/11/2010 at 22:27 teo says:
If your dick is small enough to only hit one key
16/11/2010 at 17:34 Ricc says:
The Call of Duty series is not trying to simulate war. It’s trying to simulate an action movie. Instead of going back to these interrogation scenes, they might as well show the cast getting their make-up done or talking to the director. It wouldn’t be jarring at all.
And as Arnie showed us so well in Last Action Hero, the hero never dies in an action movie. ;)
16/11/2010 at 18:21 EthZee says:
My friend, that idea is excellent. A big-budget, action movie-style shooter, where the point is that it is an action movie, and all the characters and mooks are actors, and all the weapons shoot blanks, and the cars and barrels are fitted with flashpots and barrels of wired-up gasoline so that they explode like they do in films and videogames?
That would be brilliant.
16/11/2010 at 22:12 Devan says:
No One Lives Forever 2 was spoofing an action movie, but it only tips you off in the last level when there’s an awkward cutscene, which you don’t really understand unless you sneak around later and overhear the villian complaining about one of the actors.
It’s hilarious because it’s not obvious, and it casts the whole game in a different light but only after you’ve nearly finished it.
Good, good game.
17/11/2010 at 02:31 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
Yea, no one lives for ever was indeed an awesome game. The Just Cause games also seem to go for the, “this is just an action movie” approach. (I really prefer No One Lives forever, though, is it still available on Steam? Oh and where was that post where they asked for entries on the list of ‘must-play’ games?)
17/11/2010 at 09:22 TonyB says:
I agree with EthZee, there’s a touch of genius in that game idea. All sorts of things you could do with it are running through my head now.
17/11/2010 at 14:32 battles_atlas says:
Hasn’t MW already done this though? If I remember right the credits of MW2 show a series of dioramas from the game in a museum like setting. I thought it was the only glimpse of self-awareness in the whole game – “Look! It was all just a ridiculous facade!”
16/11/2010 at 17:37 Jim Rossignol says:
This is like the polar opposite to Front Mission Evolved, where the robots on opposing sides will shoot at each other ineffectually for hours, forcing you to step in and use the only real gun on your team.
16/11/2010 at 17:55 Gap Gen says:
I think the AI in previous CoDs refused to advance unless you went first in many cases. This kinda sucked sometimes, too, because the AI would wait a bit before following and let you get shot from a few different directions. Still preferable to allowing you to be passive, I guess.
16/11/2010 at 18:28 Mark says:
Gap Gen is right, in that the same applies here. I think it’s just because this is the first mission that you’re being guided more than usual. It’s certainly overdone, though.
16/11/2010 at 19:32 TK says:
At many times in the game I just inched past the trigger point and hauled ass back to let my teammates rush in and do the dirty work. The game has to be played this way because it really doesn’t have much in the way of AI. Their only programming, as far as we can tell, is to run to a predetermined cover point for each NPC, take shots, attempt to move forward, repeat process until NPC can melee player. The NPC teammates are programmed to run to a specific cover point, and proceed to the next pre-determined point either when resistance is low or the player reaches the trigger (which happens to be 5-10 yards ahead of the closest teammate cover point).
I can say with quite a bit of certainty that if you took out the teammates and made the player invincible, the enemy NPCs will behave more like a zombie mob than as soldiers, and you will find the player will be surrounded by a large group of NPCs. There could be some protection against that, as enemies will only come around the corner of your cover one at a time, and it seems some enemies never move from their first shooting point.
I hate to bring it to Crysis and Halo, but the AI had something right when they would (somewhat) properly flank you. I don’t think it’s much more of a stretch to add cover fire to the flanking, but the designers would have to prioritize that over other game features. Too bad even the classic non-linear shooters (R6) have dropped their level of design sense over the series. The problem is that the simple and stupid gameplay is what sells, and the people that try to implement advanced AI market their games to the more hardcore audience under the guise of realism. Designers should really just stick in AI and let the game reviewers reveal it and hype about it when the game comes out.
16/11/2010 at 17:37 Tei says:
From a philosophy point is very interesting. The player is unnecessary, the achievements are a joke more than ever.
From a gamer point of view there’s not much to say, the people that play this level probably has fun, and is not aware is on a setpiece. Fun is the most important part of a game, so is a ok game.
16/11/2010 at 18:55 DollarOfReactivity says:
@Tei
Totally agree. In some cases the illusion of importance is enough. I’m reminded of a huge setpiece battle in one of the Wing Commander games, dodging lasers in your fighter while two capital ships duke it out. Probably nothing you can do to affect anything or even get accidentally blasted by one of the big guns, but it was awesome all the same. Of course in that game, like CoDBO, at other times your input is critical.
16/11/2010 at 22:07 DMcCool says:
The problem here is that the player character’s role in the story and the player character’s role in actuality are not identical – as they should be. In the mythology of the game, in set pieces like that your imput was important – you were part of a small team massively outnumbered, relying on eachother to escape and survive. However, if a game is too scared to show failure states of any kind, which includes being unwilling to plan for failure states that do not result in Game Over (see Dragon Age’s last act), then the player will never recieve the feedback that places him inside these sorts of situations, as an actor in a role, and not merely a spectator. Its cowardly, lazy game design. No, its not even game design, its cinematography in games. Which is fine: this is a piece of entertainment, but it should only be viewed as such; as an example of how a studio can avoid designing a game if they try hard enough.
16/11/2010 at 22:17 Tei says:
@DMcCool
Thanks, you did a fantastic post here. Now I can see the flaw you point and is a important one. Anyway since this game will only play once, maybe very few, or no one, will see the flaw. Is like making a RPG with options to choose evil and good side, and forget to implement evil side, very few people will chose the evil side.
16/11/2010 at 17:40 Tacroy says:
You know, this actually raises some relatively interesting moral questions – if you could go through the game without killing those NPCs, if their bullets can’t hit you often enough to actually kill you, are you really justified in killing them?
16/11/2010 at 17:40 Theory says:
Blatant mechanical spoilers in this post.
16/11/2010 at 18:26 itaniknight says:
I like what you’ve done here.
17/11/2010 at 03:03 DrazharLn says:
You stole my post.
16/11/2010 at 17:49 Nathan says:
So? This is clearly the tutorial mission on the easiest difficulty. I don’t see why it’s a big deal if someone doesn’t have fun with a game whilst intentionally playing it in a way that isn’t fun.
16/11/2010 at 17:52 Vinraith says:
Actually, it’s the second hardest difficulty, as you’d know if you’d read the article or watched the video.
16/11/2010 at 18:32 mwoody says:
But it’s still the tutorial mission, which needs to be pointed out loudly and often. Show me this done in a later level and we have an interesting problem.
16/11/2010 at 18:36 Mman says:
“But it’s still the tutorial mission, which needs to be pointed out loudly and often.”
This. BLOPS is hardly the pinnacle of interactivity, but there’s no way you can get through any later areas (outside of a couple of story-based sections anyway) like this on the top couple of difficulty settings.
16/11/2010 at 19:18 JKjoker says:
it might be the “tutorial mission” but the rest are really not that much better, they just put a few more meat walls between cutscenes
worst of all is that sometimes you feel like you are in the way of the script, i remember how pissed off i was in No Russian when i reloaded the level and opened fire as soon as i got out of the elevator just to find that the cardboard “civilians” wont die or react in any way until scripted to do so, i found a few of these in BLOPS
the most outrageous one because you are very likely to shoot before the script plays out is a dude that drops a flame thrower and you are told to grab it and burn everyone a level or two before the end, there is also that moment when you are infiltrating the missile base and you are supposed to use stealth, your partner is slow so youll probably take the lead by accident but since the helicopters will see you no matter where you hide unless you are right where you partner is youll fail the mission
they dont even let you move your head during cutscenes anymore, you can sort of tilt it but its like you are struggling against someone that is grabbing your head and forcing you to look at a certain place, and the QTE parts are so hilariously pathetic i rather they left them as cutscenes like the car “driving” scene in this video or when you rappel down in a few places
16/11/2010 at 20:22 Taillefer says:
I think the lesson is not to try and have an intense, actiony level as the tutorial since you can’t punish the player during it. Although, I’m not sure such games need a tutorial level.
16/11/2010 at 20:24 Nathan says:
Apologies for that. I did actually watch the whole video after someone linked it elsewhere a couple of days ago, but muted after a few seconds because the guy’s voice was grating on me.
I think my point still stands though: I don’t really care if someone plays a game (particularly the tutorial of a game) in a way that’s intentionally un-fun. A game is only ever about how much fun the individual can extract from the experience if it’s the sort of game they’re after.
17/11/2010 at 02:37 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
If you can go through the entire tutorial by shooting twice, in a game where shooting lots of people is the main mechanic, how successful was that tutorial?
16/11/2010 at 17:50 terry says:
I preferred Bungle when he was on Rainbow :-(
16/11/2010 at 17:55 Mechorpheus says:
I totally agreed with John regarding the ‘Oh for gods sake they shot that guy again!’ issues with MoH, but found CODBLOPS to be nothing like as bad in this regard. You mostly had to do something to make progress, especially towards the end, unlike in MoH where you could do the whole game on hard without really thinking at all.
Thoroughly enjoyed the CODBLOPS single-player all told, far more than stupid Modern Warfare 2. At least your player character had a bit more presence in the world (had a few spoken lines COULD OPEN DOORS SOMETIMES!!!), without being the all obeying mute. Particularly incongruous was that in MW2 good old Soap Mctavish spend the whole game shouting about everything, then as soon as you stepped into his shoes his tongue dropped out.
16/11/2010 at 17:56 Lu-Tze says:
*pulls beard off Santa Claus*
“Hey this is just a guy in a suit! He’s not the real Santa at all!”
But you know, sometimes it’s just fun to pretend.
16/11/2010 at 17:56 bleeters says:
Out of interest, does the player jump off the plane themselves, or does the game boot you out the door?
16/11/2010 at 20:24 Skurmedel says:
It kicks you out, then you run and press fire. The scripting wouldn’t have worked if you instead decide to run away and cook a dinner in the hangars behind you. Although that would have been a more worthwhile endeavour.
16/11/2010 at 20:58 Rinox says:
The game does it.
16/11/2010 at 21:00 JKjoker says:
the game boot you out of the plane and puts the mortar in the center of you hud, you get to press forward once you are in the ground
16/11/2010 at 21:16 bleeters says:
So, essentially:
“WHAT’RE YOU DOING?!”
“I HAVE NO IDEA”
Harrumph :(
16/11/2010 at 18:00 Griddle Octopus says:
That said, Call of Duty 2, on Veteran difficulty was amazingly tough – I remember playing the same ten seconds over and over, trying to get through one of the Russian levels; and you couldn’t just sit still, as the enemies would hunt you down. Perhaps they’ve realised the vast majority of gamers just want to feel like heroes, and aren’t very good at games?
16/11/2010 at 23:01 Bob Bobson says:
Then the vast majority of gamers should avoid the hardest difficulty levels. That’s what difficulty levels are for, so people that want to kick back and enjoy the cinema can put it on a low one, and people that want ot play the same 10 seconds a hundred times until they perfect it can put it on a high one.
16/11/2010 at 18:01 coldwave says:
This has to end soon.
At some point people will realize this is wrong and stop making single player military shooters.
16/11/2010 at 18:05 Basilicus says:
It’s a shame, especially when compared to the original Call of Duty and CoD: United Offensive, which were truly difficult games. CoD2 struck a great balance of scripting versus difficulty.
I miss CoD making me feel like I was in a war. It’s this special ops stuff, that takes away the feeling of being in a war and suddenly makes you Arnobruce Stallonorris, that’s ruined the entire gameplay philosophy.
16/11/2010 at 19:20 N'Al says:
I’ve now decided to call my firstborn son Arnobruce Stallonorris. Too good an opportunity to miss.
16/11/2010 at 18:06 bansama says:
While I’d consider this sort of thing acceptable for say a “casual” difficulty level, it’s inexcusable on the harder settings.
As to the comment, “At some point people will realize this is wrong and stop making single player military shooters.” that’s just as ridiculous. People who enjoy single player games shouldn’t be restricted from genres they enjoy just because some developers want to be lazy. If anything, the demand should be on the developers to do a far better job.
16/11/2010 at 18:08 Colej_uk says:
CoD has always been an on-rails action movie rollercoaster ride. Back in the day of the first one, it being a PC exclusive, I’d like to pretend it was more sophisticated and realistic, but that simply was never the case. This video doesn’t surprise me.
But: I don’t think it’s a bad thing. We have games where the player does all the work (stalker) and games where realism really is the focus (arma). This is CoD; its fun, action-orientated, popcorn entertainment. Who cares if it’s a rollercoaster? Rollercoasters are fun!
16/11/2010 at 23:45 Spacewalk says:
Ah those were the days, when you couldn’t sleep through a COD game because your health wouldn’t auto-regenerate.
16/11/2010 at 18:13 Crapknocker says:
Would the not-shooting-anyone action be better if you had a healing gun and wacky hats?
16/11/2010 at 18:21 coldwave says:
And item store.
16/11/2010 at 19:40 Arthur Barnhouse says:
Yes, because the healing gun would at least provide agency in what’s occurring.
16/11/2010 at 19:48 Lilliput King says:
And at least then you actually have to dodge, rather than sit staring vacantly into the eyes of your aggressors.
16/11/2010 at 18:22 Lobotomist says:
This is why I dont play MW games.
When it comes to dumbing down , question is how much is too much?
The game playing for itself ? Even on hard difficulty?
Problem with MW games. That even if you try to dictate your pace , and play better – than the game kills you (no mater how good you are) you must play at predetermined pace, or no pace at all.
I long for the days when we will go back to games that require skill
17/11/2010 at 00:07 squidlarkin says:
Lots of games still require skill. As a bonus, most of them don’t cost $60!
http://www.supercratebox.com/
17/11/2010 at 10:00 Al3xand3r says:
I guess you’re saying you’ll play this because it’s not a “MW game”?
16/11/2010 at 18:25 cov says:
Anyone who paid good money for ths 6 hour action movie has been had.
I have never played a more heavily scripted and un-viable game in my life.
16/11/2010 at 19:40 Zenicetus says:
So, you didn’t play Mafia II, then?
‘;)
16/11/2010 at 20:05 cov says:
At least MAFIA II had boobs.
16/11/2010 at 21:09 JKjoker says:
and long boring drives in slow cars with crappy handling and the fact you cant speed too much without risking the police chasing you/crashing which is likely to force you to go back to the checkpoint 30 minutes ago, oh and the toilet cleaning
at least you got to drive with more than just two mouse buttons
16/11/2010 at 18:29 Dervish says:
I don’t see a fundamental design flaw here, just an indication that the game is a bit too easy, and the AI buddies a bit too effective. COD games have always been pretty easy on Hardened. Clearly they went too far this time around, but the player takes damage at various points, so some tweaking of the variables seems all that’s really needed. Hell, maybe upping the difficulty to Veteran would be enough.
For COD4 I remember a bunch of people complaining that your AI friends were too ineffective and wouldn’t move up without you, or that all the enemies seemed to target you instead of them. Let’s not act like this is a question of the player’s role or interactivity when it’s a simple problem of balancing difficulty vs. competency of AI teammates.
Also: I bet I could go through most of HL2 Ep1 letting Alyx kill all the enemies, too.
I am also interested whether this really is just a case of “easy tutorial mission” as others have suggested.
16/11/2010 at 19:31 Brumisator says:
I recently replayed Ep1 in detail, tried all kinds of silly things, and Alyx WILL DIE if you leave her alone and don’t help. Even on the easy difficulty setting.
it’s a really clever move on treyarch’s part. Nobody can honestry say CODBLOPS is a bad game…becasue it’s not a game at all, it’s a cut-scene all the way through!
I have nothing but irrational hate for this franchise and I wish for everyone who works on it to DIE HORRIBLY!
16/11/2010 at 19:49 FunkyBadger says:
Brumisator: re: Alyx: Good.
16/11/2010 at 18:30 Satchel_Charge says:
man this is depressing
16/11/2010 at 18:32 FhnuZoag says:
There is basically two factors at play here:
1. Effective, invincible AI buddies. Invincible AI buddies will always kill everything, assuming you give them enough time and avoid getting shot yourself. (Which the player in this video was doing by hiding all the time.)
2. Invincibility flag set in the ending sequence. I’m guessing they found it too frustrating in playtests. The explosions just before that can’t kill you, because remember that part in COD1 where you had to go exactly along the right path or get killed by a mortar shell? That was LAME.
It’s not really that bad for a tutorial level. Compare MW where the first level had no enemies on it, and the second level you were confined to the interior of a car and couldn’t shoot.
16/11/2010 at 18:33 Yargh says:
Quite frankly, in any game, there’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re irrelevant to the events going on. Might as well watch a film instead.
16/11/2010 at 18:37 Araxiel says:
The comments section is even far more interesting.
16/11/2010 at 18:38 Psyk says:
mmmmmm This is pretty much how I completed both modern warfares on veteran.
EDIT
“For COD4 I remember a bunch of people complaining that your AI friends were too ineffective and wouldn’t move up without you, or that all the enemies seemed to target you instead of them.”
They were alright, the never ending enemies on the other hand
16/11/2010 at 18:44 Ruuh says:
Isn’t the ability to advance through the game without shooting men in face one of the reasons for which Planescape: Torment and Fallout are regarded as classics?
16/11/2010 at 18:45 cov says:
CODBLOPS is an open world RPG?
16/11/2010 at 19:37 D says:
If only we could talk to the men. This is critical.
16/11/2010 at 22:22 Wowza says:
No, but neither are those two games.
17/11/2010 at 10:00 James T says:
Unlike in the above video, to do so in either of those games involves effort and good judgement.
17/11/2010 at 10:17 Forch says:
i suspect you are a troll, because COD is a first person SHOOTER, and fallout is a role playing game.
16/11/2010 at 18:56 T says:
the SP campaign its more off a movie than a game (a bad movie)
It should be caller RPFS where R stands for Rail or a GMovie, meaning a Movie you experience by one off the characters
Aftwerwards you can use the same carachter in a game (MP part) with diferent disguises on some of the movie setings.
Its all ok, except when they sold it as a Game.. not to mention a PC game…
16/11/2010 at 20:33 Archonsod says:
Actually, just replace the gun with a video camera and rename it Call of Duty : War Correspondent.
16/11/2010 at 21:08 Lachlan says:
See, that could actually be a really good concept for a game because the player is using his FPS “birthright” (a camera view pointing at the action) AS agency. It would provide a convincing reason for the player to hide, run, and generally try not to get shot.
You’re on to something there.
16/11/2010 at 22:54 stahlwerk says:
“I covered wars, you know?”
17/11/2010 at 07:27 DJ Phantoon says:
And then you end up at a mall filled with zombies, and can karate chop dudes in HALF.
18/11/2010 at 03:04 DigitalSignalX says:
Wasn’t there some game where the protagonist had a camera and the whole point was to run around with your wacky sidekick and photograph the evil-doer-stuff while avoiding violent confrontations? I forget the name.
Anywho – I think the video’s narrator had it spot on with the console comment. Remove them from the picture, and this sort of optional interaction would never be a multi-million dollar franchise.
16/11/2010 at 19:03 Taillefer says:
I actually quite like the idea of a game where you just have to avoid damage as opposing sides fight it out.
16/11/2010 at 19:51 Zenicetus says:
You can do a little of that in Fallout: New Vegas, by staying neutral with factions who hate each other (and then looting the bodies after a battle… heh… get more loot that way). It’s not a central part of the game, but it’s possible here and there with certain quests.
I’m not sure I’d like a game where I was forced into that stand-offish role though. What makes it fun in that game is the ability to choose whether to participate or not, and on what side of a conflict. Pretty much the opposite of an on-rails FPS.
25/11/2010 at 08:18 drygear says:
I was thinking that too. It could be like Catch-22: the game.
16/11/2010 at 19:08 Jimbo says:
So the first 15 minutes (probably less if you were playing it as intended) of a 6-7 hour campaign can be played like that. Does it work on the next level? How about the one after that? It seems likely that the opening is deliberately designed like that to ease the player into the game. For the one in x million players that decided to go out of their way to play the first level as seen in this video, then yeah it looks dumb (particularly the plane part), but for everybody else their design works as they intended.
How much of MW2 can you get through without playing your part? The first half of No Russian is the single instance I can think of. That part is obviously deliberately designed to be like that and lasts a few minutes (how is that any more objectionable than a cutscene would be?), and anybody *forcing* you to open fire during that part would make no story sense at all.
17/11/2010 at 10:04 Al3xand3r says:
6 hours isn’t a whole lot, and there are plenty more a-few-minutes-long segments where you don’t do much scattered throughout the game, even if it’s not complete levels like this one.
16/11/2010 at 19:09 Rond says:
Hey, you people used to praise Deus Ex for being able to complete the whole game without a single shot! :D
16/11/2010 at 19:15 Shakermaker says:
6:27
Elitists ftl
16/11/2010 at 19:17 SlappyBag says:
People don’t seem to get the idea that its supposed to be an on-rails shooter, its supposed to throw the player head first into combat and make him feel as if hes just a slightly above average marine, thats what it tends to do well.
Also, most people buy it for the multiplayer anyway.
16/11/2010 at 19:33 Tyshalle says:
MW2 was so much better than this game. It still had the same illusion going, but it was much less obvious. I don’t know why John Walker brought up No Russian, as IW said right from the getgo that you wouldn’t have to participate in that level at all if you didn’t want to, so I don’t find it to be a particularly great example.
Black Ops sucks as a single player campaign. I had a ton of fun in the James Bond-style action of MW2, but the scripting in this game is so terrible. There was one level where a bridge apparently must get blown up with you on it, but they give you like 2 full seconds to machine-gun the asshole carrying the bazooka, and it doesn’t have any effect. I can’t remember anything like that in MW2.
This video doesn’t surprise me all that much. One thing that I am not a fan of in all the CoD games is how all the key NPC’s are invincible, but they are able to easily dispatch the enemies. No wonder you can just walk through this level without firing a shot. It’d be much better if primary NPC’s had more hit points, and did less damage to other NPC’s, so that they could still be killed.
On the other hand, I don’t want to have to baby sit NPC’s if the mission is gonna end should they die. So maybe they did right. Either way I don’t think this video is very revealing of anything.
16/11/2010 at 19:41 Tyshalle says:
Also, y’know, it’s not like the dude isn’t struggling to stay alive. He’s getting shot, he’s dropping into cover, he’s hiding. Certainly his survival would be made much easier by shooting.
So what exactly do you want, here? He’s still using strategy and playing the game, he’s just letting his teammates take down the enemies. I really don’t see the problem here.
It’s one mission, guys.
17/11/2010 at 09:45 Nallen says:
The question is, if the video was made to show that if you didn’t shoot then your buddies would essentially never manage anything at all by themselves (like the Front Mission Example) would everyone be up in arms about that? I think so.
16/11/2010 at 19:37 nobody says:
This was actually an acclaimed feature in the original Operation Flashpoint (Cold War Crisis). AI would mind its business and stuff would happen regardless of your actions or even presence, AI winning the mission for you being one of them :)
16/11/2010 at 19:38 Clovis says:
That dude was straight up beastin’!!!!!
16/11/2010 at 19:39 Thoroughly Annoyed says:
What disturbs me the most is that a far too large amount of people here are defending this as being perfectly fine and implying that it is the player’s / gamer’s fault if he can’t make/force himself to enjoy it / pretend.
RIght, so the challenge is no longer in the game, but in me lying to myself enough to enjoy it and stay.
What, are you all in a dysfunctional relationship and too afraid to leave or where is this psychotic logic coming from?
Seriously worrying defense and logic.
Like some, I do hope this devolution stops soon, because I for one would like to actually still participate and be challenged in a game, feeling like what I do not only matters, but can tangibly impact and change the gaming world \around\ me.
Also wtf @ new captcah system.
16/11/2010 at 20:08 cov says:
Remember when games used to be hard?
That was awesome.
16/11/2010 at 21:26 Sir-Lucius says:
But not everyone LIKES hard games. That’s not a hard concept to understand. I understand where you’re coming from, I really do, but there’s a large segment of the population that doesn’t play games for more involved player/game interactivity. Modern CoD games have very clearly been targeting this segment of gamer. So just because it doesn’t fit with your perception of what makes “good” gaming doesn’t mean that it’s a bad design philosophy. There’s an inherent NEED on the part of the player to immerse themselves in the world of the CoD games. It’s an on-rails, heavily scripted game, where you’re not supposed to be directing the world around you with your actions but playing out the role of an action hero. It’s a movie from the first person point of view.
The CoD games from top to bottom are painted in broad strokes. It’s like those images where you have to defocus your eyes in order to see, but the second you blink the whole facade drops and you’re looking at gibberish. Keep moving forward, never look back. Just because you may need to force yourself to pretend what you’re doing matters doesn’t mean that the majority of people who are going to play the game need to, and when the game is designed around that principle then it is the “fault” (although the word is more negative than I want) of the player that they don’t click with the philosophy. It’s not bad, it’s just not for you.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not my personal preference when it comes to game mechanics, and I have plenty of issues with BLOPS. I love the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series MORE than the next guy, and I’d love to see GSC’s approach to design and immersion mimicked on a larger scale across the industry. But that being said I do still enjoy turning my brain off and running through the CoD campaigns from time to time. It’s popcorn gaming, and I don’t quite see the point of going out of your way to play a game “wrong” and then throwing a fit when it becomes brazenly obvious that you’re not supposed to think when playing.
To me it’s like watching any of the old 80′s action movies and whining and complaining about how the hero should have bled out 15 minutes into the film or how shooting a gas canister won’t cause a mini-nuclear explosion. Yeah, you’re right, but nobody cares. You’re missing the point, no matter has mind numbingly simple that point may be.
16/11/2010 at 21:48 SlappyBag says:
@Sir-Lucius
I love you.
16/11/2010 at 22:30 Zogtee says:
There’s an impressive number of people here telling me what this game and level is supposed to be and how I’m supposed to feel about it. It’s like the scripting is carrying over into real life.
17/11/2010 at 09:16 ix says:
You “lying” to yourself is what they call suspension of disbelief. I could go on a rant about how all movies suck because they require you to believe the people on the screen aren’t actors with make-up on. But I didn’t, because that would be silly.
Not that I intend to play CODBLOPS, but I did play mass effect 1 and 2. Although I died here and there, that really is on rails just as much as this one. All those big choices you’re offered, does it matter? Now if I could betray humanity and side with the reapers, that would be something.
22/11/2010 at 14:58 K says:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.245575-Extra-Credits-Easy-Games
This sums it up perfectly.
16/11/2010 at 19:42 DiamondDog says:
Unfortunately I didn’t get to the best bit because around half way in he told me to “get the fuck off” his channel. Seems like a reasonable chap.
All I’ll say is, if I ever watch Transformers 2 I won’t be shocked by its stupidity. When does it become redundant to point out that the CoD series is unsophisticated? I’m not saying we shouldn’t be critical but we know by now, don’t we?
16/11/2010 at 20:49 JFS says:
Yeah he sure is. How can one be so stupid to ruin the great idea of the video with such a childish crap. Makes me sad, even sadder than the revelation that Call of Duty is quite a not-so-intellectual game franchise.
16/11/2010 at 19:45 l1ddl3monkey says:
I bought this. I regret buying it, it’s balls.
16/11/2010 at 19:50 briktal says:
I don’t see how this is really any different than the many many other games where you can just run past all the enemies without shooting them (Well, most of them. You might need to take a few key ones out here or there to stay alive). And most of the ones you can’t are the ones that don’t unlock the door until you kill all the guys in the room.
16/11/2010 at 19:51 Frosty says:
People might be defending this by saying it’s the tutorial level but the fact that the level allows you to complete the airplane section without a single shot fired is pretty bloody stupid.
16/11/2010 at 19:52 GenBanks says:
This has probably already been pointed out in the comments above me, but the ‘No Russian’ mission of MW2 is not a good comparison to this. That set out to be a show, and couldn’t be anything else since your opponents were unarmed. The handful of cops you meet are intended to be victims just as much as the civilians. & anyway, it would have been ludicrous to implement a gameplay requirement that the player take part in the massacre.
What I found annoying about that mission was the fact that it felt like I could easily have killed the small bunch of terrorists and ended the entire story then and there.
16/11/2010 at 20:57 Jimbo says:
From your character’s perspective you were there to get closer to Makarov with the aim of working your way up the food chain. Killing Makarov and his guys was already achievable at any time without going on the mission, but wouldn’t have helped you achieve what you were supposedly there to do.
Or at least, that’s the situation as far as your character is concerned. In reality of course you are just being given to Makarov by Shepard so that he has a US agent to dump at the scene. Had you killed Makarov and stopped the attack anyway, it still wouldn’t have ‘ended the entire story’, because Shepard would still be unexposed and would presumably just find another way to fake a US attack on Russia.
17/11/2010 at 03:53 internisus says:
“it would have been ludicrous to implement a gameplay requirement that the player take part in the massacre.”
Nope. That would have been the gutsy, interesting thing to do. Along with removing that ridiculous warning that pops up before you start the game.
18/11/2010 at 18:59 Jimbo says:
As gutsy and interesting as that may be (which is questionable – it’s not like I haven’t killed innocent virtual people in a game before), it would have been ludicrous on the grounds that it’d make no sense. Nobody present during that mission has any believable motive to force you to open fire on the civilians.
16/11/2010 at 19:59 skyturnedred says:
AI mates can be done in two ways: either they do the work for you, or they are totally useless. Getting it just right somewhere in the middle seems impossible. I prefer for them to be useful: they’re helping me and I’m helping them. “We’re in this shit together” and all that comradery. Of course, giving the option to coop is always better.
16/11/2010 at 20:15 noobnob says:
The rant around 6 minutes kinda ruined it for me. But the video still shows some glaring flaws on the game’s scripting and AI…I’d like to see a complete walkthrough without firing a gun, or as little as possible, on Veteran.
16/11/2010 at 20:38 Jimbo says:
I’m pretty sure the second level reverts to the typical CoD mechanic, which is the rest of your ‘team’ waiting for you to fight your way forward to a certain point before they move up.
Off the top of my head, I think you would get killed about 2 minutes into the second level if you didn’t return fire (you are taking cover behind a moving object and enemies run up on either side of you).
But hey, let’s not let reality get in the way of a good CoD bashing!
17/11/2010 at 01:40 Loveschach says:
You seem pretty defensive over this bad game, Jimbo.
18/11/2010 at 19:49 Jimbo says:
No, I’m defensive about people being wilfully ignorant in order to bash a game just because it’s popular (here) to bash – I felt the same about the No Russian article and said so then too. Clutching at straws like this makes RPS and many of the commenters here seem desperate. It just comes across as a bad case of Scorned Woman Syndrome rather than any coherent position that somebody should take seriously.
I’ll summarise the argument: “You can get through the first 15 minutes without playing a decisive role, *massive leap of logic / wilful ignorance*, therefore I will extrapolate and apply this observation across the whole game.”
Slating the first 15 minutes for not requiring enough input for your liking is fair game – debatable, but fair. Implying that this 15 minutes is demonstrative of the game as a whole is just straight up disingenuous.
I have no problem with people criticising the game at all – my own experience tells me that the PC version at least is technically incompetent – but we don’t need to lower ourselves to blatantly making shit up about a game just to make it easier to bash. It rings hollow and makes me feel queasy. That’s why I call it out when I see it.
16/11/2010 at 20:31 stahlwerk says:
This is like a meta let’s play: I’m not playing a game but watching someone else not playing a game, and yet we both experience it.
Interesting times.
16/11/2010 at 20:35 manintheshack says:
Seems like this man has put far too much effort into proving something most people must surely know but choose to ignore. Point is – wouldn’t it be more fun if he just had a go at shooting the bad guys? Does anyone really expect any COD game to be anything more than a barely interactive fairground ride?
Hate the games because they’re repetitive spurts of machismo driven by spectacle and little else, not because if you try especially hard not to be shot then the NPCs might take 30 seconds to kill a man at 50 yards on the first level. Would it not be worse if you could leave the two sides eternally exchanging fire with ne’er a wound between them? And I don’t get the significance of the last few minutes of the video. The mounted gun sections have always just been irritating filler in the CoD games. Sitting back and watching things roll along without you at least negates the need to actually be involved in the bastard thing.
Also, his tedious comments about the death of PC gaming are less than amusing. We shouldn’t be promoting this toolbag’s twaddle.
16/11/2010 at 20:37 ZIGS says:
“I kind of miss the days when games were judged on their game-playing merit alone. I’m a little concerned about how far we (the game industry) are into the licensed four-page-ad marketing blitz era these days, which may be a natural evolution of the industry. But I’m always worried when we put more emphasis on glitz and production values than on the game. That’s a trend that looks good for a while until you realize there’s no game industry any more. If we don’t have gameplay, we can’t really compete with other forms of entertainment because we can’t do graphics as good as the movie industry and we can’t make sounds as well as the recording industry. All we can do that’s special to us is be interactive. So we have to hang on to that and make sure we do a good job.” -Sid Meier, creator of Civilization, in 1998
*single tear rolls down cheek*
16/11/2010 at 20:46 Isaac says:
To everyone who says “this is just the tutorial level”:
Yes, tutorial levels are supposed to be easy. However, tutorial levels are also supposed to teach you how to play the game. If you are not required to play the game, it is a bad tutorial. Black Ops being a shooter, not being required to shoot in the tutorial seems pretty stupid.
16/11/2010 at 21:14 starclaws says:
More and more people getting tired of the Interactive Movie genre of games.
17/11/2010 at 00:40 Kieron Gillen says:
Your comment broke me.
No, they’re not. And if some people are, many more people like it this way.
How can you tell? Because this is going to be one of the biggest selling games of all time.
(I admit. since it *is* the tutorial level, I don’t think the video means that much. I remember playing Contract Jack, and in the first screen I could stand there getting shot and never die. This, bless it, at least keeps relatively ludicrous coherence. It’s a level about learning to point and shoot and follow a level’s terrain and all that jazz. It’s about trying to present a forum to learn basic skills to play the game, while giving a lot of colour to give you a feel for it.
In short: GOOD FAITH ASSUMES YOU WILL PLAY IT AND THUS LEARN THE SKILLS IT’S TRYING TO TEACH YOU. You don’t play the game, you’re playing in Bad Faith. Punishing people who are playing in Bad Faith also means punishing the people who are genuinely, awesomely incompetent before they’ve got a taste for the game. They have somewhat understandably decided to not worry about the people who are just being dicks with the game in favour of trying to welcome in people who need a bit more support.
Okay. That’s not that much “in short”.
And as a general design point, a game which doesn’t punish incompetence isn’t the same thing as a game which doesn’t reward brilliance. We can easily imagine a game like Lego Star Wars where to really do anything worthwhile you had to play it like God Hand.)
Would I design a game like this? No. Absolutely not. But I’m not being asked to make back 50 Million Plus on my game decisions.
KG
17/11/2010 at 00:50 Nalano says:
Then, KG, what you have may be wildly successful, but gaming it most certainly is not.
As such I have a perfectly reasonable and justifiable grievance in that, by rewarding companies for making these non-games, my choice of actual, viable gaming experience is curtailed and limited.
As I tell my students: Screw up your own education all you want, but fuck with the other kids’ learning in the classroom and I will put you in a world of hurt.
17/11/2010 at 00:57 Mman says:
Except, as Kieron and some others have said, this is pretty much the tutorial (and by extension, about 15 minutes of a 6-8 hour game), and, at least on the higher difficulty settings, you aren’t going to get anywhere past this if you don’t do something; which makes terms like “non-game” absurdly loaded.
17/11/2010 at 01:17 Kieron Gillen says:
Or to put it another way: are you, experienced gamer, so shit that you expected to die in the tutorial?
KG
17/11/2010 at 01:32 Vinraith says:
In short: GOOD FAITH ASSUMES YOU WILL PLAY IT AND THUS LEARN THE SKILLS IT’S TRYING TO TEACH YOU. You don’t play the game, you’re playing in Bad Faith.
Conversely, good faith also assumes that interaction with the game has meaning. When the game is designed to play itself in the absence of your input, it’s designed in bad faith. I’m sure later levels require interaction, but the design priorities of the developers are pretty well spelled out when the tutorial is “press w to win” even on high difficulties.
17/11/2010 at 03:05 Theater says:
Thank you Kieron.
I want to argue something about the history of entertainment: every form of entertainment at some point requires the famous term suspension of disbelief. Games require this, too. At some point the designer (writer, actor, director) is expecting the player to act a certain way and the rest of the game (book, play, film) requires the player to participate in the expected way. There is no way to avoid this.
Refusing to participate in that suspension of disbelief and then proclaiming that the game (book, play, film) is bad because of it is a ridiculous request. Every game is bad if you don’t choose to play by the rules at some point.
AKA Theater is really bad if you spend the whole time pointing out that it’s all fake. (Pre-emptive counter: no I’m not saying CoD is theater.)
My comment is not spam, you lying lying lier-face you.
Edit: That last sentence actually got me through the spam filter. How about that.
Secondary Edit: Is interactive fiction considered a game genre?
17/11/2010 at 07:59 BeamSplashX says:
If you wish to translate playing in Good Faith to less-polished-yet-more-sophisticated games, think of any time you experienced a bug. It probably took you out of the moment somewhat.
You probably kept playing.
For example, I experienced a bug in Fallout 1 that stopped me from obtaining Power Armor. It certainly did a lot to reduce my feeling of agency; having so much in the first place and losing a little bites deeper than having just a bit the whole time. I kept playing and let it go enough to continue enjoying the game.
I suppose it’s about degrees of what you find necessary in a game, though. In most FPSes, I don’t feel ripped off if I didn’t personally get to cap every last enemy since the only tangible rewards (one less gun firing at you, one more gun you can pick up) are the same if someone else does it. I try to shoot as many enemies as I can because most games make it satisfying to do.
Not getting the Power Armor in Fallout was also fine, since I was already really powerful. However, if a game like Gothic bugged out and stopped me from getting really good armor, I’d be pretty upset, since you can never have enough defense in that game. That would probably constitute Bad Faith for a more open game.
P.S. “PC games used to be special.” My laptop is pretty awful, yet plenty of new, special PC games still come out that I can play. If your rig can handle CODBLOPS, you are really spoiled for choice. But even if I had a better PC for gaming, I’d never give up my PS2 library.
16/11/2010 at 22:03 Jiggawatts says:
Well its a shame that a player can get thru this mission without firing a single shot but hey lets not forget that most players buy CoD for multiplayer. I did. Also every player I know bought it for multiplayer. We just dont give a **** about the 4 hour long story. I mean I would never ever spend 50+ bucks on a short singleplayer mode you find in most of games like CoD nowdays. But I will prolly play multiplayer for months and if its good even longer…
Greetings from Germany
17/11/2010 at 16:40 Al3xand3r says:
They sure could save a lot of money by building just the multiplayer side, and then selling it for $20 as a digital download release, 1943 style. I’m sure you’d not hear many complaints then. But having 6 hours of an oh so cinematic campaign allows them to tell you it cost gazillions (lol, right, in a year or so of development time) and thus is worth of full price + Activision Tax on top! Hurrah!
16/11/2010 at 22:34 Fooley says:
Wow, you really hit the nail on the head. I can’t believe a developer would have the balls to make a level where you don’t do anything. Can you imagine a level where all you do is ride a train into a research facility? I mean an entire level of arriving to work and readying a sample to be tested? That would just be the worst.
16/11/2010 at 22:39 ZIGS says:
Either you’re a master of sarcasm or a retarded fuck
16/11/2010 at 22:42 Miker says:
Something tells me he’s the former. Well done, Fooley.
17/11/2010 at 03:10 Theater says:
He’s neither as the analogy doesn’t work beyond them both being intros to shooter games. The purpose of the two levels are entirely different.
16/11/2010 at 22:35 PearlChoco says:
Codblops is nothing more than a graphically enhanced Operation Wolf, except that the latter was more difficult.
If you think about it, BLOPS should’ve been released on XBLA like most other small arcade games.
16/11/2010 at 22:43 BeastmodeBenji says:
I always enjoy playing games on their hardest difficulty, because of the satisfaction I get after completing the entire game. I just spent 1 hour on a stairwell trying to get to the next checkpoint. Obviously the game gets a little harder.
I really think the person in the video is trying to be overly-critical. Why would you play the game without firing a shot? It’s the very first mission, and it’s trying to take things at a slower pace so you can learn to shoot you gun, learn how the progression of the game work, and learn how to do everything else before they throw you into gaming sessions that take you ridiculous amounts of time to get to checkpoints. Why would you not take the initiative to throw yourself into the game and shoot your gun? Obviously the easier the play-setting you choose the more bullets it will take to kill you and the more your AI helps out. I can tell you that on veteran, I’m doing almost all of the killing. Stop being spoiled, and play the game how it was meant to be played.
You also have the option to turn Aim Assist off, which I’ve opted to do. Yeah you can make this game as easy as you’d like, but there’s options where you can make it as hard as possible for you. I prefer the latter.
I’m the type of player that’s going to lead my squad and not let AI get all the kills. I’m on the 3rd mission and since the first mission I’ve been having to wait for my AI to catch up to me. It just depends on how lazy you are. If you want to beat the game doing as little as possible, then play it on easy and let the AI do your work. I recommend that the user re-creates this video on Veteran and trys to do the same.
16/11/2010 at 23:02 msarge says:
I think this should be the new “Speed Run.”
Instead of trying to complete the game fastest, you try to beat the game by doing as little as possible. Whoever does less, WINS!
16/11/2010 at 23:31 doom says:
let’s just get back to doom. Only you, against the enemies.
There is no point in adding ai companions. The emphasis should all be in the role and skill of the player
16/11/2010 at 23:37 icupnimpn2 says:
Blocking bullets with your instantly-regenerating body is not a bad way to protect the plane from damage.
16/11/2010 at 23:42 1stGear says:
Hey, guys, while you’re all busy sipping tea and decrying the downfall of video games, maybe you should remember that there are still games like Alpha Protocol (oh wait, you aren’t going to play this because of bugs and the hacking is kinda hard a bloo bloo bloo), Fallout 3: New Vegas (unless your name is Quinns), other RPGs (that aren’t made by Bioware), any given 4X, and many other games that rely heavily on player agency! Maybe we should accept that our chosen artistic medium will have its Die Hards and Twilights just like every other and stop our weeping about how somebody can deliberately not shoot during the tutorial level of a game and not die!
17/11/2010 at 00:50 MD says:
I would love a cup of tea right now. And I’m at home, so I can go right off and make one. Thanks for reminding me!
17/11/2010 at 00:05 Zwebbie says:
There seems to be a lot of hate here for anything that doesn’t have much interactivity; “We’re games fans, and movies are stupid.” Games don’t need to be interactive. They don’t need to fit your definitions or tastes. They don’t need to be or do anything. I’m a bit tired of people telling me what I can and can’t make, or what I can and can’t like.
For what it’s worth, I never played more of CoD than two demos, exactly because such railroading isn’t my kind of fun. But that’s something different from a value judgment! I don’t hate these games or the people who play them. Who am I to tell other people how to have fun?
17/11/2010 at 10:16 James T says:
“Games don’t need to be interactive.”
Right, and movies don’t need pictures and music doesn’t need sound. Fuck those fascist prescriptivists, telling us what things have to be!!! My favourite videogame is Dr Strangelove! My favourite development studio is Allen Ginsberg! My favourite species of tree is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home!
17/11/2010 at 16:23 Zwebbie says:
James T: Plenty of media cross-overs have taken place. Did you notice that Star Wars begins not with pictures, but with words? Is it a book for its first few minutes?
What about comic books? Are they even books? They’ve got pictures! Dearie me, are they trying to be paintings? Some panels don’t even have text!
By many definitions, games need goals (otherwise, they’re just ‘play’), which would mean MineCraft isn’t a game.
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t exactly shake any fundemental core values of the universe.
Every complaint that is directed here towards CODBLOPS can also be said about, for example, Dear Esther. Only nobody does because DE is completely awesome. Nobody in this thread recognises that an attempt – even if a shoddy one – to combine the pacing and story from uninteractive media with the immersion of interactive media is actually a pretty impressive goal. Instead the word cinematic has become an insult. “Oh, those traitors like to spend their time with other things than perfecting skills! They’re dirty movielovers and traitors to our cause, who need to be taught how to have the right kind of fun!”
If people like to pretend to be soldiers, let them. It’s all pretending in the end anyway.
17/11/2010 at 00:15 Emperor_Jimmu says:
I really don’t understand the problem. Just because Blops exists doesn’t mean player agency is a thing of the past. This game was always going to be made this way, and obviously it is a type of game that sells well at the moment. Also RPGs and RTSs are still capable of selling millions, genres dependent on a proactive player.
17/11/2010 at 00:26 Droniac says:
What’s the big deal here?
A Call of Duty game that presents absolutely no challenge on the second highest difficulty level and sees AI teammates that shoot through opposition all on their own. Gosh, that sounds exactly like the very first Call of Duty – released more than 7 years ago – to me.
The only real difference between the original CoD and this latest iteration is the lack of infinitely respawning enemies in Black Ops (that I’ve noticed thus far). A change that actually makes Black Ops feel less like a series of poorly scripted events than any other game in the series and particularly the first Modern Warfare game. Aside from that change it’s really not any less difficult than any previous CoD game if you compare the highest difficulty settings (the only difficulty setting at which any CoD game is ever even remotely worth your while).
I don’t really see how this could possibly represent the downfall of difficulty in gaming when games made 7 years ago are no more challenging in any way, shape or form. And the way he’s gaming the system is obviously not something any normal gamer is going to run into. All this complaining is really not far removed from whining about being able to beat Quake or Half Life in record time and with minimal actual shooting by using rocket jumping, grenade jumping and map bugs for speed runs back in the 90s. It’s possible, but only someone looking for that specific result is really going to notice it.
I do agree that most games nowadays tend to be excessively easy and Black Ops certainly fits the mold, but given the fact that the original CoD is equally void of challenge it’s kind of unfair to count Black Ops as a ‘sign of the times’. Poorly scripted setpieces are what this series was built on! That kind of gameplay may be more popular now with games like Gears of War, but it’s important to note that in this case it’s inherent to the franchise and NOT the current fancy. It wouldn’t be CoD if it didn’t have ridiculously easy scripted events.
17/11/2010 at 00:42 MD says:
In general I think you’re being sensible, but I strongly disagree with this:
“All this complaining is really not far removed from whining about being able to beat Quake or Half Life in record time and with minimal actual shooting by using rocket jumping, grenade jumping and map bugs for speed runs back in the 90s.”
There’s a huge difference! Speedrunning takes skill, curiosity, experimentation, practice — unless you cherrypick a few easily-broken games for the comparison, there’s *more* challenge and player agency in a speedrun than a regular playthrough.
(I do realise that the key sentence may have been “And the way he’s gaming the system is obviously not something any normal gamer is going to run into.”, but even if that was all you meant, you still highlighted something pretty crucial: in the Quake days, ‘gaming the system’ meant looking for creative and skilful ways of completing your objectives; in the CODBLOPS days, apparently it means noticing when the game plays itself.)
(But, yeah, I did just fall into the trap of referring to ‘the Quake days’ and ‘the CODBLOPS days’. I think that’s because, while simplistic, there’s plenty of truth to it. Still, as has probably been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the gaming cake has expanded massively, and if we can’t often get what we want from the mainstream anymore, there are plenty of other places to look and games to play.)
17/11/2010 at 01:04 manintheshack says:
I think Droniac’s point is that if a player reaches the end of a level by playing the game in a way that wasn’t intended by the designer then said designer shouldn’t be taken to task on it, whether profound skill or just sheer dickishness was the winning factor for the gamer. Most people who buy games aren’t expected to immediately set out to find fatal flaws in their construction, they’re expected to follow instructions and enjoy themselves.
17/11/2010 at 02:10 Vagabond says:
I suspect there’s a difference between “not playing the game as intended and it not being any fun” and “not playing the game as intended and it showing you that playing the game properly doesn’t count for as much as you thought”.
It’s hard to feel like a master of the game for playing it through on hardened level if someone then turns around and shows you exactly how little skill is required to achieve that.
17/11/2010 at 02:35 MD says:
I don’t take the video as suggesting that ‘victory is hollow now that we know it can be achieved this way’, but that ‘victory was always hollow, and here’s a humorous and extreme illustration of why’.
@maninthesack: yeah, I tried to acknowledge that I was taking one thing he said and possibly going off on a bit of a tangent. (For what it’s worth, I don’t think I agree that “if a player reaches the end of a level by playing the game in a way that wasn’t intended by the designer then said designer shouldn’t be taken to task on it”, but I won’t argue that point now.) Your statement that “Most people who buy games aren’t expected to immediately set out to find fatal flaws in their construction, they’re expected to follow instructions and enjoy themselves.” is kind of another illustration of what I was getting at, though: there’s a sense that, much more so now than 10 or 20 years ago, gamers are indeed “expected to follow instructions and enjoy themselves”, rather than experiment and play creatively (or destructively, for that matter). Back in the day, testing the boundaries (or looking for flaws, as you put it) had a decent chance of producing interesting results. Nowadays,* most of the interesting ‘flaws’ have been polished out, and — uninteresting bugs aside, which always have and probably always will exist — those that remain to be found are more likely to be of the ‘this section of the game actually requires no player input’ kind rather than the ‘fun and challenging new style of movement’ or ‘unintended capability that allows me to skilfully bypass sections of this level’ kinds.
*again, I’m aware that I’m being simplistic and treating a mainstream trend as the entirety of modern gaming.
17/11/2010 at 10:27 abhishek says:
“The only real difference between the original CoD and this latest iteration is the lack of infinitely respawning enemies in Black Ops (that I’ve noticed thus far).”
Just pointing out that this is incorrect. The infinitely spawning enemies are very much present in Black Ops, and very blatantly obviously too.
18/11/2010 at 06:17 Bret says:
Just wanted to reminisce about a good use of infinitely respawning enemies. Remember the end of chapter 1 in Minerva?
With the endless combine and the open door giving a natural incentive to haul ass, a chance to get lost and killed, smart enemies, and a good reason for the spawning to stop, it worked better than most examples, thought I.
17/11/2010 at 02:00 jonfitt says:
I have no comment as to whether CODBLOPS is good or not, but I just wanted to add the comment that in some of the best Arma2 online ops I have played I have not fired a shot or even seen the enemy, but have nevertheless been on the edge of my seat the whole time.
17/11/2010 at 02:08 Jayson says:
Does it really matter? It’s not ArmA II, yes, very good. I am not sure the horse is dead, perhaps the flogging should continue.
I continue to find it remarkable that we have to become so polarized as gamers. I played Black Ops and enjoyed it. It was loud, it had tons of cliche/classic moments. I shot a lot of men. I had fun. I also liked Call of Pripyat enough to play through it twice. Can’t we just enjoy different gaming experiences on different days. I liked Company of Heroes and the Matrix Close Combat remakes too.
17/11/2010 at 02:14 Jachap says:
This just in: scripted game is scripted.
It’s interesting that people have cited Fallout: New Vegas as the absolute opposite of this. There have been times when, with Rex and Boone as my companions or enough NCR troopers backing me up, I could have done exactly what this guy is doing. I could potentially have levelled up several times and even completed a few quests without firing a shot. Looking at the accuracy of the NPCs at around 4 minutes in (when the player almost dies about four times in a row) Boone is infinitely more helpful.
I mean, what exactly does this guy want? He refuses to fire his gun, the game doesn’t break down and he criticises it. Then he is forced to actually discharge his weapon and he criticises it.
Sid Meier quotes are all very well but I could spend an entire game of Civilisation with just my initial settlers, walking about, without building a city. Eventually, someone would come along and kill me. I imagine it’s much the same in Call of Duty. We’ve all played them before, they’ll clearly be a point where he has to get stuck in to advance.
17/11/2010 at 03:59 internisus says:
Some of you gentlemen and/or ladies may enjoy this comical deconstruction of CODBLOPS.
17/11/2010 at 05:21 Snuffy (the Evil) says:
I suggested this to my brother when I was watching him play through it, and he didn’t believe me.
I’ll have to show him this.
17/11/2010 at 05:23 commissar says:
“It’s a fifteen minute video during which he doesn’t fire his gun once.”
Except for the bit where he does fire his gun.
Sure it’s a scripted sequence of kill or be killed, but I don’t mind being pedantic :]
17/11/2010 at 06:30 pipman3000 says:
it’s a metaphor for blueballs. he is “hardened” but he never “fires his gun” even once.
17/11/2010 at 07:24 Hardtarget says:
This is interesting and all but it’s not indicative of the rest of the game, at all. There are parts of the game that are absolutely brutal where I died many many times without getting it right.
17/11/2010 at 08:07 Neil says:
Maybe they wanted Ebert to call it art.
17/11/2010 at 08:08 AaronLee says:
To me; movies should be movies and games should be games.
I’m not a big fan of how the current business model growing among larger game studios is beginning to parallel that of the film industry. Ie;
Bean counter: ‘I want to throw money at something!”
2k Game Studios Universalthesda Games LLC Inc.: “Hey! Why don’t you throw money at another FPS sequel? Everyone LOVES FPS sequels!”
Bean counter: “Great idea! Here’s a few cool million smackers and two years, now make me a fi- I mean video game for the televisions that is a total low-risk asset that does stuff I already know works!”
2GSUtGLLC: “Sounds like a plan! Time to start whipping the devs until they bleed binary!”
That said; I AM an indie fan. That kind of makes me biased in the same way the sky is blue, so.
17/11/2010 at 08:28 qqq says:
I played the first two missions of the game and I found them terrible, but certainly not for the reasons shown in that movie.
If anything, the game is too unforgiving and unfair.
More than once I got killed by enemies that somehow appeared behind me. More than once I got killed for walking in the wrong spot, where the level design had decided that I wasn’t allowed. More than once I got killed because enemies and allies look very similar and sometimes I ignore a guy, thinking he’s one of my crew (but he isn’t). More than once, while marching forward in their usual frenzy and calling for me to follow them, my allies walk right past enemies, prompting me to do the same – except that I get shot.
One guy carefully finding cover spots and waiting for his allies to complete the mission, all of this based on KNOWLEDGE FROM A PREVIOUS WALKTHROUGH OF THE MISSION, means nothing.
17/11/2010 at 10:21 plugmonkey says:
“Don’t worry about those bullets. They won’t actually kill me. They’re just there for show”
Those bullets killed me when I played it! I distinctly remember being killed.
I don’t really see how this is any different to playing for the Pacifist achievement on Geometry Wars. It’s not as if you can just walk through the middle of the level. A lot of players would struggle to repeat this, and frankly I wonder how many takes it took him to do it.
What exactly is the alternative? You make it so that your comrades keep dying because you’re not good enough, and so you have to restart the mission a la Mafia? That sounds pretty annoying.
Or you hide behind a box while your comrades and enemies exchange and infinite number of rounds without hitting each other? In which case I dare say some smug cock would probably put a video of THAT on YouTube instead.
17/11/2010 at 12:02 The Sombrero Kid says:
i personally would prefer a game, you know something where my input or lack thereof affects the narrative.
17/11/2010 at 12:22 plugmonkey says:
What the hell are you talking about? So, dying doesn’t affect the narrative?
If you play codblops and just walk forward shooting a bit, you will fail. Repeatedly.
Even the enormous chip on your shoulder won’t protect you..
17/11/2010 at 15:44 BeamSplashX says:
Actually, having a difficulty/mode where either your comrades die or they ditch the scripted teamwork sequences and make you do all the work would be cool. All the exits could just start out open, allowing you to play the game like an old-school shooter. Just bring back level ratings like DOOM to encourage clearing more of the map.
Also, Castro in a robot battle suit. Lord knows he’d need one more than Hitler ever did.
17/11/2010 at 10:22 roryok says:
If they replaced all the weapons with an SLR camera, and called the game Call of Duty : Embedded, we’d probably love it.
17/11/2010 at 12:00 The Sombrero Kid says:
Call of Duty black ops is a first Person Walking Forward Game with some shooting elements, there are huge sections of the game were you are only allowed to press W or not, this is inferior to my DVD Player, because i only have to press play on that once not hold it down continuously or hammer it repeatedly like it’s broken.
17/11/2010 at 12:27 Fwiffo says:
Bah, I had total control in Far Cry 2 and the world in that game cared not one jot for my actions either. I enjoyed that regardless as well.
17/11/2010 at 14:42 Jayson says:
I take it back. Not playing the game is the next frontier in emergent gameplay.
17/11/2010 at 16:37 mujadaddy says:
RUN! RUN INTO THE SUGAR FIELD! (~12:45)
17/11/2010 at 17:02 Dave says:
This reminds me painfully of one of Hellgate London’s many flaws (I’m replaying it now).
Most of the time, friendly NPCs’ weapons do about 1/50 of the damage that a player can do. Except in the one zone with a “kill 9 plague zombies” mission and exactly 9 plague zombies available — suddenly the NPCs are competent and manage to steal your kills.
17/11/2010 at 19:47 stojg says:
I don’t really know why I keep buying this crap. I thinks it’s a flaw in my personality, something similare to watching a crappy triple A movie, like ironman 3 the prequel.
Sit back, eat some popcorn, prod the mouse and keep the W key pressed and watch events unfold themselves.
I’ve spent money on far more useless things, like Mass Effect 2.
17/11/2010 at 22:39 MrUnimport says:
I seem to remember one of the biggest complaints about the Call of Duty series being incompetent squadmates. I guess that problem’s been solved and I don’t see it as a bad thing.
18/11/2010 at 00:03 Sir Digby says:
Best part of the clip was the dude raging at console gamers “shit, if you own a 360 get the fuck out of my channel, you are part of the problem!”
18/11/2010 at 07:39 tribalwhore says:
@Tk “I hate to bring it to Crysis and Halo, but the AI had something right when they would (somewhat) properly flank you.”
In a game where 92% of the time you’re traveling down a narrow hallway (even when you’re outside sometimes) there really isn’t any pathway for the enemy to use to get behind or on the side of you.
Come to think of it, I can’t recall ever actually getting flanked in ANY game except F.E.A.R. 2 recently.
Maybe they sort of flanked me in Halo. But in Crysis they mostly carried out a search pattern in the vicinity of the last place they “saw” me before I went invisible.
18/11/2010 at 12:13 James T says:
What’s all this “fundamental core values of the universe” bullshit? You said “Games don’t need to be interactive”. Wrong. No matter how far you reduce the definition of a game, interaction must play a part (although if we do chuck that out that stipulation, then at least people with inferiority complexes about their gaming can stop droning on about the prospect of “gaming’s Citizen Kane” — turns out it was made seventy years ago by Orson Welles!) Argue all you want about whatever else it takes for something to be a game, but good luck getting anywhere without interactivity. (And do you honestly think that a film having words bolted onto it means that nothing can define film? Lulzy!)
I like how you gripe about how oppressive everyone else is (including a spectacularly fictional strawman), immediately after imperiously declaring that anyone not impressed by the goal of “combin[ing] the pacing [...] from uninteractive media with the immersion of interactive media” is a mere philistine, blind to the fact of its impressiveness, rather than someone who doesn’t give a shit about a glorious endpoint of making ‘player’ meet ‘rail’. Sorry, I have no duty to share your opinion, nor does anyone here who dares to think that it might be a bad thing for videogames to marginalise what defines them and just turn into a clumsy vector for film delivery (just as a film made entirely of title cards would be nothing but a clumsy vector for short story delivery; I hate to be a spoiler, but a couple of minutes into Star Wars… the pictures kick in).
18/11/2010 at 13:40 Hmm-Hmm. says:
To all of those saying it’s not that bad because it’s a tutorial level: Is it? Is it really a tutorial if you’re not shown how the game works later on? No. This isn’t a tutorial. This is simply a level which you cannot fail. That doesn’t mean it prepares you for the rest of the game.
22/11/2010 at 05:16 a says:
aaaaaaaaa