Article 1- Is War the Answer?

Article 1- Is War the Answer?

I think we have all been in a situation where we look forward to the new Call of Duty game. It happens every year and I myself have been no different. Just last year I was heavily anticipating Call of Duty Ghosts hoping to play something new. With a name like ghosts I was expecting to be a stealthy soldier using silence and tactics to eliminate my foes instead of the traditional hoorah tactics of the previous games. Then I started playing and after a slightly stealthy first level I began to warm to the game and even met the legendary stealth experts the ghosts. Then we crashed a van into a stadium and my dreams died a little. From there stealth was mainly an excuse to start the mission before breaking into all out chaos. It was regular COD all over again and all I could do was shake my head and finish it.

The Genre

Ok story time is over now. So this is an article on the grand topic of war shooters. In first and third person. These are among the most popular of games and mainly took off with the PS2 as the first C.O.D games emerged. This trend developed with the release of the last generation consoles like the 360 and PS3 and has now splashed into the now current gen consoles, the PS4 and Xbox one.  Is this a negative? No. These new consoles allow for newer and better-looking war games that can utilize new mechanics and connectivity to band gamers together. Can we see this happening soon? I hope so.

The basics of this genre are that you will be a soldier in a war. The brand war shooter gives this away. This can be a real war say world war 2 or the Middle Eastern conflicts or a completely made up war that the writers have devised. The latter is much more common now and in some cases works very well, the stories of C.O.D Modern Warfare 1 and 2 but can sometimes fall flat, as in C.O.D Ghosts. It will seem like I will insult this game a lot but this is not the case, I am just conveying what I believe it does wrong. It is not the only offender and by no means will it ever be the last.  The main premise is you will usually be an American marine or in some games a British S.A.S that has to fight a terrorist threat in some far-fetched fashion. The spectacle and cinematic nature can be fun to play but the stories are usually highly unrealistic and the Americans/Brits will always win. This is just how it has always been.

The Problems

So before I mentioned that Ghosts would be an example and now I will showcase my problems with the game. I already mentioned the story is just another gung-ho, explosion filled adrenaline rush with superior Americans this time fighting the whole of South America in what is considered a post-destructive wasteland. Now the wasteland is nicely done, I must admit but the story conveyed a fight against a superior enemy yet they only gain superiority through use of an American super weapon. There also seems to be no struggle to fight back against this force rendering the story pretty useless.  This was also seen in Medal of Honour Warfighter where you are given control of a machine gun mounted robot, pretty cool huh? Well it easily mows down enemies until it is destroyed by a rock. It sort of makes you question your actions. If they use rocks, why do I need a killdroid? It’s not an easy question to answer.

The other key issue in campaigns and this affects a lot of the main war shooters around is the lack of control. The game rarely ever lets you explore or try other tactics; they are just linear shooting galleries with a lot of explosions and not much else. You will occasionally be given cool weapons and gadgets that can only be used at certain times and even then they may just be there for the sake of it. For example in Medal of Honour warfighter you are given laser targets to destroy buildings. This is at a specific point where you are apparently pinned down by snipers. They never damage you even if you stand out in the open. The game refuses to let you progress past this point until you have use a laser target on the building they occupy even if you could shoot them without it, even killing you if you dare try to avoid it. This sense of linearity and handholding can ruin the experience and although creates a cinematic experience limits just what the player can do. Choice is ignored in these games.  Even your teammates can do the work for you. If you play on normal difficulty a lot of the time you will never be incredibly challenged. Your teammates can shoot everyone for you or you can call in vehicles of doom and destruction.

Lastly the genre is usually completely designed for multiplayer, which again is heavily a copy and paste formula. This is the main issue here. Single player modes are usually lacking as the game is designed for multiplayer. This is the problem with franchises like C.O.D and Battlefield. There is never any depth to the story or they’re just disappointingly short. Although these multiplayer modes can be fun it is usually just the same as playing an older game with a few new guns and occasionally a new mode. New maps are fun but soon grind and get repetitive.  A victim of this is an older game that showed promise, Homefront. This game boasted a campaign written by the writer of Red Dawn, an impressive war film and featured Americans fighting for their own turf after the U.S. is invaded by North Korea. Unfortunately the campaign was only 4-6 hours and full of stereotypes and scripted scenes. There was a fully working online mode that was very similar of other current multiplayer models and because of this the game disappointed a lot of gamers.

Is it all Bad?

Short answer, no. I have played good war shooters and bad war shooters and I don’t hate the genre. I enjoy the excitement of some of them and I can get a kick from some of the explosive action of these titles, I just hate the shallow nature and lack of change. I recently played Spec Ops: The Line, an older 3^rd person title that was based on a novel about the darker side of warfare. It pitted me as the commander of a three-man team looking for a lost squad in a sandstorm ruined Dubai, fighting desperate rebels and eventually the battalion we were looking for. It was a dark and quite depressing game, which really questions the nature of warfare and the questionability of just fighting a lesser enemy or those of your own. It is an experience that sticks with you and at time really plays with your mood. As dark as it was I thoroughly enjoyed the narrative and felt satisfied with it. Another was not necessarily a war shooter but had a war-based story and that was Metro Last Light.  A first person survival shooter set in a nuked Moscow in the metro tunnels. There was war among the factions and I actually understood what I was fighting for and what the stakes were. It was again a mix of fluid shooting mechanics, difficulty and narrative that made the experience incredibly enjoyable.

The Improvements

So the last part of this article is the improvements. I enjoy this genre and happily play a lot of the games from it but there needs to be change. EA, Activision this is directed at you mainly. You can’t re-use the same formula without it getting stale. There is a limit on the control the player can have before it feels more like a movie than a game. To improve this it is a simple process, look at the classic first person shooter, there was exploration, secrets and an arsenal of destructive weapons. You could spend hours on a single level. Imagine incorporating this into a fully functional battlefield. It would be awesome. Perhaps even creating whole cities with dynamic warzones that can be randomly generated. There is a long list of possibilities here.

The other problem is that the narratives used have gotten stale. We need to break away from the stereotypical U.S. vs. the world scheme and develop more in-depth and fulfilling stories to satisfy the single player gamers and story fans alike. There was a scene in the first Modern Warfare game that still sticks and that was when we see a soldier in the midst of a nuke explosion and players control him as he tries to crawl away before slowly dying. It was a cryptic scene that really added a darker, realistic side to the story and really it was moments like that that the developers should be trying to create. Memorable sequences that can make the player question their actions and for once lets see the player decide what happens and not have the player lead on a trip through the set pieces. It’s time the player was back in control. Now if you excuse me I’m going to go replay Spec Ops.