Quote from: Bohemian;297643Given that this is "just" a game, will we be able to play either side?

You know, Arabic insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan are actually an awesome FPS scenario. It's got all the classic elements. You're outnumbered and outgunned by futuristic cyborgs, and all you've got is your trusty assault rifle and your cleverness to defeat them. It'll never be made. of course.

It'd make a fun roleplaying game, too. Or, some people might find it fun.

I'm not sure that Australia's current sedition laws wouldn't proscribe it, as some idiot might construe it as urging engagement or assistance to those engaged in armed hostilities against the ADF.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;297755You know, Arabic insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan are actually an awesome FPS scenario. It's got all the classic elements. You're outnumbered and outgunned by futuristic cyborgs, and all you've got is your trusty assault rifle and your cleverness to defeat them. It'll never be made. of course.

See, that's the question.  It *would* be an awesome scenario, but it's won't get made any time soon.  There's a tacit understanding that a certain sets of values and tactics are "okay" to portray in a game, while another set isn't.  The implication, it seems to me, is that putting the player into the shoes of one side during a real life conflict is read as an endorsement of that side's actions.  

If this game were really trying to serve as a "documentary",  then it would allow the playing of either side.  Instead, it seems like propaganda at best.

A documentary can be factual AND told from a point of view. The story of WWII told from the point of view of cryptologists makes it a focus piece, not a propaganda piece. A factual documentary will only underscore the factual depravity of those involved even if the story is presented from their point of view.
 
I don't know enough about the game to comment on it directly, but since the gulf vets are all rabid X-box players anyway, catering to them is nothing more than good business sense.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;297755You know, Arabic insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan are actually an awesome FPS scenario. It's got all the classic elements. You're outnumbered and outgunned by futuristic cyborgs, and all you've got is your trusty assault rifle and your cleverness to defeat them. It'll never be made. of course.

...AGAIN, this has already been - on a technicality. In the game CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE.
In the online multi-player mode, players have the option to choose a side represented by crossed arab-styled swords. It is portrayed in the game as a fictional militant Islamic insurgent kind of group. (IF you go by the clothing the game designers chose to put on the members of that faction)

- Ed C.

I'm reserving judgement.  At worst I'll ignore it as long as it doesn't play like Postal: The Iraq War.

Quote from: Koltar;298012...AGAIN, this has already been - on a technicality. In the game CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE.
In the online multi-player mode, players have the option to choose a side represented by crossed arab-styled swords. It is portrayed in the game as a fictional militant Islamic insurgent kind of group. (IF you go by the clothing the game designers chose to put on the members of that faction)

- Ed C.

I love CoD4 but it hardly counts Ed.  Online play is evenly matched regardless of which side you play.  Weaponry, battlefield advantage, etc.  Everything about online play makes the clothing and curved swords irrelevant.

Battlefield 2 if anything did a much better job of setting a more believable scenario.

Quote from: Werekoala;297625So our troops used WP against terrorists, not civilians, as indicated in the BBC article. That's an attrocity now, is it?

If you believe Wikipedia, you believe a lot of things.  I don't believe Wikipedia.  (Edit: Yeah, it was lazy of me to link to a source I don't put much stock in, but if I linked to something silly like the United Nations you would just report me to Senator McCarthy...)


I hear rumors that sometimes Americans give money and weapons to non-American soldiers and civilians get killed.  Oddly enough this does not make Americans more popular.

However, to hear some Americans tell the story, sometimes American soldiers do indeed kill civilians.  

In fact, here are the words of an American Marine who claims that Americans kill civilians.  The first part explains the killing and the second part explains the motivation.

QuoteHe explained that the military goes to great lengths to avoid bombing weddings, that wedding-avoidance is practically an obsession, and they would try to keep from doing it too much in the future. I reckon it must have made any survivors feel good.

Funny, I too try to avoid bombing weddings, but I’m a lot more successful at it, despite a much smaller budget.

Now, I don’t want to sound cynical or anything. Still, I’d like to know how the good colonel would look at things if his daughter, if he has one, were having her wedding and kerblooey! Daughter and forty members of the family and close friends suddenly become clotting goo over a fifty-yard radius and the bombers say, “We’re sorry, kind of, but that wedding looked just like a troop concentration.” Troop concentrations always feature a woman in a white dress holding flowers. It’s what they teach at West Point.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Body%20Scan.shtml

QuoteNow, we read a lot of PR about “surgical strikes” and “precision weapons.” Think carefully about this. Intel says a terrorist leader of indescribable potency is in a house in a flimsily constructed suburb. The Air Force then makes a surgical strike with a five-hundred-pound bomb, taking out half a block. Pretty surgical, that. Perhaps it was the right block—it is possible—but still kills seventy-five people. The male relatives of the dead then join the insurgency. Ray-rah air power. The Air Force can’t afford to understand this, as then it would have to find a day job.

So why does the Air Force engage in counterproductive tactics with totally inappropriate airplanes? Because it’s the only kind of airplanes it has. Why? Because fast, screaming, roaring, flashy zoom-buggies with lots of screens and switches and rockets are fun. Never, ever underestimate fun as a driver of military policy. A hot fighter is the world’s pizzazziest, priciest, swooshiest video game, an air-borne dirt bike with all the fixin’s. Really. You may think I’m trying to be snotty and clever. Think again. (All right, I’m trying to be snotty and clever, but what I’m saying is still true.)

Do you think I spent thirty years covering the military because I wanted to butcher puzzled third-world illiterates tending goats? No. It was fun. Low-level pop-and-drops in an F-16 out of Shaw AFB, F-15 air-to-air against Guard A-7s over Holloman, bomb runs at four hundred feet over hazy Wyoming badlands like the doorway to hell in a B-52—god, what a freaking trip, far better than growing up. Snazzy mask and helmet, five-g turns with your face flowing back behind your ears, world going inverted, burners kicking in…Hoo-ah!

It’s not called a joy stick for nothing.

And jet jocks get paid to do this. Whether it serves a practical purpose doesn’t matter. Not with rides like those. If you think these things don’t matter, you are out of your mind.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Air%20Power.shtml


All you have to do to shut down that criticism of American bombs is to shut down those traitorous reprobates like Fred Reed.  Heck, he's old, he'll kick off from old age real soon now.  You just need to prevent the younger generation of American veterans from following his reprehensible example.

Realistic war games suck anyhow. Who the fuck wants to minimalize what gave real soldiers PTSD, Shell shock, whateverthefuck ya wanna call it?
 
 I'd rather be a pilot at the Battle Of Yavin, or the Battle of Endor.

Battlefield II completely kicks ass.

Quote from: StormBringer;298668Battlefield II completely kicks ass.

QFMFT!

I wasn't that ever into realistic shooters until BF2 and now CoD4.

Quote from: Idinsinuation;298671QFMFT!

I wasn't that ever into realistic shooters until BF2 and now CoD4.

Eh.  Neither of those games really constitute "realistic" in any sense but that they technically model real world weapons.

You want realistic, try Rainbow Six 3.

Quote from: J Arcane;298712Eh.  Neither of those games really constitute "realistic" in any sense but that they technically model real world weapons.

You want realistic, try Rainbow Six 3.

I meant "realistic" as in no energy weapons, plasma grenades, power armor, force fields, and so on.  Rainbow Six 3 was fun but I'll trade it's realism for the fun of CoD4 or BF2 any day.

I'm not a huge CoD4 guy myself, though I own it and like to play the campaign.
I'm much more of a Halo 3 fan, in fact. I can't get over this game. I just love it.

It's been cancelled apparently.

Though i'm more offended by the army retuitment ads on tv.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;298839It's been cancelled apparently.

Not quite.  Konami won't be publishing it but after 3-4 years of work the developers aren't giving up yet.  I've also been reading how insurgents were interviewed for research into the game's developement so at least a token effort has gone into seeing the other side of the story.  Whether that apparently unbiased approach will actually be represented in the final product remains to be seen.