2) The multiplayer is fucking fantastic. It doesn’t seem like anything more than pedestrian 360 “HAHA A TEN YEAR OLD CALLED MY MOTHER A WHORE” DM / TDM / Capture & Hold for the first little while, but then you realize there’s an MMO grind on it and about 9 more gametypes to unlock. Eventually (in about 4 hours of play) you can unlock CS-style bombing missions, set to one or two-shot kills, with no respawn. You unlock weapon upgrades, get challenges (“Jump 30 feet to your death” is surprisingly difficult to do), get into DOD-style respawn-wave ticket attrition games, etc. etc. Multi- is where it’s at.

Whoa, I shit an entry into your comments. :/ soz.

Game design has the potential to be both short and fucking amazing; see portal, Gr0w, some casual games &c, or even low budget and fucking amazing : introversion being the powerhouse of small-house games. but for some reason, when it comes to large budget war sims, especially WWII sims and contemporary warfare sims, the idea of credible storyline gets pitched out of the window. Hollywood allows writing for some utter shock, but every now and then it churns out a war movie with a plot you can identify with and characters you feel invested in; I always wondered why the gaming industry chose to embody the worst of these scripts and not the best.

sounds like the team was split down the middle and told to embdy the best of things like GRAW and mix is some more conventional, medal-of-tedious style play, and the builders were more invested in stealthkill SAS stuff; theres a surprise; hasnt Johnny spamhead the indestructible american soldier that singlehandedly won WWII been done to death? I know if Im irritated by it, chances are a guy who has to spend more than 8 hours a day for two years listening to the same drivel being barked at him out of his speakers has to be as well.

as a consequence, when we’re presented with quality, story/character driven FPS games that avoid the direct theme of war and still go balls deep (HL2 & episodes, Stalker) we invest, heavily. when the story is confined to fantasy, we’re allowed to portray the white spamheads as fascist extremists. we’re allowed to work morals and ethics into the picture without glorifying the concept of war. and where neccessary, we’re allowed to sidestep glorifying the military machine and paint a much bleaker picture of the entire idea of armed conflict; See Defcon, Stalker.

What Im looking forward to with a pretty good mix of glee and disgust is being able to write a paper on how foreign policy in the west affects who the ‘baddies’ are in games.

and as for schizphrenic messages in games, please play the opening videos from NeedForSpeed Underground2, then NFS;Most Wanted and then NFS; Prostreet one after the other. I can never decide if games are moralising too heavily (manhunt; Do not attempt ninjitsu evil neckstabbings! stunts performed by digital professionals!) or simply being pumped too full of self importance by rabid nutbags like Jack Im-fucking-loopy Thompson.