New Army of Two trailer has Poe's Law in full effect.

[Elijin]

Maybe he just really likes tacos.

I mean they're delicious. In fact all this talk about whether its racist or not has made me crave some tacos.

Screw this, Im going to go make tacos, argue away then.

 

[Batou667]

If a cartel murders your local mayor, assumes the running of your town, then turns up at your door with a group of thugs armed with machetes and machine guns, then demands you to join their militia... what are you going to do? Politely tell them to go away?

You're overthinking a game whose tone is never presented as anything other than ridiculous machismo. Next you'll be boycotting Pac Man because those poor ghosts represent the tormented souls of the restless dead, doomed to an eternity of being devoured and waking afresh from their agony after a cursory respawn time.

It's a game, and a stupid one at that. If Mexican cartels are such a worry for you, perhaps your efforts would be better spent addressing that in real life, not criticising low forms of media just because the enemies are brown?

 

['Record Stops.']

Tropers? In my Escapist? More likely than you'd think. In all honesty, this looks to be exactly the same kind of thing you've seen a thousand and one times, repeat Ad nauseam. What can be said about has already been said, it's just a quick cash grab with no real substance. The Troper's have already done their usual amount of sperging on this game, move on, nothing to see here.

 

[Nieroshai]

Let's just think for a moment:
They made Kane and Lynch, didn't they?

Anyway, yay pre-set protagonist models... two white males in their early thirties, naturally. Ngh.
And cutscene characters that look like they're made of plastic. Maybe it's supposed to be a "playing with action figures" simulation?

Analysis: All too real. Sadly. And it'll probably get mediocre reviews but still sell enough to make the publisher a reasonable, though unimpressive profit.

If it's parody, too much work's gone in, and it's been made a little too dry. It's a little too real, without any proper knowing nods. Bandwagon, not piss-take.

You know, they could be bros because they're two GAY white men in their thirties. You know, to fill the equal-opportunitydiversity quota.

 

[Batou667]

Pacman doesn't claim to take place in a real-life setting, or with real life context. It's a videogame that takes place in an entirely abstract videogame setting.

I see exactly what you're saying but let me be obtuse for a bit.

Counter-argument 1: Pac Man may be an abstraction but it's not abstracted to the point of being meaningless non-sequitur devoid of all relevance and links to reality. Being chased is a thing. Getting killed is a thing. Running from aggressors, and possibly becoming the aggressor yourself, is a thing. (Ghosts may or may not be a thing, but they still hold a distinct cultural relevance). There's plenty of scope for somebody to feel threatened or even offended by the themes present in Pac Man.

Counter-argument 2: Conversely, even if Mexico is a real place and cartels are real (and bad) things, that doesn't make these things anything more than a backdrop to the game. The game would, mechanically, function just as well with GIs in WW2 or flippin' Ulala zapping aliens up on Space Channel 5. They're pixels, wave files and subroutines. Ultimately YOU are choosing to project real-life gravitas on the situation. Basically, it may be a game set in Mexico and featuring cartels, but I doubt it could be described as a game about cartels, if you see what I mean.

You know, we could do an Austin Powers and have heart-wrenching eulogies for every henchman to get blown away, but that's not what the vast majority of gamers want nor expect. If WW2, the Crusades, Vietnam and the Gulf War can all be served up as entertainment, what makes this one game so sacrilegious?

Once again, I don't see how this is any sort of excuse. Medium is medium. It doesn't excuse poor taste and crass exploitation.

Poor taste, maybe, and I'm not even going to try to defend the ethos behind the game. But who's being exploited? Certainly the cartels aren't receiving any kind of positive publicity from this.

Yes, because as a low level warehouse operative based in the UK with very little in the way of money right now, I am perfectly placed to bring about positive change in a conflict that is taxing all the resources of the Mexican police force, army and the US Border Patrol.

...or not. No, I think I'll just stick with calling exploitative crap exactly that. Cheers for the suggestion though...

You know, thinking about it, I know exactly where you're coming from. I would probably be rankled by a game that either tried to sell something inherently unethical as entertainment (Slavery Simulator 2013, or whatever), or trivialised a real-life event in a flippant enough manner. But even so I think you're worrying a bit too much about this one issue. There are games out there featuring all kinds of criminal and underworld activity that is no joke in real life, and yet can be made entertaining enough for films or games (either by portraying them as antiheroes, or as adversaries to be defeated - the Mafia, Yakuza, etc). What I don't understand is why this one particular topic is so objectionable.

 

[LarenzoAOG]

It's a bro game, what do you expect? You go in expecting a shit ton of explosions and maybe a few mildly funny stupid jokes, and you're bound to have a good time.

I like my games as deep and meaningful at the next guy, but sometimes I just wanna play a game where two men wearing entire fridges shoot brown people with guns made of diamonds, it plays foil to Spec Ops and Mass Effect and Dragon Age and Deus Ex where things make me feel emotional and sad when I mess up, and I feel like I have obligations and responsibilities, and that's not a bad thing.

 

[BBboy20]

It's a game, and a stupid one at that. If Mexican cartels are such a worry for you, perhaps your efforts would be better spent addressing that in real life, not criticising low forms of media just because the enemies are brown?

.....Um..dude, from what what Jeff said, it seems like an AK is the best directed solution on what is going on in Mexico and if he tried taking non-violence approaches, chances are he would end up getting killed (or worst) either way. =/

 

[Terramax]

Being that I've actually played the games, I can assure you that it is in fact just the style of humour this series goes for.
In one game I made the choice to take a bunch of guns from a security guy, smacked the gun out of his hand.
The gun discharged, ricocheted twice, and planted itself right in the brainpan of security guy. The Response? "How hard is it to not kill people?"
Another point I refused to kill an endangered tiger (I was fighting through a zoo, that should be enough evidence right there) and in the midst of the panic, it escaped, hopped in the back of a car that belonged to a man currently robbing a store, and killed the burglar when he got into the car.
You can equip a soda can as a silencer and a screwdriver as a bayonet and both work FLAWLESSLY.
There's an augment that makes your grenades solid gold and jewel encrusted.
This series thrives off the ludicrous nature of two dudes taking on entire militaries while never taking it too seriously.

It's just a game trying to have fun.

This is why I wish there was a 'like' button on the Escapist.

I find people on this thread, taking this video footage seriously, demeaning those whom play Army of Two games, rather hilarious. The irony.

Capcha: heated debate

Always on this site, Escapist.

 

[Batou667]

Given that the game seems to be about shooting things, and the things in question that are being shot are Mexican cartel members, then I don't really buy that. It is about the Cartels, by virtue of being a shooter game where you shoot the Cartel members.

But does the game actually tackle any related issues, or bring up sufficient real-world themes, to differentiate this game from any other gung-ho cover shooter? Somehow I doubt the developers have the nerve or the capability for that. If the setting is literally a backdrop and the context is simply a roundabout and inelegant way of demarcating the bad guys from the good guys, then it's not truly about that issue.

The innocent people caught up in the conflict. As I explained in another post, not everyone working for the Cartels is doing so out of choice. Huge numbers of people are being forced to work for them, if only because the only alternative is to have your family raped and ending up dead in some mass grave somewhere.

We could say the same about conscripted Russians and Germans in WW2, who are nice no-qualms cannon fodder in dozens of games. Even the Taliban must, on some level, feel compelled to do what they do out of a sense of loyalty and defence of their religion/culture/homeland. Computer games have been cheerfully downplaying empathy for enemy NPCs ever since their creation. I can't see how this game is doing any worse.

When real people are being beaten, raped and murdered as we speak in the conflict, then I think it falls to developers to try and at least have some sense of tact. I'm not saying that games about the Cartels shouldn't be made, simply that they should at least try and respect what is actually going on out there.

Would you really trust EA to do the issue justice? It'd be nice to think they could aspire to some powerful but balanced multi-view account, like some videogame version of City of God, but actually I think that in attempting po-faced realism they'd end up trivialising it in an even more damaging way. At least in this guise the issue is clearly presented as a Mickey Mouse, simplified portrayal which very few people would seriously mistake for real life.

 

[Batou667]

It's a game, and a stupid one at that. If Mexican cartels are such a worry for you, perhaps your efforts would be better spent addressing that in real life, not criticising low forms of media just because the enemies are brown?

.....Um..dude, from what what Jeff said, it seems like an AK is the best directed solution on what is going on in Mexico and if he tried taking non-violence approaches, chances are he would end up getting killed (or worst) either way. =/

I don't think either I nor Jeffers were talking about intervening personally! I suppose we could try, though, Perhaps we could wear matching facemasks... oh god, what have we become!?

 

[William Dickbringer]

It looks like this will either be this years Call of Juarez: The Cartel or this years Driver: San Francisco. You never know. It's also being made by Visceral, and they can do action stuff I guess.

I highly doubt anything can top call of juarez: the cartel it's just jaw droppingly bad

O.T. so what happened to the "serious tone" they said they were gonna try and that was the reason rios and salem wasn't gonna be in it? also glad to see the big bad took lessons from the jason voorhees school of menacing villains

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I might pick it up when it's on sale. I liked the other AO2 games, they weren't great or anything but they were some crazy over the top action fun times. Not every game has to be a fucking super amazing jaw dropping epic story driven experience guys, I'll be the first to admit that there are one too many third person shooters on the market these days but AO2 has always been rather tongue in cheek about the presentation. This looks just as over the top and fun as the others.

I'm of the personal belief that there is plenty of room for dumb action titles, you people seriously need to lighten up a bit.

Same here.
Besides, I played the other games, and I'm a co-op nut, anything I haven't played with my sister, I've played with my best friend and those two parts of the Venn Diagram overlap A LOT.

 

[AsurasEyes]

"Some non-white people got shot in the trailer, that means it's racist!" is the jist I've seen from this forum so far, but I bet that if we were talking about Call of Duty, you'd be complaining that you were killing Russians. I would. I like Russians.
But so far, it's only shown that you're fighting the cartels, whose soldiers consist of mass-murderers, hitmen, psychopaths, and enforcers of a horrific regime that holds the people of Mexico in terror and constant warfare. It's like saying Django Unchained (awesome movie by the way) was racist because all of the white Americans were shown to be horrible racist bastards who say "******" and hit slaves. Would you prefer if they set the action in Mexico, and had all the bad guys be white? Or if they set it in America and fought the Crips or the Bloods?

I'd prefer that if they take a real life horror story like the Cartels in Mexico, then they at least treat it with respect, if only out of respect to the hundreds of people who have died as part of the current conflict.

The stuff going on in Mexico is incredibly fucked up. It is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world right now. Having a game where two white Americans march in and righteously blow everything up is in incredibly poor taste, and completely misrepresents the situation as it currently is. Not a brofest, but a genocide.

Imagine a game where the player is encouraged to march into a Kosovo refugee camp and start unloading. Would you have a problem with that? I would hop so. And hopefully you'll see why I have a problem with this as well.

I can see why people have a problem with this. Problem is; while Mexico is a real life horror story, you don't need to approach everything with a somber, respectful tone. I think Moviebob is a bit of a *****, but I can agree with him on one thing: if you only treat something with reverence and seriousness, you make it an abstract idea separate from our reality. An action movie in which two dudes mow down legions upon legions of cartel enforcers is better than the previous attempt at a serious game featuring the Cartel, Call of Juarez, which I would recall is now gamings' "Song of the South".

Here's the point of my little rant: Which is worse? A game that doesn't try to send a message about this hideous real world conflict, not trying to be serious or gritty, or a serious and gritty game that completely fucks up and sends the wrong messages about this hideous real world conflict?

 

[Leoofmoon]

considering the FUCKING dark tone of the last game I want this new one to be light heated and really I don't see that much wrong with the trailer, its in mexico are we gonna make a huge flame of RACIST like we did with RE5? (A game I like) Really this game seams fun in many silly ways and I want to enjoy a game like that.

 

[Coffeejack]

Only the 'I could go for a taco' line makes me think this is parody, because surely noone would be retarded enough to play that line straight? Surely? Please?

[sub]They did, didn't they?[/sub]

Reminds me of a line from Red Dwarf, in which Arnie 'Ace' Rimmer (what a guy) blows up a pursuing Nazi on his motorbike and remarks 'Bet he's a Sour Kraut'.

It's kind of funny, in that holding-your-face-in-your-hands sort of way.

 

[deviltry]

characters Alpha and Bravo shoot a bunch of brown people.

In my 23 years of life in eastern Europe I never dealt with or witnessed any racism and seeing a black/brown/asian man is like christmas - once a year.

And all I see is people in group A shooting people in group B. No offensive material.

We should replace everyone with white people? Oh yea no racism there - sarcasm, because white people don't live in Mexico. Deal with it.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

I tend to assume this sort of thing is straight faced and mildly retarded until I see concrete proof to the contrary.

Given the game industry's past with this sort of content, it seems like the winning bet.

Got it in one.

Way too often studios think they can throw in a couple fourth-wall jokes and assume people will let it go because "It's just a parody! Didn't you catch the joke?" When the truth is their attempts to remain self-aware about the absurdity of their game just makes it even sadder when you realize they are expecting us to buy it for the "serious gritty action."

And then sadder still when people do.

 

[Leoofmoon]

I tend to assume this sort of thing is straight faced and mildly retarded until I see concrete proof to the contrary.

Given the game industry's past with this sort of content, it seems like the winning bet.

Got it in one.

Way too often studios think they can throw in a couple fourth-wall jokes and assume people will let it go because "It's just a parody! Didn't you catch the joke?" When the truth is their attempts to remain self-aware about the absurdity of their game just makes it even sadder when you realize they are expecting us to buy it for the "serious gritty action."

And then sadder still when people do.

I'm sorry IS Army of two a serious game? its 2 guys who first game was fighting terrorist by parachuting in on one shoot together, blowing up terrorist and had a hacker buddy who spoke in 7eeT speak. not to mention after the Iraq level I'm pretty sure next on the list was Russia!

I love the Army of two game for stupid over the top action fun and this seams a return to forum instead of the immediate 180* that the 2nd pulled.