The Exhausting Violence of Max Payne 3

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oldtaku

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It's already been mentioned, but just to reaffirm - you really need to play SpecOps: The Line for a good look at what Six Days in Fallujah might have been. Though I suspect The Line is even more brutal than they would have dared.
 

ElPatron

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What made me give up on just putting holes and more holes when you see your enemies fall in slow-mo was not the exhaustion - it was the lack of ammo. Totally unnecessary to just keep pulling the trigger.


Xenocides said:
I haven't played MP3 but a similarly violent game is God of War 3.
No, it's not similarly violent.

God of War was that game I was waiting to find but was too young to understand. Now I appreciate the game's over-the-top unrealistic violence as the extreme power fantasy it is.

Max Payne is just realistically violent.
 

ThatDarnCoyote

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Prime_Hunter_H01 said:
That praise was what was used to convince people that it should be released, its intention was not to revolutionize games but to tell the stories of the soldiers that worked with Atomic before they were on tour and participated in the Battle of Fallujah. If they had told their story any other way, book or movie, only those who already know what they have been through would know the details of their story. It was a video game biography and if it lived up to the hype then it may have been one of the most important games ever made. But it would be successful in its's purpose by just getting a release.
I get that, and you're right. Again, I would have played it, and I liked that these Marines' stories would be told. My problem isn't with the game or the developer, but with people who always bring Six Days up whenever war-themed games are discussed.

The phrase you use, "if it lived up to the hype" is key. Consider: The updated version of Medal of Honor was made in close collaboration with veterans of special operations units, based on their experiences in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. It was, in many ways, their story, which had been largely untold in other media. But because it was actually made and released, it could be analyzed and criticized. In the OP, Mr. Scimeca just snarks at it.

I sometimes think that the "serious" writers and thinkers about games who sing the praises of Six Days were secretly relieved that it was canceled, because now their image of the game would never be sullied by real life. Like a rock star who died young, it would remain forever a shining promise of what might have been, and no similar game that actually gets released could ever compete with that vision.
 

Dennis Scimeca

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ThatDarnCoyote said:
The phrase you use, "if it lived up to the hype" is key. Consider: The updated version of Medal of Honor was made in close collaboration with veterans of special operations units, based on their experiences in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. It was, in many ways, their story, which had been largely untold in other media. But because it was actually made and released, it could be analyzed and criticized. In the OP, Mr. Scimeca just snarks at it.
Criticizing the idea of a military shooter being "realistic" is not snark. It's honest assessment that I've never heard any analyst or pundit, or gamer from the military disagree with.

Having military advisers on a development project does not mean the mil-shooter is realistic, or an actual depiction of real events such that anyone could seriously look at a mil-shooter and try to draw any conclusions about the reality of military life or conflict from it. Mil-shooters take famous or well-documented battles and use them as settings for levels, and that's about it.

The Medal of Honor series would better, and perhaps more responsibly, be described as "aesthetically authentic," meaning the gear, the lingo, the weapons, etc.. Any bearing on the real world ends when you take a step past that point. "Realism" is a marketing tool used to sell copies of these games and nothing more. Cynicism in the face of that word being applied to mil-shooters is a healthy thing.
 

ThatDarnCoyote

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Dennis Scimeca said:
The Medal of Honor series would better, and perhaps more responsibly, be described as "aesthetically authentic," meaning the gear, the lingo, the weapons, etc.. Any bearing on the real world ends when you take a step past that point. "Realism" is a marketing tool used to sell copies of these games and nothing more. Cynicism in the face of that word being applied to mil-shooters is a healthy thing.
Thanks for the response! I think I understand a bit better what you were saying.

I take your point about the difference between "aesthetic authenticity" versus "realism", but I think it's splitting semantic hairs a bit too much. "Aesthetically authentic" may be a more precise term, but when gamers and developers talk about "realistic", it's pretty clear that they mean the same thing. And when we're talking about video games (or movies, for that matter), that's probably the practical limit anyway. No game is ever going to be able to really communicate the gestalt of armed combat beyond the aesthetics. And that limitation would have applied to Six Days in Fallujah just as much, had it been released.
 

RhombusHatesYou

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Dennis Scimeca said:
Having military advisers on a development project does not mean the mil-shooter is realistic, or an actual depiction of real events such that anyone could seriously look at a mil-shooter and try to draw any conclusions about the reality of military life or conflict from it. Mil-shooters take famous or well-documented battles and use them as settings for levels, and that's about it.

The Medal of Honor series would better, and perhaps more responsibly, be described as "aesthetically authentic," meaning the gear, the lingo, the weapons, etc.. Any bearing on the real world ends when you take a step past that point.
Yep, spot on.

The developers of mil-shooters know this. They know that aiming for 'realism' that goes any deeper than hanging the trappings of the military on their game has the very real likelihood of lessening its appeal to a broad audience. They know that the closer a mil-shooter gets to being a military simulation (milsim), the more niche it's appeal comes, which is why even on a single platform (PC in this case), any given CoD or BF title will outsell something like ArmA II (which shares pedigree with the VBS military training software).

Of course, even with milsim software, there's a limit to how far developers are willing to take 'realism', partly because things outside the focus of the sim but mostly because there are limits to how much 'realism' even the most hardcore simmer will put up with.

The basic reason to all this, which people need to keep in mind, is that some situations are entertaining if not outright fun to go through while others are nothing more than mindless tedium. A tense firefight or pull off a difficult aerobatic maneuver is entertaining... filing flight plans or standing sentry duty for hours with your biggest danger being chafing is not entertaining... and militatry service (and reality as a whole) contains far, far more of the non-entertaining sort of duties than the entertaining sort.

Or as a veteran infantryman of 20 years service in the Australian Army said to me, "Outside of actual combat, the closest game experience you'll get to military service is playing Solitaire for 12 hours every day."
 

Prime_Hunter_H01

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RhombusHatesYou said:
The basic reason to all this, which people need to keep in mind, is that some situations are entertaining if not outright fun to go through while others are nothing more than mindless tedium. A tense firefight or pull off a difficult aerobatic maneuver is entertaining... filing flight plans or standing sentry duty for hours with your biggest danger being chafing is not entertaining... and militatry service (and reality as a whole) contains far, far more of the non-entertaining sort of duties than the entertaining sort.

Or as a veteran infantryman of 20 years service in the Australian Army said to me, "Outside of actual combat, the closest game experience you'll get to military service is playing Solitaire for 12 hours every day."
That veteran is correct. Despite the fond memories most military members have about their service, most people may not realize that being in the military is a lot of waiting and procedure. My ROTC instructors taught me that, one one a pilot, the other was a cop. From their stories the closest to situation like a modern military shooter would portray was the make shift duty of grabbing water for the defense force in Kuwait during an alert and a sand storm. The one who was a pilot had the most danger due to bad landing conditions. No Ace Combat dogfights there.

Captcha: thats hot

I really hope it is talking about Kuwait or a jet afterburner.
 

RhombusHatesYou

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Prime_Hunter_H01 said:
Or as a veteran infantryman of 20 years service in the Australian Army said to me, "Outside of actual combat, the closest game experience you'll get to military service is playing Solitaire for 12 hours every day."
That veteran is correct. Despite the fond memories most military members have about their service, most people may not realize that being in the military is a lot of waiting and procedure.[/quote]

He also said "the biggest day-to-day challenge a soldier will face in peacetime is managing to have a wank on the sly when on night sentry duty."

... can't really see that featuring in the next CoD.
 

Worgen

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Mcoffey said:
I would definitely recommend Spec Ops: The Line if you want violence that makes you think about what it is you're doing.

There's one point where I was hiding behind cover and these two enemy units hadn't seen me yet, so they were just chatting about gum. It was very human, very friendly conversation, which made them seem very real to me.

As they started heading in my direction, I remember thinking; "Please, just go the other way." I genuinely did not want to kill these people. The game is filled with moments like that. Fantastic game.
I remember a game called Turok Evolution or something for the xbox or ps2 or something. Anyway one thing that could happen is if you injured your enemies enough they would surrender. They would get down on their knees and put their hands behind their heads. I don't remember if you could shoot them at that point but I know I always tried to avoid it since I tended to try and get them to do that, its too bad the game kinda sucked. It would be interesting to see a mechanic like that in a game now, where you could render someone unable to fight and either "Arrest" them or at least ignore them.
 

RhombusHatesYou

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Worgen said:
It would be interesting to see a mechanic like that in a game now, where you could render someone unable to fight and either "Arrest" them or at least ignore them.
You want to go and pick yourself up the old game SWAT 4 then.
 

Worgen

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RhombusHatesYou said:
Worgen said:
It would be interesting to see a mechanic like that in a game now, where you could render someone unable to fight and either "Arrest" them or at least ignore them.
You want to go and pick yourself up the old game SWAT 4 then.
Its strange how older games tended to do that, the only modern example I can think of that lets you not kill people is Deus Ex... and Alpha Protocol I suppose.

I remember one part in mw3, you had just blasted your way into a bunker and there were shell shocked solders stumbling around all over, you could shoot them or the ai would, no way to avoid it.
 

Ivan Petrovna

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FANTASTIC game!!!
One of my favorites! Already playing for 3 week and don?t wanna stop) By the way I Downloaded it free full version here http://bit.ly/maxpayne3new