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A Call to Arms: The Hamster Wheel of the Military Shooter

Round and around and round they go - where they stop, everybody knows

Words: on October 30, 2012
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25 comments

  • avantguardian - October 30, 2012 11:56 p.m.

    people that want different have different. they have the halos, killzones, farcrys, crysis(cryses? crysises?), borderlands. gears, dust, tribes. all that ftp shit. i don't see that as the real issue. as the writer pointed out, warfighter sucked. hard. ea is obviously just trying to directly compete w/ activision. if it was a well made game, or succeeded with what little it did bring to the table, the point would be somewhat moot, imo. i see the "problem" having a lot to do with our current place in this generation of games. shooters are a lot like sports games. towards the end of the cycle, the limits of tech really start to stagnate the genres. i expect the next wave of consoles/PCs to reinvigorate a lot of those who have become frustrated with the "sameness" of current games, especially shooters and sports games. and i'm not saying that the constant regurgitation and lack of ideas isn't an issue, i just don't think it's THE issue.

  • secher_nbiw - October 31, 2012 1:03 a.m.

    This article isn't about shooter in general (the halos et al) but military shooters in general. No one is disputing that there are options out there, but for gamers who want to play a military inspired game, the options are shit. You can't honestly say that the problem with military shooters is the tech. It's the uninspired stories, the bland characters, by-the-numbers Clancy plots. Tech won't result in better crafted stories, or better character and events. Gamers buy this shit, so they (we) are somewhat complicit, but there is little innovation in the details and execution of military shooters. Tech may be a small part of it, but many gamers I know would happily overlook lower production values if they got better stories.

  • ParagonT - October 31, 2012 5:20 a.m.

    You mean realistic-military shooters since Halo, Gears, and others are in fact military shooters... but I digress. Stories and bland characters are a big problem, but so is the tech. Tech can widen the possibilities of the AI, Phsyics, multiplayer cap, objects available per map, and more. All those things effect the stories and such things. Black ops seriously has an arcade like style going through the story-line, but imagine with better tech, they could seriously add more enemies, better AI, and better physics in the mix. That could affect the size of the map in a whole, level design, and even the story to put you in a massive warzone. Not saying that tech is the main issue, but I wouldn't call it small by any means.

  • amagasakiseb - November 2, 2012 3:43 a.m.

    What annoys me about COD is that they never change the game engine and its blindingly obvious from the way the characters run (with their legs quite far apart) and its been the same since .. I suppose COD2 right? That's the first time I remember seeing them like that. I want to see the next COD2, the next COD4. These were groundbreaking COD games. Corporate guys clearly value short term gains over long term improvement, but I bet the developers are not as black-hearted as that. I would say that is a big reason why Valve rarely (perhaps never) makes a bad game. They have more or less total control of their finance and, with it, total control of the development process. They can take as long as they like to make a video game and are not pressured into churning out annual additions to franchises just for the sake of competition.

  • taokaka - October 30, 2012 11:52 p.m.

    You speak as if there's no innovation within the entirety of battlefield, COD or MOH. While I haven't seen anything to convince me otherwise in the case of MoH so I agree that it's probably still around entirely because of the other two franchises successes. Now on to battlefield, DICE were actually quite innovative with the bad company series, can you name another well written comedic military FPS? Because I can't. BF3 wasn't that innovative and felt like they injected battlefield with a bit of COD and as a result was criticized by the community accordingly. Now onto COD, Infinity ward take a bit too much flak for lack of innovation, the original modern warfare brought an addictive arcade style gameplay to modern military FPS and revolutionized multiplayer. MW2 brought with it spec ops and MW3 did well ...... um...... zombies with guns? Speaking of zombies, Treyarch have consistently innovated in the military FPS, WaW brought a challenging arcade-ish single player to the WWII era and created the phenomenon that is COD: zombies, black ops featured a time travelling conspiracy filled plot, welcome variety to the zombies formula in maps like call of the dead and shangri la and dead ops arcade. I can't judge Black Ops 2 yet but the new more open structure of the campaign certainly looks interesting.

  • secher_nbiw - October 31, 2012 1:09 a.m.

    All the innovation you mention is years old. BFBC2 came out almost 3 years ago. The original MW came out 5 years ago. The little tweaks of adding zombies or Spec Ops is something, but not real innovation. They are minor changes added to give gamers a reason to buy the next iteration.

  • taokaka - October 31, 2012 2:42 a.m.

    But what this article is really trying to say is that after one installment in both COD and Battlefield that have failed to bring anything significantly new to the table they should just stop making them. Why? For the sake of the integrity of video games like katamari, which is a pretty poor example to use seeing as it hasn't evolved any more since its conception than battlefield and COD. It's as if the author hasn't even spoken with a majority of the community of BF or COD, they don't play them as if they're an art but a form of entertainment. I've tried to convert my friends which regularly play BF and COD into various games which are built upon quirky concepts and rarely are they intrigued. The author has to except that every gamer out there isn't open to the new experiences that games can provide and they're happy to just abide by the stereotype of a shut in mindlessly shooting stuff for hours on end.

  • bobob101 - October 30, 2012 11:23 p.m.

    Well said. Any genre that continues to annually pump out titles that are more or less the same is destined to stagnate, or at least cease offering new and interesting things.

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