First of all: spoilers for Modern Warfare 2 and, at the very, very end, some stuff about Metal Gear Solid 4.
Second of all, this week's episode of Podtoid focuses mainly on Modern Warfare 2. Stories about the midnight launches, our feelings about the game in general and, ultimately, a really long discussion about the airport massacre level.
It's got a pretty good mixture of intensely immature humor and legitimate discussion, as most good Podtoid episodes do, so we hope you enjoy it.
You can listen to the show here or subscribe to us on iTunes.
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Contest:
1:00 PM on 11.11.2009
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Anyway, good show.
you don't have to kill people... headshot are not the only way to go..
shoot them in the ass or in the legs... preserve your cover and don't kill people...
I'd rather play Borderlands.
You true gamers are my friends, but if I have to listen to Frat guys and other tools and meatheads on line playing, I'd rather just skip it all.
I was referring more to the fact that you are at least partially complicit by letting it happen, not that you're forced to shoot people or anything. I didn't shoot a single civilian in the level.
Dreamsower:
Wouldn't that be a MORE realistic expectation if a game is going to push the envelope? It would definitely be unrealistic to, say, cover all possible options for HL2 like wanting to kill Dr Kleiner or Barney or blow up white forest intentionally, because there's absolutely no moral dilemma there, no complex emotions evoked. The MW2 level forces you to feel really shitty and ambivalent about the massacre, and should thus cash the check it's written by allowing you to at least partially follow through on that stuff.
I remember when it wasn't cool or even socially acceptable to be a gaming "nerd". Now that we can all somehow have a chance of getting laid, even though we have several gaming consoles and a few hundred games in our living rooms, we're going to start doing what used to be done to people like us and crack on them? What? Because they look differently or they play "mainstream" games?
I don't find the "frat boy playing Madden, Halo or CoD" stereotype to be one that describes a person I'd really like to spend much time with, but I also don't particularly enjoy the "elitist gamer who shits on others and wants to keep his hobby all to himself".
But hey, I understand, I guess. Our little culture which was once mocked is now becoming cool, so it's our turn to shit on others who we don't think belong in our club, right? Awesome. And that makes us better than the supposed frat boys how, exactly?
I guess I was kinda giving them slack since this is the first CoD game that I have bought/played extensively, but yeah they should have put more time thinking that part through.
What do you think of the game?
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Samit please reduce your usage of "um". Please?
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It's a sad day when Adam Dork has to cross out Aaron Linde's name from the list...
Hmm... actually tempted to try listening to these podcasts through Audiosurf. Anybody ever done that?
But having said that, it's ultimately a fact of not knowing what game you're buying. Yeah, I said it. What you expected from MW2 in that scene has ABSOLUTE ZERO president set in the Call of Duty series started when a bunch of guys quit EA making Medal of Honor to make... Medal of Honor. Call of Duty, even from IW, has always been about forcing you to experience, not dictate events. This isn't Peter Molynuex talking about deciding the fate of an entire world based upon whether or not you eat ten live chicks. This isn't Bioware talking about the moral implications related to saving a village or raping all the women and dogs in that village. Call of Duty NEVER gave you a choice or a branching path. So it's not some great failing of Inifnity Ward because they didn't craft two seperate campaigns to keep Reverend happy. It's YOUR failure for not knowing what game you're buying.
Now if the Call of Duty franchise was always about choices shaping the campaign, yeah, your point is valid. But you're bitching about a guided experience being, SUPRISE, guided.
LOL. Sounds like a plan.
We are playing the role of an undercover agent - a "good guy", who find himself in this bad situation. When we start any level in this game we are expected to behave in a manner that would be close to how that character would. We must follow orders given to us or we can't complete the level.
You are then given the choice to either kill or not kill the civilians - lets say you decide to play the role of the "good guy" and not kill, but let the rest of the team kill them and and walk outside, so far so good?
You then proceed outside where you need to kill the riot squad or else you cannot proceed any further and complete the level. This is the problem I had, am I supposed to believe the character I'm controlling would do something so horrible? This is the "good guy" after all.
The focus is shifted for me, from killing civilians to taking on the role of a very strange undercover agent. The kind of agent that will just watch as hundreds of civilians are killed before him and do nothing - then later kill a bunch of cops - all in the name of the greater good or the mission??
I just can't believe such a character would exist even in a wild hollywood movie. It just does not gel with the rest of the game. A sane human, let alone a soldier could not partake in such an act. Are we to assume you have gone insane or turned into a psycho during the mission? I don't know.
Many people are praising IW for this level and say its very brave to handle such a serious issue of terrorism etc - but I don't see the connection. I just feel the level could have been handled better - perhaps you are one of the civilians, you have no weapons and you simply have to try and escape the slaughter but you are killed at the end of the level - it would have been much more powerful.
To me to have a choice at that level is to make it meaningless. Everyone is being a armchair general by asking for a morally acceptable out. This is a very specific character, pvt. allen, not a generic character like where everyone addresses you "soldier", and certainly not pvt. anthony burch. Pvt. Burch would have never even made it through ranger school, more or less onto Task force 141(I feel confidant in saying this as 99.5% of the people playing this game wouldn't). So to imprint your morals on a character that to me is already defined is silly. It is very easy to sit in your chair and say that you wouldn't do such an act from the safety of our homes. This story is very much a narrative, not a choose your adventure. private allen was picked for a specific reason, and that reason is that he would do these things. This soldier just came from afghanistan were you watch friends he likely would have know for years, ate with everyday, played cards with etc, die fighting for america. pvt allen is a soldier that would do the dirty work so the rest of could live our lives in peace. The point of the level is to make the player share responsibilty of defending america, not to back out of it. Anthony said he not would be willing to pay the moral price to kill innocents, well unfortunatly for the innocents, its not pvt anthony in that airport, its pvt allen, and those people are going to die because pvt allen isnt going to do anything, because he cares more for the safety of america and his friends than a bunch a russians in a airport. The largest flaw of that level was not to endear to his fellow soldiers more and make you want to pay that price to defend america, as to generate the alex vance affect, so you want to pay that price instead of forcing it down your throats.