I just started playing COD Black Ops Cold War because I got it through my PlayStation Plus subscription and wanted to try it out. I’ve previously played some others like Modern Warfare (1 and 2) and WWII. While it always felt a bit over the top and propaganda-ish, I really liked it for the blockbuster feeling and just turning your mind off and enjoying the set pieces. However, Cold War has a section in Vietnam and I suddenly started feeling really uncomfortable and just turned the game off.
In WWII you can easily feel like the “defender”, and even Modern Warfare felt like fighting a very specific organisation that wanted to kill millions. Here however it just becomes so hard to explain why I’m happily mowing down hundreds of clearly Vietnamese locals that I was unable to turn my mind off and just enjoy the spectacle.
I turned to the internet and started browsing and found this article and I really agree with what the author is saying.
I don’t know if I will be continuing the campaign or not, but I just feel that I don’t want to support these kinds of minimizations of military interventions.
I just wish there were more high budget / setpiece games that don’t glorify real life wars. Spec Ops The Line was amazing in that sense, but it’s also quite old already.
I would love to hear your opinions on this subject.
If you define fun by “having a blast” then we are talking about the same thing. Why wouldn’t a game be valid if it’s about delivering a message above moment to moment action? Strip the message away and obviously it’s lesser for it. Because it’s not a message plus an entirely separate mechanical system, it’s about what everything means in context. Rather than focusing on making flashy combos, it’s more interesting to ponder over what is it supposed to represent and what is actually happening.
It’s a little funny though that I did consider Spec Ops as another example, and that I have seen people judging it the same way that you are doing to Hellblade, that it was a mediocre military FPS, but many rebutted that even its lackluster gameplay is supposed to contribute the commentary. In the same way you praise of Spec Ops, I don’t think Hellblade is nearly as bad in that aspect as you say, As an action game it is serviceable, but the action is not the point.
If you argue for serious games but only in the context of the gamification of business and education, you are still glossing over a whole multitude of media that is more about exploring ideas than moment-to-moment thrills, something other media have in plenty, and something which games have incredible potential for. You are thinking of typical games solely in terms of pop culture. There is a lot more to a medium than pop culture and strictly functional tools, and you are making that to be a massive abyss where nothing has worth.
You argue that Hellblade needs to be interpreted in context. I argue that Hellblade felt like opening a book only to find it full of thumbtacks and being asked to appreciate the context as to why it contains nothing but thumbtacks. If my definition of a “good book” requires a narrative told through words, I’m clearly not going to consider Thumbtacks: A Story of Bleeding Fingers a good book (Note: I am being a bit disingenuous here as Hellblade is very clearly a game but I hope my point gets across none-the-less)
Is the issue one of my expectations not being met? Sure. Is my definition of gaming too narrow? Perhaps so. But really, I think we likely agree about the definition of games in broad strokes and are in disagreement simply in the case of Hellblade. I suspect the biggest hurdle between us is not so much in our definitions of what a game is but rather in our definitions of what art is. If that’s the case, then I politely defer to you. I’m not much interested in debating what art is nor its value. You seem like a better spokesperson than I on that front.
I define a “good game” as one with a set of rules where the players have to make interesting decisions. I feel Hellblade focused more on its message than in meeting that definition. You seem to have gotten more mileage out of the game. Fair enough.