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Comments
This reminds me of debates over whether or not The Binding of Isaac is a roguelike.
How would it not be a roguelike? It has literally every trait that is part of that genre definition.
People (I am not one of them) have argued that a roguelike must be turn-based.
Others have argued that roguelikes must have ASCII graphics (this would also exclude a number of far more traditional roguelikes like the tileset version of Dungeoncrawl Stone Soup).
Eh. That's akin, to me, to arguing that an FPS has to be 2.5D.
Saving the world doesn't come into Lost Odyssey until the end-ish...I think. From what I remember, it was mostly a revenge plot.
I feel that Spec Ops' criticism of shooters works effectively only if you consider the war vidya subgenre rather than Doom. Granted, Doom spawned those other shooters, but SOTL deals mostly with how fucked up war in video games is. It just so happens that the most popular war video games are shooters.
Sometimes, I usually get tired of the whole save the world plots in gaming, along with huge epic worlds. I kinda feel that a smaller scale would mean more time on the character aspect of things for some reason. Maybe more development on them?
That's...not really an apt comparison. One of Spec Ops' major themes is how war video games tend to demonize the enemy.
In Doom that point is moot, since you are fighting literal demons. No, not metaphor ones, actual demons that are explicitly stated to come from Hell.
*Plots that clinch on MacGuffin hunts
*The weight of the world rests solely on the parties' shoulders
*Dungeon-hopping without downtime segments and plot twists that throw a wrench in linear progression
*Characters always having a link to the central conflict through backstory that motivates them(saving the world out of duty, for money, for adoration, for adventure, etc. is almost always replaced by traumatic backstory eventually)
I disagree on the basis that outside of shooters, war is handled somewhere between more maturely and somewhat properly.
Fair enough, but I still don't see how knowing about Doom somehow influences or improves on your experience with that particular game.
Well, not Doom specifically. But Malk was saying that Spec Ops and Doom being in the same genre is odd, which I disagreed with because Spec Ops uses that notion as its most powerful tool. It's not to do with Doom specifically, but the games that came after which all owe their existence to Doom.
A more accurate comparison would be Spec Ops and Modern Warfare 3, or Spec Ops and Battlefield.
Doom's...not a war game. It's a science fiction/religious horror game that just so happens to be the pioneering FPS.
If you mean games, sure. If you mean media in general, then I disagree. Of course, said media has had a significant lead start and doesn't have to deal with the problems of interactivity.
EDIT: Noimporta in charge of reading English properly, disregard everything.
In dot points:
I'm not saying that Spec Ops is a criticism of Doom specifically, or that Doom needs to undergo social criticism (because it doesn't), but Spec Ops sharing a genre with Doom is necessary via the bridge of modern military shooters.
^ Also, I do mean in other game genres.
Oh, I see.
To use reductionism even further:
Doom: Hey guys, shooting up monsters in droves is fun.
Military Shooters: Shooting up soldiers in droves is also fun.
Spec-Ops: Wait a minute...
Technically speaking, a more apt comparison would've been
"Spec-Ops: Shooting up soldiers in droves is fun!"
"Player: Wait, really?"
"Spec-Ops: NO! ~smack~"
To be perfectly honest, I like games to be epic in scale, since they make you feel like you're a part of something awesome.
This is part of the reason why I could never get into the Ace Attorney series. They're spectacular games in terms of storytelling and characters, but courtroom drama, no matter how over-the-top, feels more suited to a TV series than a video game.