Video Game General

[Unformed Golem]

The only decent RTS since Dawn of War was the Wargame series from Eugen Systems, a French developer.  A reboot/balance patch/graphics update is currently pretty far along under the name "WARNO".  It's a "Cold War Goes Hot" scenario obviously inspired by World in Conflict.  It strikes a good balance between simulation-realism and not getting too bogged down in details (e.g. all tracked vehicles move at the same speed along roads, weapons standard ranges by type).  There's no base building and high-APM micro is pointless since a slight input lag is part of the simulation.  Unfortunately the campaigns are somewhat stupid bot-stomping exercises.

[Recent Friend]

https://www.youtube.com/@ActionPoints

This is a depressing knight. Used to be popular during Gamer Gate, and spread the idea of commercializing nerd culture. Now occasionally makes normie socialist-leaning videos, which I assume is mostly a result of the situation he's in. I look at his recent videos, and I see they are the opinions of someone whose options are slowly being removed. Can only make money doing commissions? AI art is a threat. Pokemon GO is charging more, it's more expensive for me to get friends.

[anthony]

https://www.youtube.com/@ActionPoints

This is a depressing knight. Used to be popular during Gamer Gate, and spread the idea of commercializing nerd culture. Now occasionally makes normie socialist-leaning videos, which I assume is mostly a result of the situation he's in. I look at his recent videos, and I see they are the opinions of someone whose options are slowly being removed. Can only make money doing commissions? AI art is a threat. Pokemon GO is charging more, it's more expensive for me to get friends.

AI Art discussion directed at Asmongold. That's bleak.

[Recent Friend]

I was playing Paradise Killer for a bit and saved some screenshots. I was waiting for the hopepunk thread (explained in spoiler) to happen but now I'm not so sure it fits, so I'll just post my thoughts here. Suda 51 hopes his sensibilities will outlast him, so people are making Suda style games. But is it being built upon, or is it just repeating the style?

I have only played up to a certain point. I'll post the things that stood out to me.

Show Content

Spoiler
Look at her name, something something dies death. Suda names a place called the Deathmatch Bar, a place called Body Slam Beach. I think Suda has this childish quality with naming conventions, edginess combined with pro wrestling. Here every name is cranked up with a lot of thought put into it, with references to esoteric stuff.



This isn't a Ukraine flag. We find the LLD in exile for a shocking amount of days.



These UI elements are nice, it's good graphic design. It's like a travel brochure, did I mention we're going to a vacation area? Because this game adds Flower Sun and Rain to the Suda soup, which already has you playing as a god (Harman Smith) and solving a mystery (Silver Case).





This is the dialogue that made me think this belongs in "Hopepunk". Because despite all of the "crazy Suda shenanigans" we're eventually just going to return to "normal", everything will be okay.



This game's version of Iwazaru. He makes a joke about redistributing wealth.



A Suda Moon.

And that's about it, I don't know if I'll finish it. I think what this game does is just mix every thing Suda does and tries to westernize it. 

Now does it build upon Suda's works? UI wise yes. Character-wise I'm inclined to say not as much, I guess you can say it clarifies what he's already built, and fits in every trope he uses filtered through western sensibilities. It struggles to explore ways to be surreal that doesn't come off as attention seeking (almost every character in the cast looks/is gay). The most visceral feeling I got as far as I did is probably reading about how a bunch of entities were just murdered, and everyone is nonchalant about it.

[anthony]

I was playing Paradise Killer for a bit and saved some screenshots. I was waiting for the hopepunk thread (explained in spoiler) to happen but now I'm not so sure it fits, so I'll just post my thoughts here. Suda 51 hopes his sensibilities will outlast him, so people are making Suda style games. But is it being built upon, or is it just repeating the style?

I have only played up to a certain point. I'll post the things that stood out to me.



And that's about it, I don't know if I'll finish it. I think what this game does is just mix every thing Suda does and tries to westernize it. 

Now does it build upon Suda's works? UI wise yes. Character-wise I'm inclined to say not as much, I guess you can say it clarifies what he's already built, and fits in every trope he uses filtered through western sensibilities. It struggles to explore ways to be surreal that doesn't come off as attention seeking (almost every character in the cast looks/is gay). The most visceral feeling I got as far as I did is probably reading about how a bunch of entities were just murdered, and everyone is nonchalant about it.

I look at this and get the feeling that it's relatively earnest, but also completely off the mark. They seem to get a lot of what Suda does. The "travel" aesthetic of FSR, heavy attention to graphic design, but it doesn't strike me as fundamentally like Suda (which in my mind would mean something like emerging from similar tastes, interests, and thought processes) or comparable to his best works (craft quality doesn't feel equal, the vision is lacking).

This feels like an attempt at synthesising something which is completely natural and somewhat poorly understood. Suda is not a Mad Libs board. You can't take elements that exist within his work and recombine them and get something that still feels like Suda. Wrestling, the occult, the moon, murder, you can do all of that and be wrong. While Suda himself can pick up anything he wants and make it Suda because what makes Suda is the refraction through his own character and tastes. He creates, he selects, and he also spins.

As you say, in this artist's hands it's all tropes, while I readily get the impression that everything Suda makes means a lot more to him than that. Suda at his best is distilling a picture of the world into fine multimedia art. Is that what Paradise Killer is? Or is it a kind of arbitrary re-arrangement of things which are superficially Suda?

I'm interested that you think to call what this game is doing "westernising". Because I think you're right, maybe more right than you meant. Suda is already something of an occidentalist. Everyone is in the 21st century. He knows a fair bit about and is interested in America. Many of his characters have names like 'Smith' and deal with western issues. What does it mean to "Westernise" the work of someone who isn't really making explicitly Japanese art? I think you know even if you didn't say. The way to make something American is to make it shallow, derivative, and gay. Now someone can look at it and instinctively think "Westernised". 

I actually forgot about this game. Might summon Pigsaw and others for further commentary.

[Recent Friend]

"Westernising" is probably best described in the screenshot that made me think of hopepunk. There's "despite the fact were weird god things, we're eventually going to return to normal". Being a god thing has a purpose for Suda, like being the "God of The United States of America", here they don't feel like gods, they're just idiosyncratic. "Normal" is just standard libtardation, attention seeking. Experiences are subconsciously censored by creators and things are picked out for consumption (tasteless consumption = our negative idea of westernized).

But I think there's non-shallow way to westernize Suda. Usually I Imagine it as if Suda was an American movie director sometime before the 60s. The mysticism (Harman would be a Guardian Angel of America, not a god, or a mystical Dirty Harry) and dialogue would be different, But certain universal experiences would remain the same.

[Recent Friend]

https://www.youtube.com/@ActionPoints

This is a depressing knight. Used to be popular during Gamer Gate, and spread the idea of commercializing nerd culture. Now occasionally makes normie socialist-leaning videos, which I assume is mostly a result of the situation he's in. I look at his recent videos, and I see they are the opinions of someone whose options are slowly being removed. Can only make money doing commissions? AI art is a threat. Pokemon GO is charging more, it's more expensive for me to get friends.

AI Art discussion directed at Asmongold. That's bleak.

That video is now deleted. Which makes me wonder about cross-site trackers on this site, as he could've checked analytics.

[oyakodon_khan]

The new-ish Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines: 2™ vaporware "trailer" that was released recently is really promising. If I was working on a sequel to a cult-classic "immersive sim" that's known for being worth playing and replaying despite the fact that everything about it is actually terrible, as it goes with every "classic" entry in this "genre" ("immersive sim" refers to when an RPG is on your computer and is actually "good" instead of bad. The genre is actually strictly defined on the dictionary as "A subgenre of video games in which you can talk to people and also press left-control to crouch.) 
I WOULD definitely take inspiration from Bethesda's classic video games such as Fallout™ 4, the other one that's in space, and also the Cyberpunk™ game made by the producers who were somewhere in the same studio as the developers of The Witcher™ when that was made.
I would do that since all of those games actually sold really well, because video game players are cattle. They're stupid fucking worthless cattle. Once the game is near release, all you need is a couple dozen youtube videos called "Here's all you need to know before jumping into Vampire the Masquerade™: Bloodlines™: 2!™" and millions of drooling mongoloid hogs will be lining up to purchase the latest zogeo game. It's really that simple. They'll say (out loud, no internal monologue) something like:  

"Huuuuh? I know some of those words... I saw it in a youtube™ video essay... If I play this then I can say I am a FAN of (franchise) or something. that would be a very important thing for me to do." 

In a way these people remind me of the ghouls in the classic role-playing game series Vampire: The Masquerade™ released in 1991 by White Wolf Publishing™

It was always a given that the game, if it were ever to escape the deep subterranean jail it was thrown into for being born as a deformed idea of a sequel to an unfinished game with none of the original developers being involved in any way, (All of them were killed and buried in unmarked graves near the Troika Games Studio parking lot) would be a dumbed-down console-centric "shooter with bad shooting" which in Toddworld sort of makes the game resemble an "RPG" by virtue of the combat mechanics being so awful that it only resembles a mechanical approximation of the exact thing you're looking at, despite being a real time shooter (Isn't every "video" game an RPG?) This exact story has already happened in the past. With the Thief™ franchise.
And I can't stand the voiced protagonist. Surely the decision to make the protagonist's awful dialogue be voiced came directly in an attempt to mimic Todd Howard's winning formula (stole from Bioware's similarly terrible games.) The average video game streamer watching husk can't help but think that voice acting is more betterer than reading a text box, because it's more like uhh a movie or something. You know what's better than movies? Anime. You know what's better than RPGs? JRPGs. Japanese voice acting is so much better at conveying sexy little girls than stupid 50 year old California VA Union whores.
The new-ish Monster Hunter™ lets you replace the in-universe original language created just for the games with English voice acting. Even the new-ish Zelda™ game that I didn't play has terrible voice acting. Everyone is saying that in the next game Link will say something along the lines of "welp.. that just happened." 

Not that I actually care about any of this. The only video game I like is Dark Souls™

[anthony]

Not that I actually care about any of this. The only video game I like is Dark Souls™

This might be the greatest post on this forum.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

I've been playing Ace Attorney, and I found it interesting that the fates of the villains are never shown. You technically don't even know if they're charged since the trials end abruptly after you get your client acquitted, even though you're always finding the real culprit in the process. After the fourth trial you're shown a happy ending that catches up on how all of the allied characters and witnesses from previous cases are doing, and you might expect some comedic scenes perhaps showing the villains in prison making the best of their situations, but they're completely absent.

At first I assumed that this was done because the game was for children (which it is), but the violent murders depicted are obviously less child-friendly than showing a criminal facing consequences. It seems like their fates are conspicuously ignored to keep the atmosphere light for reasons other than to sell the game to a younger audience. In a similar vein, characters that at first appear cynical are usually revealed to possess an underlying earnestness that isn't common in real life. Deaths in general (and even the death of a major character) in most cases don't weigh heavily on anyone. I was surprised that a story could center around murders and uncovering lies while maintaining such a compelling optimism.

[Ichor_Juice]

Wanted to try out the demo for the Beyond Citadel game. Caught my eye when I saw it was a game about violence against women. It was discussed before on the Boltgun thread but I didn’t try the first game. After playing this one I’m convinced on buying the predecessor.

The Dev stresses inspiration from Marathon, which he expresses in the weird reload mechanic, being able to punch (and kick) switches, the scoped .44 pistol, being able to bullshit a lot of the enemies by just punching them to death (technically I was stabbing them with knives this time), and the narrative being heavily oriented towards text and drawings (Marathon’s chapter transitions and terminals vs this game’s memory fragments).




Stretching the comparison, the narrative also seems to orient itself towards the protagonist, like Marathon: Infinity (whether or not it is revealed that the character is a paranoid transcendent ageless heroic killing machine who despises being at peace remains to be seen, although it seems like the part where she is a resurrected super soldier is present). The Marathon inspirations are charming, but they aren't half of what actually interests me about this game. All of this serves to transition into what I want to actually discuss because, from what I have seen, this seems to be a very Japanese take on Brutal Doom.



What I mean is that the developer has a zealous desire to capture hyper-violence in the most intricate details. All the 2d first person gun sprites are drawn in multiple different angles with multiple different firing modes, multiple different reloading methods, a separated cocking animation with its own dedicated keyboard button (where the weird reload comes in), a gun jam mechanic, and your character even pulls back the bolt to check if the firearm has loaded correctly when you press the weapon switch button that corresponds to the gun you are currently holding. You can very much tell that the developer desires to match, or perhaps even surpass, the intent to fully capture every motion and intricacy tied to the action of inflicting violence that SgtMarkIV had also done, all in 2d art as well.

Lets move away from the tools of war and towards what those tools are responsible for. The game has an intricate locational damage system. The unfortunate fodder that you are confronted with can have a piece of their head blown off with a pistol, or downright decapitated with a slicing weapon like an axe. Sometimes enemies die on their knees, and you can use the interact button to knock them over without damaging the corpse. You can shoot legs and arms off to neutralize foes without killing them, and their behaviors afterwards can vary on interaction. Most of the time they will just fall over and with heavy breathes unceremoniously expire, but the girls with automatic rifles will occasionally pull out a pistol to continue fighting, and the acrobatic stealth enemies will sometimes activate a self-destruct sequence on their suit to take you out with them. Even after enemies die, the locational damage still applies. You can blow off arms, or legs, or the head, or you can even disembowel enemies with the axe, and you can do all of this until the enemy is a bloody pile.







The developer Doekuramori does not shy away from an extremely graphic presentation. I saw in one of xosts, on some supposed controversy that the depiction of women being brutally massacred is profane content, that he takes great offense at what he sees as the diminishing of his life’s work.




He most certainly does not turn away from the fact that his chief intent is to capture the utmost extreme in sexual violence. The narrative presented in the demo also reflects on this, from which I mostly interpreted that he saw excessive moralism and an obsession with purity as sterilizing forces in human life. You get depictions of what seems to be a previous iteration of the protagonist getting ripped apart, tortured, and ruined at perceived crimes of excess, and from the little that can be read about the antagonist their main goal seems to be sterilizing and enslaving the will of all humanity as a means of achieving the ultimate eradication of sin. I also took care to notice what games he compared these depictions too in his defense. Black Ops, World at War, Soldier of Fortune, and Ready or Not. Playing through both campaigns of the two Call of Duty games discussed, as well as being familiar with the last two games, it seems to me that these serve as prime inspirations for what he wanted to create. The older Treyarch games distinguished themselves by featuring a full dismemberment system that isn't present in the contemporary InfinityWard games, as well as capturing a particular senseless brutality with World at War.  A dismemberment system is also a noted element in Soldier of Fortune. Obviously the modern military tactical elements of all the games above the desire to capture a complex gun handling system, as well as other details like the leaning system. Perhaps stretching the comparison again, Black Ops and Ready or Not have a notable personal psychological bent to them that is also present in Marathon. Nonetheless, he definitely is presenting what he wants to show on his sleeve, besides the fact that he has a load of hentai rexosted on his account unashamed.



If one may excuse me for being reductive, he does seem to have some pride in depicting women getting exterminated horribly, with contorted faces depicting terror, confusion, misery,and dejection. As a fellow misogynist and admirer of supreme gentleman Elliot Rogers, I salute him as a man and a kindred spirit.

And on a final note, it seems that the Dev also took inspiration from Marathon’s effective sequel, Halo. By that, I mean that just like in Halo…







…you can look down and see that you aren’t just a floating head, but that the player perspective is tied to a body. In this case, a skimpily clothed body with nice breasts and shapely legs. Again, I salute the Dev as a man, and as a fellow pervert. May the Sun never set on the wonderful island of Japan.

[Virtue]

Eviternity II and before that The Citadel, which I didn't enjoy, found it dull.

What I want to talk about is, map 24 of Eviternity II, Temeraire, a Hyperborean map.

Out of all the DOOM levels I have played never have I played a level that is as rich as this, if one were to make a group of people play the first movement of this level, each approach would be different and also valid, the variety of approaches one can take is many, as the picture would suggest. But that is not the only reason this map is exceptional on so many levels but I don't want to rob ye of the joy of playing this by illuminating the later movements, but I assure you it doesnt end with a whimper but with a bang, so take my word for it and play it. You will not regret it.

If you liked Anthony's videos on Sunlust, you will realize that the thoughts he brought up in his videos, perfectly fit this level too. DOOM as an architectural and Aesthetic experience, the necessity of building a mental model of a level to get better at it and what could make an FPS game interesting besides the shooting parts.

[anthony]

The Citadel is a really fantastic piece of work. I agree with much of what Ichor says, but I've been looking at this stuff for a while and have some input of my own.

Yes, obviously the guy is a fan of Marathon. He likes the idea of a literary approach to what is superficially a "first person shooter" or "fps". But like Bungie's games what he's making isn't really one. In the sense that he's not building around the mechanical experience/challenge of shooting. Especially not in any game sense. He is absolutely not making a "boomer shooter" as certain idiots have insisted.

He's doing what Bungie did, and what the Japanese pretty much always do, which is building the game around sensations and impressions and ideas. And then presenting from a first person perspective. If Marathon was something like a science fiction novel broken up and presented through "first person shooter" levels, tropes, and form, The Citadel is that too. But while Marathon was mostly a literary work, with some visual and architectural flair and expression, The Citadel is far less literary and far more viscerally visual. Idiot boomer shooter slave makes a "game" and then contrives some looks and sounds to sit on top. Bungie made a literary "story" and then made a shooter "game" to frame it. Citadel Man I believe is starting mostly with images in his head, ideas and sensations, and then builds a game to frame them. As far as sensibilities expressed within "fps" go he has more in common with Bungie than anybody else in the business.

Bungie were weirdly oriental all along because they were artfags working from ideas rather than the idea of firing a weightless laser tag gun at goblins. They were also pretty good at sensation because of their experience making Myth. Which was about sensation-ideas rather than literary ones (this is why Mandalore is retarded and his video tells you nothing about the games). Halo was where these instincts met and peaked together. Myth is shallow and kind of pointless despite what Mandalore Americans will tell you ("Did you know it's inspired by The Black Company?"). Marathon has the conceptual ambition on the literary end, but relatively primitive ideas on how to use the elements of a "video game" to that end. They have some good ideas with levels, playing with meta ideas, virtual architecture, but they also have you do switch puzzles, take too much of the form of Doom for granted for my liking, etc. Too many elements feel vestigial and in the way. I don't like feeling like I'm doing chores to see the interesting part.

But that's a bit of a tangent now. My point was that I believe that there is a literary side and a sensation side to this game's inspirations which have been identified so far. Yes, there is Marathon in this. Both in the very harsh and severe science fiction setting and a few of the particulars. Vague in media res lore slowly revealing the world from within (Bungie did not create this, but they did have the idea to do it in a video game to an advanced and serious extent).

Yes. I believe there is obviously Marathon influence. And maybe also Brutal Doom, but I'd like to take a moment to comment on ethnic dispositions towards art, objects, and tactility. The Citadel is Japanese. Brutal Doom is Brazillian. I believe that what looks like influence may in fact be convergent evolution. Even if SergeantMarkIV and CitadelDev were looking at the same things (I believe they often were) I believe that they liked different parts but still ended up creating similar successor works.

SergeantMarkIV's Brutal Doom got a lot of shit for a long time from people who considered themselves true Doom fans (or posed as them, I actually suspect many of its vocal critics in random 4mex threads didn't play it much) for messing with the finished game form of Doom. But that's missing the point. SergeantMarkIV did not believe that he was improving the weapon sandbox or making the base game objectively better along its original or community standards. He was making a new sensation experience based on a certain idea of DOOM, which was arguably closer to the original intention than the community's eventual treatment of the game as mostly a formal puzzle-game type of standardised form. I'm not calling any position right. I'm saying they were different. SergeantMarkIV is a kind of artfag. A kind, because there are multiple ways to do this.

Brutal Doom's guns are more elaborate than those of the original game. They have heavy, metallic sounds and are handled with a lot more hands on detail which some might call realistic. But they aren't really made for realism, or even an appreciation of guns or an idea of guns. They're made because Brutal Doom is about brutality. And a more elaborate, grounded, and metallic gun is a more violent one. SergeantMarkIV has a vision, so his mod does not succumb to cancerous feature-bloat. He is building towards an ideal, and that ideal is violence. He adds as much depth and substance to the guns as he feels is necessary to reach this end, then stops. 

There are mods which go further. SEAfunmaxxed Brutal Doom submods which add more functions, more weapons, hideous new graphics effects on everything, etc. And there is Hideous Destructor, the genuine details-oriented mod which does seek for perhaps a deranged ideal of realism and hardcore depth which makes every feature of the game more elaborate. It feels more like modded STALKER than any kind of Doom experience (STALKER modding is a subject that deserves its own post). It feels less like a particular vision of Doom, and more like a general Video Game fantasy of maximal hardcore realism according to memes. I don't have much to say about this, just look it up if you want to see how restrained SergeantMarkIV actually was in adding features.

SergeantMarkIV built for sensation and a certain aesthetic ideal. Crude and silly maybe, but this is what he was doing. And it succeeded fantastically. As I've said elsewhere, the only successful single player "fps" games made since mostly owe their form and style to him.

Now most other "boomer shooters" made since are retarded poser derivations with no purpose or coherent authorial intent beyond being "a boomer shooter guy (or girl)". A million Brutal Doomvaniabornelites set in chunky cyberpunk funky noodle vendor hopecrustcore dystopias starring butch anime lesbians because that's what being a cool boomer is about. Or something obscene like that. Posing and guessing. Impersonation of someone with vision.

To a retard, one might take The Citadel as another of these. But extra quirked up and zany because it's Japanese. That would be retarded. This does not share the creative geneaology of the Brutalvaniabornelites (ripping off brutal doom and pretending to be a bald Quake 3 turbo autist cool hardcore guy who also stands up for valid trans girls). It actually doesn't even share a source with Brutal Doom, though Brutal Doom may have contributed several ideas. There are fundamental differences between doekuramori (Citadeldev) and SergeantMarkIV. For SM4 guns are a means of violence. Making the guns more gunlike is making brutal doom more violent. The Citadel is violent. And it has elaborate guns. There is some connection here. But a clear difference exists in that doekuramori is an object fetishist. His guns are elaborate beyond the service of violence. They are elaborate for the sake of the guns themselves. What Mark wants to realise in violence via guns doekuramori wants to realise in the guns themselves. A brilliant experience of pure gun is his intention. Not gun to facilitate cooler or more realistic first person shooter. Or for more realistic or in depth infliction of violence. The gun is a sufficient end.



Isn't this interesting? FPS / Gun simulator hybrid.

He probably didn't put a lot of thought into saying this, but he might be the first one to ever identify this point so succinctly. The form of the "FPS" is not a gun simulator. I believe that if you develop a true interest in guns as guns, or objects, there is only so much appeal to you on that front in the average "FPS", with many potentially being downright offputting or disappointing. Question for you, is Brutal Doom a Gun simulator? I think not. How many first person shooter games would you say really are? In how many do you feel this joyful exploration and expression of guns as guns?

The trend I notice, in general, is that this is a very oriental thing. The European games that do this are eastern european, particularly Ukrainian and Russian (STALKER, Tarkov, World of Guns). And the other strongest ones are Japanese (Metal Gear Solid, The Citadel, Resident Evil). I believe that when Slavs do this it's because they are at the same time capable of autistic asian object fetishism, and the western autist obsession with received form. They make very formal "FPS" games with a distinct consideration of guns as objects, rather than means of constructing a mere "FPS" game scenario. While the Japanese I don't think have ever made an "FPS" for the sake of "FPS". The Japanese pretty much always seem to start developing from scenario or ideas. They don't make "FPS" because, if you ask me, "FPS" is not actually a very natural or good form for the realisation of many ideas. You can make a linear, almost rail-shooter like movie-game (I think things like Call of Duty campaigns might as well be on rails, as I may have said here or elsewhere I actually really like rail shooters conceptually), and not much else. Otherwise there's just the pure "FPS" game form, which as I may have said or implied already, is basically a completed game form. Fun as it is, infinite potential variations and fun, infinite potential for expression, as long as it's a DOOM level running on DOOM parts.

The Japanese don't make "FPS", but why should they? Was the West really well served by its long fascination with a gun taking up half the screen walking along shooting people constantly? How many memorable experiences did this generate for the trouble?

I raise all this just to get you thinking. Why did Citadel Man make The Citadel? And why is it an "FPS"? Did he suddenly catch our retarded poser compulsion to make a remixed clone of a boring form that already exists a thousand times over? I think absolutely not. He made The Citadel because it was a rare case of a form actually being very well suited for what he wanted to do. With the different elements that make it stand out all being built for purpose, as opposed to the western mad libs variation to stand out approach. He is fascinated with guns. He is fascinated with weird hard science fiction with heavy western influences. And there's one more influence that nobody but me seems capable of pinning down. I'll let you in on this secret before trannies find out and repeating this becomes Hazel-coded.





Does The Citadel not look an awful lot like this old Sega Saturn game called 'Baroque'? One of these screenshots is in English, but its original release never actually made it outside of Japan. It has remakes, further confusing its reputation and legacy.

The Japanese have not made many 'FPS', but they have made many 'First Person' games, and many games with Guns. Did doekuramori make an "FPS" because that's a type of video game? Or did he make an "FPS" because he's both an object-fetishist who wanted to create a hands-on gun experience, and he's a fan of Baroque and Japanese artfag dungeon crawlers? Of course he did also make "FPS" inspired by actual "FPS". He says himself he loves Marathon, and tweets now and then about other western "FPS". But they are at most one third of the source of this thing if you ask me. And those other two, which are very unique, artisan inspirations and very novel approaches among the field, are the sources of the game's overwhelming uniqueness and style.

An idiot might look at 'The Citadel' and think it's a boomer shooter with a Marathon derivative plot. This would be very ignorant. And would give you a very skewed idea of where innovation comes from. doekuramori is not another derivative boomer shooter idiot who got a lucky roll on his variation elements on the formula. He's a man who was approaching from a completely different angle to everybody else. The final forms might superficially feel quite similar between this and a million western cyberpunkimmersivesimvaniabornelites starring anime dykes, but if the differences really were incidental, the quality chasm between the impressions they make would be so hard to explain.

I can only think of stupid insults to accurately describe how the average "retro" coded shooter strikes me. But there is so much more going on in The Citadel. It's a JRPG Dungeon Crawler with guns. It's an adventure game with guns. It's virtual architecture in the vein of Nihei and serious science fiction. It's personal, it's fetishistic, it's just fundamentally unlike everything else that it looks like.

[Yumetaro]

Helldivers 2 came out recently and I've been playing it a bunch. If you're not familiar with Helldivers it's a game where you participate in an MMO "Galactic War" as an infantry soldier dropping from orbit onto various planets to perform some pointless tasks while fighting off the hordes of enemies that correspond to the front you're on. I think it has a nice sense of humor, and the gore from targeting specific body parts and bombs coming from orbit are cool.


Part of the game's sense of humor is centered around the dystopian future where Earth is now the Starship Troopers inspired "Super Earth," and is a fighting a total war against the enemies of "managed democracy" with an extremely flimsy casus belli to push all non-humans to the far reaches of the galaxy. It's a satire, so that means we must be media-literate and tell each other that it's a satire. But also Arrowhead should put trans flags in the game so that troons can be represented by the satire of the people they hate.

No one outside of this forum could possibly resolve this seeming contradiction because it requires both honesty and media literacy, which are both in short supply. This sort of analysis doesn't come very naturally to me so I'd like to write about what I think Helldivers 2 is actually about as an exercise.

Almost everyone playing the game agrees that Super Earth is a dystopia, that the government is bad, and that it's fighting an unjustifiable offensive war so that it can control the galaxy. It also says things like "Freedom Isn't Free" which reminds people of the Bush Administration. This is all true, and if you're a dopey libtard you'll stop thinking here and walk away feeling the chuds have been owned. But it should be understood that the only thing you can do in Helldivers is contribute to the war and further the interest of Super Earth. There are hundreds of thousands of people handing over their cash to fight in a war for a cause they do not believe in and for a society that they do not like. Why?



I actually wasn't going to any quoting for this initially but just in case I looked for interviews and found this one with less than <500 views. This is Johan Pilestedt. He's the director of the first Helldivers and he is very much a white nerd who likes games. He also likes the Starship Troopers book and thinks you should read it. Here's what I think are the most important quotes from the video, from the segment of 25:00 to 37:00 if you're interested enough to listen.

They're super space soldiers and...but they're just a mess. I mean it's a regular dude in an armor, and somebody tells him 'you're an elite soldier' but he's not, he's really not. He's just this average, average dude that's supposed to be a hero and he needs to live up to the name of hero. And I guess that's the way our mentality internally at Arrowhead works. We like to create this sort of satire of what game characters usually are... and take that into different genres.

Being this epitome of a really fascist government fighting enemy species for something you don't believe in or something you don't know what it is, an arbitrary idea. And just going out and killing things. It's such a delicious topic, because it's filled with an enjoyment, it has a lot of potential, but it also gives you a chance to reflect on "Why are you doing this?"

Helldivers came from that—that idea that we need to make a game that is so overt in how it manipulates concepts that we already know about, that are seen as good.

The middle quote is the one I'd like to focus on. He brings it up a second time but he doesn't answer his own question of "Why?" either time. I'm going to try to answer it for him. Men are naturally interested in violence, war, conquest, domination, and the heroic. Players are participating in the galactic war of Helldivers 2 is because they find war to be enjoyable for its own sake. The political differences are shoved aside and the victories of Super Earth are legitimately felt as the victories of the players.

I think the political humor of Helldivers can best be summarized in the loading screens. You'll be watching your hellpod dropping for orbit while triumphant music plays and humorous tips will come up to remind you what you're actually fighting for. I think that this kind of humor can have one of two effects on the player. It can remind the player that their indulgence in this game is contradictory to their own perception of themselves, that they would only fight for or believe in a war if it were for some good and just higher cause. Or it could act as a permission slip allowing them to indulge in values that they would normally consider fascistic by creating some emotional distance from what they're actually doing in game. Maybe it's both at the same time.

So why should Helldivers be wearing the trans flag? It's because they're meant to be cool and they're an avatar of (male) interests that the media literate would like to pretend they don't have. No one at Arrowhead is making players salute nukes going off in the distance. They did that on their own.

I argued that Helldivers comes close to revealing something about ourselves, but Johan Pilestedt only raises the question and doesn't want to answer it. There's almost certainly other games that touch on these themes in a way that goes all the way (if you can think of one feel free to mention it). On the other hand, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone making an MMO to try and create a mass mobilization in this way, and the concept of semantic drift Johan alludes to is something that can definitely be applied to libtards. The way that characters believe in democracy and liberty as religious totems or believe in the right side of history is very reminiscent of GNC.

[Unformed Golem]

They're super space soldiers and...but they're just a mess. I mean it's a regular dude in an armor, and somebody tells him 'you're an elite soldier' but he's not, he's really not. He's just this average, average dude that's supposed to be a hero and he needs to live up to the name of hero. And I guess that's the way our mentality internally at Arrowhead works. We like to create this sort of satire of what game characters usually are... and take that into different genres.

Compare to Mao:

There is no profound difference between the farmer and the soldier.  You must have courage.  You simply leave your farms and become soldiers.  That you are farmers is of no difference, and if you have education, that is so much the better.  When you take your arms in hand, you become soldiers; when you are organized, you become military units.

"You're not a soldier, you're just some dude who's been handed a bunch of weapons as part of an organization that wages war."

[Heil]

On the other hand, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone making an MMO to try and create a mass mobilization in this way,

They are not as popular but the attempt has been made with games like foxhole, planetside 2, and a few others. It's an incredibly enjoyable *concept*, but I have to admit that the actual reality of trying to play planetside 2 or foxhole is a bit boring. I tried planetside, you jump into the game with a bad looking and out-dated interface, spawn into a random world, spend 2 minutes driving to the nearest firefight, and then die to someone with a better class and gun than you. I didn't try joining clans or participating in anything organized beyond having a friend with me, so maybe I didn't get the full experience but I just didn't like the guns or vehicles and everything was pretty ugly.

Helldivers is great because it's versus ai. I haven't played the new one but I have played the first one quite a bit and I really liked it, it's something you can really enjoy although there are some problems, for example the characters easily blend into the landscape and with each other. You can often end up in confusing firefights with overlapping models (the massive tanks are awful with this) and forget which character is yours and die. Especially bad on harder difficulties where they throw a lot of enemies at you. I really like it though, it's fun having to enter in commands for support, ammunition, flamethrowers, airstrikes, and mechs. I think the 2nd one looks fun too. The aesthetics and messaging of the game are probably the least interesting part, I have very little to say on that matter.

[Yumetaro]

"You're not a soldier, you're just some dude who's been handed a bunch of weapons as part of an organization that wages war."

I think a lot of people will probably take it that way but I don't think that's what Johan meant. It's not a commentary on soldiers in the real world but a commentary on soldiers in games specifically when controlled by players. It recognizes that Master Chief and Master Chief being controlled as a video game are two separate things. The latter throws a grenade that accidentally kills himself or the person he's doing two player co-op with. Helldivers (as well as the other games that Arrowhead made up to that point, which aren't about soldiers) relishes in this difference and gives you ample opportunity to screw up all the time. He calls it satire, but I also don't think it's meant to be this cutting ridicule that's meant to burst the bubble of the gamers and their little power fantasy. I think he just finds it funny for its own sake, so it's closer to parody. But that's just the impression I got from listening to him talk about it.

[anthony]

Youtube sent me this clip and I greatly enjoyed it. Shit meme thumbnail but great music choice and little clips.



I absolutely love the character's voice and tone while he's being chased by a swarm of giant bugs. "FREEDOM NEVER SLEEPS" in a tone that suggests he's saying this to convince himself rather than intimidate the bugs. Also the choice to go third person is a brilliant one and I love the RE6 style diving and general embrace of the kinetic possibilities of third person perspective (if you enable this in first person you will give people seizures also coordination will be impossible).

As I've said many times, Halo is far more explicitly an amplification of the most politically incorrect messages of Starship Troopers, but Helldivers I believe makes it hit harder despite the ambiguous intentions of its creators because of something incidental they did. Halo is an individual "campaign". You experience it yourself or with one other person. And you experience it as a constrained thing about other people. Set characters fighting other set characters. Their war.

Helldivers 2 is about Our War. All Gamers are an army working together. They are not fighting instances of the one set fight. They are all contributing to a piece of the same fight. They are all on the same side, and they all have the same enemies. By kind of attempting to subvert and diffuse what they see as the heroic ideal in fascism they have accidentally amplified the other one. The collective one.



Not every right winger wants to be Conan the Barbarian. In fact I'd call that a neurotic minority fantasy. For every one of those we have a hundred guys who want to be one of the nameless helmet and rifle guys swarming the bugs from the dropships. This isn't an untouched fantasy in video games. I believe it's the unspoken (and so misunderstood, failure to replicate in successors) element that made Star Wars: Battlefront a success. Being a Stormtrooper rather than a Skywalker. It's also executed more consciously in games like Project Reality, Foxhole, Planetside 2, but those games are Players fighting Players. Helldivers 2 might be the truest "Players Versus Everyone" game ever made. All in for the cause. None against it. Everyone contributes, and all contributions count no matter how small. This is the positive side of the collective fantasy. A desire to build into something greater rather than siphon from it. There are men who want to be the pyramids strongest cornerstones.

And as for media literacy, the old points about "you are playing a shooting simulator you payed for" apply.

[NuclearAbsolutist]

So why should Helldivers be wearing the trans flag? It's because they're meant to be cool and they're an avatar of (male) interests that the media literate would like to pretend they don't have. No one at Arrowhead is making players salute nukes going off in the distance. They did that on their own.

When the discourse around it really picked up along with its player count I saw this be shared, which is the motto of arrowhead as it were that you are greeted with at their website. Along with a caption that was basically a statement of "See? They serve what da gamers want!" And I just thought to myself wow conditions are such something so pedestrian is seen as a great signal flare. Which really sums up my feelings for the game in general, I played one as I had little else on my ps4 and liked it, shooting bugs was fun but its not exactly that forward thinking in concept and what it's going for is really not my cup of tea. I'll get to the most glaring to me indications of where it stops at its defined mark but first I wish to share this dev interview I found

We[as a studio] think that the most fun memories that you have as a player are the one's that you create yourselves. So we are not doing linear games, we give players the tools to play with and put them in a scenario and its up to the players to create their own stories and memories..

This is a ideal I see repeated over and over, a truism really. Arrowhead evidently is not a grand narrative vision company, but focused on particular types of fun. HD2 is a synthesis of elements new(The grand multiplayer war that is decided by players concept that's gotten in vogue although iirc one had elements of that too) and old(Four players vs hordes of AI enemies that was refined to a T in games like Left 4 Dead.). Which brings me to the point I said I was going to make earlier, its  all wrapped up in  "satirical" spin right? You are playing as a faction that acts like A Federation but really is a Empire. But its cheery! Terran militarism may be all gunmetal blacks and hazard yellows but its sleek.


Everyone even has capes! Obviously not trying to be high minded, but it gets me as such a perfect demonstration of how creators can just fill in the lines with what they have gleamed from wider society. There is nothing alien here, in terms of belief just a multi ethnic united Earth but its all rah rah about liberal values but actually does not have them haha how silly(Reminds me of how any given dystopia work from Europe I've seen in games will have someone called some variant of The Leader. Because XXth century.) They mention wanting to show things off to the players via their Gamer Master mechanic but I have the feeling that will be stuff for "Best boss in MMO gaming!?" video "essays" .   

"You're not a soldier, you're just some dude who's been handed a bunch of weapons as part of an organization that wages war."

I think a lot of people will probably take it that way but I don't think that's what Johan meant. It's not a commentary on soldiers in the real world but a commentary on soldiers in games specifically when controlled by players. It recognizes that Master Chief and Master Chief being controlled as a video game are two separate things. The latter throws a grenade that accidentally kills himself or the person he's doing two player co-op with. Helldivers (as well as the other games that Arrowhead made up to that point, which aren't about soldiers) relishes in this difference and gives you ample opportunity to screw up all the time. He calls it satire, but I also don't think it's meant to be this cutting ridicule that's meant to burst the bubble of the gamers and their little power fantasy. I think he just finds it funny for its own sake, so it's closer to parody. But that's just the impression I got from listening to him talk about it.

I actually think he accidentally comes across a deep insight of warfare, or at least the way it has been fought and thus popularly understood in this past century. Dude who's been handed a bunch of weapons as part of an organization that wages war is a literal description of what a soldier is/has been in our time. No special caste, no warrior poet despite any lingering traditions, no doubt this general Western view was only furthered in the conscript social democracy land of Sweden. You can see this energy in the country/period people get most reminded of, Bush Admin America(How this military nature developed  and why is of course a history that deserves a thread of itself really).




And it should be said being a guy is part of the games very appeal for a lot people. Especially I presume the ones who spread it via word of mouth. Check out this post
https://twitter.com/LumpyTheCook/status/...9795826790

Look at that like count. And the replies.

---

Anthony's post remarkably touched on similar conclusions to mine independently which I am too tired to write about now. See you next Terran rotation when I have further thoughts.

[TranquilPanther]

Not every right winger wants to be Conan the Barbarian. In fact I'd call that a neurotic minority fantasy. For every one of those we have a hundred guys who want to be one of the nameless helmet and rifle guys swarming the bugs from the dropships. This isn't an untouched fantasy in video games. I believe it's the unspoken (and so misunderstood, failure to replicate in successors) element that made Star Wars: Battlefront a success. Being a Stormtrooper rather than a Skywalker. It's also executed more consciously in games like Project Reality, Foxhole, Planetside 2, but those games are Players fighting Players. Helldivers 2 might be the truest "Players Versus Everyone" game ever made. All in for the cause. None against it. Everyone contributes, and all contributions count no matter how small. This is the positive side of the collective fantasy. A desire to build into something greater rather than siphon from it. There are men who want to be the pyramids strongest cornerstones.

And it should be said being a guy is part of the games very appeal for a lot people. Especially I presume the ones who spread it via word of mouth. Check out this post
https://twitter.com/LumpyTheCook/status/...9795826790

Look at that like count. And the replies.

---

Anthony's post remarkably touched on similar conclusions to mine independently  which I am too tired to write about now. See you next Terran rotation when I have further thoughts.

Relevant to note here that Spartan citizens referred to one another as ὅμοιοι ("Homoioi") which roughly translates to "peers", but the literal meaning is something like "similars". This urge is deeply baked in.
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