Splinter Cell Conviction co-op

[dimples]

Is anyone playing? I'd like to try that co-op thing as well, but don't know anyone who has the game :(

[MyNameDidntFit]

I have it on PC, I'm afraid, but I can tell you that if you find someone you are reasonably good friends with and go on voice chat while you're playing the co-op in this game is extremely fun :D

[Jason]

I don't have it, but I may rent it in the near future. Apparently the single-player mode is embarrassingly short, and I can't justify paying any real money for it.

[dimples]

I have it on PC, I'm afraid, but I can tell you that if you find someone you are reasonably good friends with and go on voice chat while you're playing the co-op in this game is extremely fun :D

I can imagine it would be fun :D

[CemeteryGates]

Ah, well I just bought this game, actually, so I might just give it a go. :)

[Archangel]

I don't have it, but I may rent it in the near future. Apparently the single-player mode is embarrassingly short, and I can't justify paying any real money for it.

Not as embarrassing as MW2's.The campaign itself is a reasonable length, and making it go for much longer would have been making the whole thing drag on longer than it needed to. But, you add the co-op campaign to the SP campaign, and the game is all-up longer than your standard tactical/stealth shooter, and generally more fun, too.

I have it on PC, I'm afraid, but I can tell you that if you find someone you are reasonably good friends with and go on voice chat while you're playing, the co-op in this game is extremely fun :D

I can vouch for that; we had ourselves some mighty fun slaughterin'. Still not sure how well it compares to the co-op in Chaos Theory, though.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Still not sure how well it compares to the co-op in Chaos Theory, though.

It doesn't. They're in the same genre and series, but they might as well be completely different games.

[Archangel]

Therein being my difficulty in judging the two.

[Jason]

Not as embarrassing as MW2's.The campaign itself is a reasonable length, and making it go for much longer would have been making the whole thing drag on longer than it needed to. But, you add the co-op campaign to the SP campaign, and the game is all-up longer than your standard tactical/stealth shooter, and generally more fun, too.


I never actually finished MW2's campaign mode. After a couple of hours of right-wing borderline xenophobic plot that would make Tom Clancy shudder, I eventually threw my hands in the air, said 'enough' and played something that didn't make me angry.

[Archangel]

a couple of hours

But, but... that's how long the campaign is!

[MyNameDidntFit]

I never actually finished MW2's campaign mode. After a couple of hours of right-wing borderline xenophobic plot that would make Tom Clancy shudder, I eventually threw my hands in the air, said 'enough' and played something that didn't make me angry.

Playing MW for the plot is like watching Transformers for the plot -- it just isn't done. You watch Transformers for robots or Ms. Fox just as you play MW2 for a challenging FPS with solid mechanics and no 'innovation' in the way of you shooting the crap out of thousands of foreigners.

[Jason]

You watch Transformers for robots or Ms. Fox just as you play MW2 for a challenging FPS with solid mechanics and no 'innovation' in the way of you shooting the crap out of thousands of foreigners.

I didn't watch Transformers either. Plus I don't actually like Megan Fox all that much. :p
Yeah, I wasn't dumb enough to be expecting MW2's plot to be any good, but it ended up made me so damn angry at how idiotic it was (and that it seemed to actually be taking itself seriously!)that I found myself hating the game for it, because I knew that if I cleared the level, I'd have to sit through another few minutes of paranoid borderline-McCarthyist crap.
Besides, the spec-ops missions were far more fun.

[MyNameDidntFit]

I didn't watch Transformers either. Plus I don't actually like Megan Fox all that much. :p
She's not particularly good looking, no. But I was making a point :p

Yeah, I wasn't dumb enough to be expecting MW2's plot to be any good, but it ended up made me so damn angry at how idiotic it was (and that it seemed to actually be taking itself seriously!)that I found myself hating the game for it, because I knew that if I cleared the level, I'd have to sit through another few minutes of paranoid borderline-McCarthyist crap.
Besides, the spec-ops missions were far more fun.
The story does it's job -- it ties the missions together. You must have a terribly low anger threshold if the plot made you angry enough to quit...

And, of course it takes itself seriously: it has to. For the sake of the atmosphere and overall feel of the gameplay. If the cutscenes were fill with the characters cracking jokes and being idiots you'd come into a serious piece of gameplay and it would feel completely out of place and you'd wonder what the hell was going on.

[Archangel]

The thing with MW2, is that it seems like whoever conceived the story just had a string of ideas that would be really cool, and that was it. Nothing joining them together, just... a random bunch of ideas along the lines of "omgar, should have character X come back from the dead 'cause I want to sex him." and "Someone should declare war on America!" and "This guy should betray the player!" etc.

It's possible s/he was a fanboy. I mean, there's no real reason behind what happens in it, but the ideas themselves aren't bad. Yes, Americaland being invaded makes for intense plot and such... but, well... there wasn't really a reason for doing it other than "A small handful of your people make me mad. I'mma kill millions of my own people and yours for lol." Nor was there any point at all for the betrayal. It just made the guy's job even harder.

But, yeah... MW2 plot = badness. Gameplay is dandy, though. And Spec Ops was pretty sweet, til all the missions are "slaughter x number of Juggernauts with y", where y usually ended up being a handgun or the like.

[Jason]

Yeah, the later missions in Spec Ops were ridiculous. However, the variety of the earlier missions was nice, and most of them were pretty fun to play. Co-ordinating headshots with silenced snipers in the snow-covered forest is great fun.

[CemeteryGates]

The plot wasn't that bad, but indeed, the thing I enjoy about the campaign is all those action scenes.
Using the Transformers analogy, I find some amusement in watching Michael Bay use $70 million on huge explosions.

Actually, what modern military shooter besides the first OFP has a decent plot?
They're all "for Freedom, for Democracy... for 'Merica!" bullshit. It's always America good vs. Russians/Chinese/Muslims/Third world country baddies. Most of them the same overdone fantasy of the Cold War exploding into total war.
MW and MW2 use Russians, Arabs, and Brazilians. GRAW used Mexicans. The first Ghost Recon used Russians and the expasion used Cubans. Battlefield 2: MC used more Arabs and Chinese. OFP2 used Chinese...

Hell, it was almost even innovative that MW used the SAS instead of only Americans.

When are we ever gonna see a game where Americans aren't protagonists and Russians aren't the enemies? How about a Kosovo war game? Or a game where Japan tries to conquer Korea like in the old days?

[Archangel]

Simple marketing. The large majority of the western world has no particular desire to play as an Asian or Hispanic or whatever. The large majority of the western world is American. And thus, they want to be an American, with balls the size of melons, crushing all the infidels.

You throw out a title where you're Japanese, trying to take out Korea, alot of folks aren't even gonna know what's happening, because they are all nice and dimwitted, and they're not going to care much, because they're close minded and whatnot. It's a joyful world.

The most outlandish concept that I reckon would still sell well would be one where the player is either Aussie or western-European. 'Cause both are white, speak English, and are allied with the US.

[CemeteryGates]

Simple marketing. The large majority of the western world has no particular desire to play as an Asian or Hispanic or whatever. The large majority of the western world is American. And thus, they want to be an American, with balls the size of melons, crushing all the infidels.

You throw out a title where you're Japanese, trying to take out Korea, alot of folks aren't even gonna know what's happening, because they are all nice and dimwitted, and they're not going to care much, because they're close minded and whatnot. It's a joyful world.

The most outlandish concept that I reckon would still sell well would be one where the player is either Aussie or western-European. 'Cause both are white, speak English, and are allied with the US.


But that's an assumption that I'm aware of and that annoys me.
How many copies of FIFA do you think sell on the US? How many of those copies are bought by chicanos or other latinos residing there, and how many by "true" Americans?
And how many sales are there in Mexico?

Now Mexico is the third world with the biggest piracy in the world, behind Russia as second and China as first, but I'd still bet mexicans (including those living in the US) buy more than twice as many FIFA copies.
The non-US market is huuuge.
There are approximately 300 million people in the US, correct?
Well, Mexico has about 115, but we don't have radical censor groups, or Jack Thompsons or fundamentalist christians who blame video-games for school shootings. Hell, we don't have school shootings. So that's one limitation less.
Granted, 70% of the country is poor (and that's big part of the reason why such immense piracy). Then again, I've seen the lower classes spending ridiculous amounts on things they do enjoy, and I wonder how they get enough money to buy it.
How can it be that people living in shacks, without a car in a city where it's a necessity, and struggling to make a living can afford a $14,000 USD trip to South Africa to watch the World Cup, not to mention weeks of not continuing to work and generate money? The answer is passion. Latin Americans in general are extremely passionate about anything and everything they like. Spend a buck in advertising here, and you will get millions and millions in return; and football and the Catholic church are both perfect examples, because no matter how shitty both are, we still consume them like crack mixed with heroin and meth... we're the number 2 country to contribute funds to both of them.

But if you produce games like GRAW that portray Mexico as a failed state (which I'm not saying it's not, but there are ways to go about it, including showing the real reasons why it is so) run by terrorists and drug lords, where everyone is evil and your objective is to shoot them all for the glory of America, and they're otherwise a weakling country that can't take care of itself, without even attempting to give them a good side, then I'll dare say it'll be a bit difficult trying to sell that to Latin America, which beyond Mexico, has a population of about 570 million... a potential market bigger than the US alone, which is the only place you could expect that right-wing propaganda to sell.
Also, what are the cultural consequences of a game like that? Well, I'm not gonna complain about the xenophobia and racism of it, because I'm of the idea that the ones that are gonna buy it are already racist and xenophobic, and people who aren't are just gonna look for a decent shooter instead; but the US is a country with two neighbors, and one that they have a cultural animosity with for historical and as well as current sociological reasons. But mexicans also represent a good portion of the American population, whether it be with celebrities who live in Miami and are contributing several million dollars there instead of doing so in Mexico, or whether it be the bigger, lower class of often illegal immigrant who, despite right-wingers denying so, provide a very important piece of the economic backbone of the US.

Irresponsibly publishing games like that doesn't do very well for the world outside the gaming industry. Perhaps my Kosovo war and Japan ideas are equally as bad, but at the very least, it's not a cliché.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Honestly, I'd rather they went away from history completely. Yeah. Cool. It happened. Uh, can we actually have something creative now please?

Sure, WWII, Vietnam, "Cold War 'What If'", and <nameless Iraq/Afghanistan clone> War are fun to play... but you can only get so much creativity into them. Why do you think games like Mass Effect sell well? Because the boss of the game isn't a guy who looks like you just with a moustache and a fancy hat. Because the story isn't something I heard about from my grandfather. Because it's not what I watch on the six o'clock news.

Tom Clancy games are some of the best modern warfare games plotwise and they still have crap plots. There's no universe to explore, there's no intriguing backstory, there's no creativity at all.

Now, maybe I've gone off-topic (not that we've been there for a while), but if you want something that isn't cliché you have to go to something with creative elbow-room. From WWII to Kosovo to the damned Boer war... you wont find anything different from the current shooters: the plot will be the same, with a different setting, different accents on characters and different weapons -- it will still be cliché no matter what nation's flag you stick on the protagonist's oversized genitalia.

[Archangel]

^ Yar, I think that thar about sums up the situation. Most modern games these days that are trying to set themselves in the modern world go for the pro-American path because it's generally better for marketing, and they don't cop lots of shit from all the Jack Thompson-esque folks. But really, it would be vastly superior to ditch the American stereotype, and all the other modern ones altogether.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres are all quite well and good, and they do very well. So what do you do if you want a modern shooter? The same goddamn thing, idiot. Make up a 'modern' world, the same way you can make up a fantasy or sci-fi world.

But, well... so far I don't know of any game that's done it well.

[MyNameDidntFit]

That's because you can't do the 'same goddamn thing'. You can't create new worlds, you can't create new races, you can add in new technology beyond a point... you are restrained by the technology of the modern world... hence it being, well, a modern shooter. Go beyond the bounds of the modern world and you're making a sci-fi, not a modern FPS. Any modern world you create that isn't our own is going to be so damn close to ours that it wont matter. Rather than an American fighting Russians, you'll have someone from <made up country> killing bad guys from <made up bad country>. It ends the same way: men killing men with modern technology.

Modern shooters are men killing men. As are historical shooters. There is very little elbow-room in that box.

[CemeteryGates]

But if you see it in such terms, then most games are about men killing men in one way or another, for one reason or another. Some others are about men killing beast-men, but the same thing anyway.


Personally, I don't ask that much change and originality from a modern shooter... just a little less clichés.
An American-180 instead of an MP5, a Wildey instead of a Desert Eagle, a CR-21 instead of an M4; NATO as a whole rather than just Americans... little stuff like that, that's what could make a very big difference.

[MyNameDidntFit]

And if you simplify it like that, all games are just clicking a mouse and pressing a couple buttons.

The point of what I said is that there is no leeway to add in any fantasy, sci-fi or unrealistic aspects to the characters, plot, setting, weapons, or anything -- the modern shooter is meant to be realistic.

[CemeteryGates]

Well, that's a better way of putting it, but I still somewhat disagree. The modern shooter is meant to be realistic to a limited point only... the only truly realistic modern shooter I've ever played is Operation Flashpoint. I think we can agree than getting shot in the torso with a 7.62x39mm seven times and still standing, let alone surviving, is very unlikely. Also, grenades do not kill in a 3 meter radius... they devastate everything on a 5 meter radius and kill at 15 meters still.

Although, indeed, staying within the limit of unrealism that guarantees its potential success with a bigger target audience (unlike OFP), I'll agree that you can't add a lot of stuff.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Realism as a game concept was never meant to be equal to realism a la life. Because, well, real life simply doesn't work from a gameplay perspective -- when was the last time you saw a single soldier do anything that occurs in the gameplay portions of FPS games? Never? Indeed.

However realistic the modern shooter is, relative to life, really has no bearing on the point I'm making: there is very little room to move creatively in the genre. No matter the setting. No matter the characters. No matter the plot. You're always going to end up with what most people will call cliché. Fortunately, any FPS player not sitting up on their high horse also calls it 'fun' :p

[Jason]

So, does anyone that lives within one continent of me fancy playing the co-op? I'll have this arriving shortly.

[CemeteryGates]

I'd be happy to give it a try. Let me know your schedule, I can probably make it. :)