Michael Bay Presents Modern Warfare 3

I remember back in 2009, I sat in this crowded theater watching Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen. I was looking up at the screen and saying to myself "I could throw Will Smith and Martin Lawrence right in here and it wouldn't change a damn thing". The set pieces, action, and imagery were so familiar; I realized I had experience "Bay-ja Vu". It's that feeling that you get when that last car chase scene seemed too much like the last. It's when you see the camera spinning around the 2 main characters as they strike determined poses in front of a city.

Fast-forward to 2011. I'm sitting in front of my PC, mouse and keyboard at my hands, headphones strapped to my giant head. My little marine is trudging through a destroyed city, tailing a tank. I flipped on my holographic sites and unleash into some soldiers shooting at me from a rooftop. The muzzle flash, the enemy behavior, the thrum of the bullet bursts in my headphones seem eerily familiar. I feel like I've walked down these streets before.Did these same soldiers shoot at me last year? The year before that? Was it 4 years years ago? I can't even remember when I experienced this same exact scenario because I feel like it's too often an occurrence.

Before I continue, I must say that I absolutely loved Bad Boys 2. I also enjoyed the first Michael Bay Transformers movie. I'm not knocking the entertainment value of these movies. I fucking love explosions. I love watching bad guys get shot up and listening to corny dialogue. With that said, I am currently enjoying MW:3. It is a blast to play. I wish I had a third arm to scoop popcorn into my mouth while I played, because the closest thing I can liken the experience to is a Michael Bay popcorn flick.

As much as I enjoyed mindlessly shooting at Russian troops and warlords from Sierra Leone, I still found the experience to be a bit disheartening. I felt as though I was being guided through another rehashed experience, with MW becoming a bi-annual cookie cutter money grab. The story progression seems a bit formulaic: drop into a character unfamiliar, witness a tragedy, question the nature of life as we know it, go back to familiar characters and continue killing stuff. Making things explode-ier will not cover up a worn out formula.

I'm going to continue playing MW:3 tonight to see if something new pops up. Hopefully there will be some dynamic shifts in AI behavior that will surprise, or at the very least the explodiest sequence this side of Michael Bay.

Gaming Stockholm Syndrome

6:45 A.M.: Dressed for work, bright eyed and bushy tailed, I find myself sitting on my couch, xbox 360 controller in hand, tapping away at some early morning Lute Hero. My character on Fable 3 is already a level 5 lute hero, which means that he’s the best paid lute player in all of Albion. Needless to say, he gets a lot of peasant pussy.
But why am I playing Fable 3 at 6:45 instead of drinking coffee and driving to work? Why did I spend 20 minutes every morning for a month killing grunts with a rocket launcher in Firefight Matchmaking? Why in the hell did I spend countless mornings jumping around Pacific City trying to collect these damn green orbs that were scattered all over the place? The answer is: Gaming Stockholm Syndrome.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, here is some information on Stockholm Syndrome courtesy of Wikipedia : “In psychology, Stockholm Syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, essentially mistaking a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness”. Makes the gaming grind sound eerily familiar, doesn’t it?

I don’t really understand why we as gamers keep going back to the same games that abuse us day after day. I really experience no real joy when mindlessly bashing through countless shitty AI bad guys in order to “level up”. Although the reward of the level up stat is great in it of itself, why the fuck am I doing the most monotonous bullshit to get there? These are supposed to fun games. I don’t want to escape into some world that mimics real life. I go to work to do monotonous, boring shit, I don’t journey into Albion to do it all over again.

So to abusive game developers out there: make some minigames that are actually fun. I hate being game abused. I don’t want Fable 4 to turn into Farmville.