Contextual depiction> Gore. Although gore has it's place and should indeed be included, I'd think that an extra option should be included to turn it off, just for those queasy people. And agreed about St. Petersburg, those small battles inside those buildings were a nightmare. Although it was always fun when you were still in the city streets.
The Brothers in Arms series of games tried to have both inside one game and it was really quite odd. On the one hand it would zoom right in with slow motion when you got a great head-shot blood billowing outwards and then on the other hand it would try and force mawkish sentimentality upon you. It just never worked, I don't think you can really have a serious historical shooter and have it retain some sort of gravitas whilst gibbing enemies.
I don't care. I don't stop to check if there's any gore, i'm too busy pwning nubs. Once they stop being a threat i switch my focus elsewhere.
I remember when i played BIA: Hell's Highway, i turned off the slow-mo kill cam thingy. To me, it just cheapened the story and game but i won't hold it against the devs because they at least gave an option to turn it off. i believe it was merely something tacked on at the last minute to appeal to the console crowd. The first two games in the series were a lot better btw, in terms of using the violence and gore to convey emotion and story; which is how it should be done. The last mission in BIA: Earned in Blood will always stick out in my mind Spoiler because of how shocking it was. i never expected Doyle to have died that way (from the tank blowing him to bits) and how Paige dragged you to safety with his mortal wounds. it was just saddening to me.
I don't really mind either way. What does bother me a bit (or did about W@W) more is making the player sit through things that IMO border on hatemongering. The piece where you are told to execute tied up Germans that kicked your *** earlier, then go out and shoot fleeing people in the back, being encouraged by your "peers" had me questioning the morality a bit. I get that it might be part of war, and I also get that it adds to the immersion in the game. I just find it a bit questionable. In the same vein, though - I didn't mind the russian bit in MW2 all that much. Call it hypocrisy or whatever you want. I think that senseless slaughter being ACTIVELY ENCOURAGED is questionable. In MW2 you were clearly doing things "for the greater good", if you will, and not fuelled by bloodlust.
You don't actually have to kill those routing Germans (except the ones that stand and fight) or the ones who your superiors ask you execute. I personally found that WAW showed off nicely how much the Russian/Germans and Americans/Japanese hated each other during the war.
I think gore to the extent of WaW hopefully engages the player into realising the very real sacrifices in war, however any form of gore similar to that seen in Soldier of Fortune 2 where one can dismember a body even after the enemy has been killed, is excessive.
So I just looked up Call of Duty: World at War on YouTube. I don't think gore is high on the list of problems when discussing realism in this game. Players running around a brown map absorbing bullets and mashing the fire button. It does look like it became a race to the end of the level rather than a sympathetic portrayal of a WWII battlefield. Maybe it's because I've played Day of Defeat for years, but the hide n' heal mechanic takes away a lot of consequences for running and gunning.
That's true. Maybe I'm just overly sensitive to the pop culture stereotyping of certain things nowadays. I mean - has anyone noticed that you could pretty much have a movie show slaughtering Zombies without as much as a PG-13 rating? Same goes for Germans. I am convinced that one could make a 16-rated movie showing the butchering of Zombies and Germans (hell - a zombie-Nazi deathmatch) inside a concentration camp. And the world wouldn't care. It's an observation that doesn't even bother me all that much, but I made that observation around the same time as W@W came out, so maybe that amplified the whoel thing. As for violence in video games - statistics show time and time again that the majority of gamers are adults. As such, I see nothing wrong with violence in games, so long as it's not just to have violence in it.
In a serious WWII shooter, gore is good, so long as it's realistic. I don't see the point in glossing over it.
Gore isn't a problem it's more of presentation. For sure W@W wasn't a very accurate representation of a solider as you are nigh invincible. But at least it's pretty memorable in the fact that it wasn't a war with things all covered up.
Yeah you gotta make the game fun too, very realistic shooters aren't something many people enjoy. I don't see why there's a massive fuss sometimes over gore in games when you have as much gore in films. Most WWII shooters have basically been rehashing Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers since they came out
Well, the perceived difference between games and films is that games are interactive. You're not simply depicting gore: you're giving players gore in response to certain actions - in most cases, actions required to proceed and encouraged by the game environment. Some would call that glorification, regardless of historical accuracy. edit - I agree with Silver about the Halo-healing mechanic and that it cheapens things somewhat. The game felt less serious as a consequence of it being impossible to sustain permanent damage. I think that, if nothing else, gives the wrong tone for a WW game.
If we're talking about realistic games, ARMA II is certainly realistic but it doesn't feel harrowing at all just either purposeful or frustrating. Of course it's not a WWII shooter and the mass graves and excecution of your CO did have quite an imact now that I feel about it.
