Oh boy, its one of these. One of these games no matter what I think of Ill get half of people yelling at me. I honestly kind of dread writing this review cause there's a lot I want to say about it but it almost feels like everything I do is going to come off as just reacting to people's views on it. That's always kind of going to be the issue when experiencing things only because of the reputation they've accrued over the years.

"Theres no such thing as an antiwar film" Truffaut supposedly said, referring to how no matter how brutal or pointless war may be depicted on screen it will never actually convey the full horror of it, and the spectacle of war movies will in fact romanticize war. Saving Private Ryan has a fairly brutal opening scene depicting the D Day landings but it also boosted recruitment numbers for the american military so its a net negative for the world.

I don't know if I agree entirely with that sentiment, certainly there is some truth to it but I feel like its 1000% times more true for videogames, especially in the AAA space. I don't really buy it as intentional but there is nothing more dehumanizing and dull than the mindless act of mowing wave after wave of soldiers from behind cover in the godawful slog that is this game. It also kind of undermined (or perhaps strengthened depending on your opinion) the point of the famous "white phosphorous" scene cause I didnt realize that I was supposed to use the mortar, so I tried to do it normally, quickly running out of ammo and getting shot and dying several times until I realized what I was supposed to do.

At that point though, all I was feeling was anger and frustration, perhaps mirroring that of captain walker and his squad, when we got to the obviously imitating both the gameplay mechanics of Call OF Duty and the like and the real life footage of american drones wiping out civillians in the middle east. I didnt feel much horror then as my squad made it to all the dead soldiers and civillians in all honesty, though the image of the charred corpse of a mother holding her child, whilst pretty trite and forced, was somewhat haunting; it reminded me of visiting the atomic bomb museum in hiroshima.

The game is almost comical in how many of those forced emotional moments and the jarring contrast between "war is hell, civillians get killed etc" and just never ending stream of pop up gallery shootouts every 30 seconds. And yet, and this is the part where Ill get pelted with stones by the Backloggd™ intellectual elite, I do think there is a lot to appreciate about it, which is why Im giving it the middling score of 5/10 to be an insufferable fence sitter.

See, and again this is impossible to deal with without coming off as reactionary (not in the political sense) but there's a lot of unfair sneering about this game on this very page that I see as kind of unwarranted to some degree. First of all, to anyone who has given this game half a star, please name another AAA game before or since where you shoot at american soldiers (and no, PMCs don't count) , I'll wait.

You can't can you? That is honestly still refreshing that in a sea of awful, brown military shooters where you uncritically support american imperialism mowing waves and waves of brown people presumably just defending themselves from the massive war machine you're backed by to protect the business interests of the US, that this game would have the balls to have you shooting at (albeit rogue) american servicemen.

And I can just hear the pre emptive typing : "wow, making fun of military shooters, how profound, we all know they're bad and its insanely easy to mock/criticise them". And sure, that is somewhat true but here's the thing : this is a AAA game, you know, the ones where even today Ubisoft will release a game about you supporting US imperialism and invading other countries and insist its "not political".

Like yeah, you are right this game occupies the intellectual kiddie pool and hell, its profoundness is severely overstated but this is still pretty much as far as AAA (mostly western I'll admit) games get. Its like seeing a baby take its first steps and going "coh, can't even run the 100m, how lame". I think there's a place to appreciate a game that whilst fumbled, released as a military shooter trying to crticize its whole subgenre and customer base, by the ever money conscious AAA sector where you don't uncritically support US imperialism (and also there are some fairly in depth subversions of the US military, its not just "drones kill inoccent civilians", the hendrix stars and stripes, a lot of the jargon and details and stuff used by the actual military and even just the attitude of US soldiers is lampooned at least somewhat effectively) and shoot at US soldiers, which are sacred targets of worship in the AAA space and broader western culture as a whole.

In a columbo voice Oh and just one more thing. The big complaint about the game undermining its theme of choice has never really convinced me even before playing it. You're not allowed to choose? First of all clearly we're playing with the conflict between player and player character (like in Silent Hill 2 but player character conflict, Japan I guess) and the lack of choice or thought kind of mirrors how captain walker keeps justifying his actions as "I had no choice", without realizing of course he keeps pushing himself and his squad into positions where hell have to use horrific violence rather than just leaving like he should have in the first place. This of course mirrors the actions of the player who will get the sense that this man is a menace and will continue anyways because, well its a videogame I suppose.

And I know, "thats super dumb why would I stop playing cause of the make believe actions of a bunch of ones and zeros" and look I somewhat sympathize, its kinda corny and I think later games like undertale have kinda tackled this better but honestly I think you're missing the main double hit here. Not only is this of course calling into question the players that at time of release went looking for these kinds of experiences and how morally iffy it is to be looking for realistic simulations of being a tool of a genocidal murder machine as opposed to just playing doom or something like that but also "your choice might have been justified at the time but you put yourself in the situation where that was the case in the first place" is also a criticism of military action in general. So many accounts of horrific violence always parrot the same "it was us or them" mentality without mentioning that you being there murdering them for oil is what caused that situation to begin with. Its not murder to committ self defense against invaders, though seemingly in the west we only understand this when the invaded are white.

Honestly, there's more that I could ramble on about like the weird ptsd/unreliable narrator thing and the smartly done 2 "choices" in the game but I think this is where'll end this unstructured screed. In conclusion I disliked playing it, its definitely not as profound as its supporters said, but its existence is worth a lot more than its detractors will admit.

*leaves the room as I am pelted with rocks, arrows and ukeleles"