Sloths of War [Bitch and Moan]

I'm not making any promises to post EVERY Wednesday, but today's a good day to start with an analysis feature.

It's no secret that WW2 games have been a source of bitching and moaning among the intelligamesia, but we should take a step back and look at the major problem:  the medium hasn't moved past the "Big War" mentality with any success.  Now, one might say that the Delta Force series breaks out of that, and yes, it does, but only in that you're not always in for the long haul battles.  I'm asserting that the concept of two (or three) uniformed armed forces conducting large maneuvers still dominates the majority of game design.  Let's take a look at titles where design choices are disjoint from the intended aesthetic of so-called modern warfare.

Command and Conquer: Generals
We played this recently at a LAN, so getting tank rushed (despite the fact that I played the Chinese tank general) is still fresh on my mind.  I do give it credit for the attempt to portray caricature versions of US and Chinese military organizations.  We won't get technical about the egregious abuse of weapon systems and doctrine, but rather the attempts to include NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) agents into gameplay.  The faux-Chinese forces employ incendiary agent from a cavalry unit--which is analogous to a flamethrower tank in real life.  Flame tanks saw popularity in WW2 as a method of clearing caves and bunkers, where mobility was not an issue as the target was mostly standing and fortified.  The US used this concept with Sherman and Patton tanks, but abandoned the idea as technology improved.  Today, destruction of caves and heavy fortifications has been relegated to kinetic penetration (see: the BLU-109 warhead), or thermobaric ordinance (see: fuel air explosives).  Now, the faux-US has a large FAEB, but even this concept is behind.  This is more closely resembling the fuel-air ordinance of yore, drawing back to Vietnam and as recent as Desert Storm.  In a post-911 battlespace, we've moved onto smaller thermobaric warheads.  Then we have their large-scale WMDs for both the PLA and GLA--these are not affected by windage, and are intended to be reusable assets--they do not incur a maintenance cost, don't have a per-unit-delivered cost, and, oh yeah, are used more than once.  Even during the Cold War, a heavy emphasis was placed on first-strike capability, with a focus on what was termed a "decapitation strike."  Instead, WMDs are treated as a repeated time-sensitive threat instead of a strategic blitzkrieg standoff.  Who did it better?  World in Conflict, but not by much.  But in its defense, a kinetic exchange had already kicked off, and nuclear deployment (at least in the single player) was on home turf.  The payload did not need to pass through inter-theater defenses, and it was used as a way of defending the illusion of an operational SDI.

Call of Duty: Subtitle Anything
Jesus, this is why I'm not posting under my full name.  The fanbase is less than cerebral and it's an admitted guilty pleasure of mine.  We fight the faux-Russians, the faux-Syrians, and basically any politically hot adversary in the media.  While yes, cinematic, the majority of action is a mix of "going silent" and "going loud" kinetic operations.  Enemies are commonly uniformed, immediately aggressive, and well-armed.  Don't think I've seen a single SKS in a proportedly modern shooter.  Anyway, while this paradigm of conflict (engage on contact) may have been relevant before the advent of standoff-range weaponry, we now work with weapons that have lethality at ranges beyond our capability to conduct IFF.  In the MW1 gunship sequence, IR strobes were simply handwaved as a simple method of IFF--and this may not work in real life since there needs to be some measure of interrogation.  Coupled with joint forces and allied forces issues, modern militaries are forced to spend more time and resources to communicate through chain-of-command and liason officers.  In this sense, the franchise manages to cut straight to the juicy fire-and-maneuver action.  Who does it better?  ArmA2, I guess.  You've got noncooperative civilians, poorly armed adversaries, and a potential IFF nightmare were it not for your NPC squadmates.  Sadly, this game sucks because of dealbreaker bugs, and a first-person camera that makes Cloverfield look tame.


Homeworld series
Well, it's a space-based game, so I'm going to ignore a few big violations--mostly that of logistics.  The biggest thing I've got gripes about is ship capturing.  Yeah, it's a huge ego boost to capture a flotilla's heaviest ship, but this goes so far as to revert to pre-ironclad naval warfare.  Ship capturing is, in modern doctrine, done for the intent of rescue, recovery, or apprehension.  Captured technology is sent to reverse engineers for evaluation.  If you'll recall, this is done extensively in HW1 (assault frigate), HWC (your wave motion cannon trope), and HW2 (movers) at certain plot points to unlock tech trees.  However, the ability to utilize war prizes is limited in modern warfare.  It does happen, like when the British exchanged their semiautomatic FN FALs for the Argentinian full automatic FN FALs.  But my cheap tactic of capturing capital ships to serve as an immediate counterattack rarely happens.  U-571 (the eponymous submarine) and Space: Above and Beyond (damaged bomber) are examples where a prize crew operates an enemy vessel with a level of competence, but this is unlikely to occur without months of research and reverse engineering.  Even worse is Independence Day where a playboy cop from Miami (Bad Boys) and an eccentric cop from New York (Law and Order CI) team up to pilot an alien spacecraft under short notice.  As survivability tech improves (since the advent of armored ships), it's more practical to score a destruction of target than capture and control.  How long was NATO in the dark about the MiG-25's capabilities until a defector willingly surrendered the craft?  Why didn't the US Navy use the captured Prinz Eugens in its regular navy?  (Well, that's a logistical problem more than sailing experience, though they did keep the German crew for quite a while until it was outfitted with sail-by-wire and stripped of weaponry).  Who does it better?  Your mother.

There's a reason these games sell.  They offer the player a sense of accomplishment, which is why Vietnam-based games don't do so well (see: Shellshocked).  This sentiment is shared in the cinema, where two prominent war films, Apocalypse Now and Doctor Strangelove are cynical views of big war mentality.  It was a period of anxiety and doubt more than victory and survival.  Cinema has grown, with countless works such as Over There and The Hurt Locker giving audiences a look into the intricacies of contemporary asymmetric warfare.

Interesting notes:  Warfare and cinema have a lot of interplay.  Anyone who has watched Inglorious Basterds will recall the importance of propaganda during wartime, but postwar attitudes also color themes.  There's a distinction between the historical masturbation Band of Brothers and the antiwar overtures of Grave of the Fireflies.  Compare the nuclear sequences of Terminator 2 and Barefoot Gen--Western interpretations involve the destruction of civilization as a projection of the American dream (expected since Americans have never had to experience the long term effects of the weapon), whereas the Japanese interpretation is focused on human misery and by extension survivor's guilt.  I'll also note that Chinese cinema regarding WW2 has a completely different tone, ranging from victory pieces such as Tunnel War to sobering documentaries like the recent Nanking.

Ultimately, I feel that war in this country's media is categorized into two categories--big war blockbusters and contemporary war art pieces.  This makes me all the more cynical about the Medal of Honor reboot.  We'll probably never talk about it years down the road as having broke ground with a complex or symbolic narrative.  We'll be talking about Cowboy and his sweet beard.

I fucking give up.