Nerd Rage: World War II Shooters
Posted on: 01/19/2009 - By: Chris

Seriously guys, give it up. There is no need to ever again have a World War II shooter ever appear on the shelves. After the mass cloning of Medal of Honor games, their knock offs, and the trash that Treyarch wants to develop, it’s pretty clear why we no longer need this shit. However, to elaborate, I will go ahead and list why we don’t need shooters from this genre.

I: It’s the same crap, just a new title every time. I am tired of storming the beaches of Normandy. I am sick of charging machine gun nests. I loathe sneaking up to a tank to plant explosives on it, or fighting to an anti aircraft battery to blow it up. Does this sound familiar? Of course it does, because it’s the same crap in every game. A quick search at www.gamespot.com came up with 14 unique titles with Medal of Honor in it. That is not including the fact that most of the games were pushed to several different platforms, as well as the expansions and different collections over the years. Considering that the original Medal of Honor game was released in 1999 means that almost every 6 to 7 months, a new Medal of Honor game has been released up until the time of this article.

II: Same story, different game. Game set in space…awesome, you can make shit up. Game in the future, or even in the present, make shit up. When it comes to games concerning historic events, there isn’t much that you can make up. No aliens, no monsters, no crazy whacked out totally made up bullshit to entertain you, just history. I’m not saying that history cannot be fun, or that you can’t have a story; however I am saying that you are limiting yourself when you choose a time period in the past. You are stuck using people relative to that time period, having Hitler battle it out with whoever holds the office of US President at the time of the games release may sound funny, but it’s just not going to happen. As a developer, you are stuck working with what has happened already in history, and being stuck kills creativity, and that is no good in a game.

III: Same Weapons, same gear. Again, since you are set in a certain time period, you are stuck to certain items that players can use. If you are in a World War II shooter, you can’t have good ol’ Johnny the generic soldier blasting Nazi ass with an M-16 or ray gun. It just doesn’t make sense, and gamers aren’t going to get into it anyways. Since rapid firing weapons were fairly new during World War II, there are only a few that you can add to a game. Grabbing hold of a Thompson submachine gun, or a Springfield sniper rifle can be fun, however limited when other games are throwing out assault rifles with chainsaws, grenade launchers, and all kinds of other bullshit on them. Some developers have tried to level the playing field by adding different types of upgrades, or extras to add to weapons, however it still isn’t the same. Regardless of the eye candy attached to it, you are still firing the same weapons.

IV: Same generic enemies. World War II doesn’t offer a lot of room when it comes to enemy NPC creativity. The player is either going to run into the generic Nazi enemy, or the evil Japanese enemy. After a while of shooting the same Nazi, you are going to get tired of it. Sure, some games have tried to change things up a bit, adding different types of tricked out super Nazis to the mix, but usually it feels odd and out of place. Nazis running around with mini guns that haven’t been invented yet makes the game feel dumb. If you plan on developing a game that involves history, remember that you can’t throw out all other rules about making a video game. There needs to be variety in your game, or the players are going to get bored with it quickly.

V: Storm the beach, blow up the anti-aircraft guns, chase down the tank and plant a sticky bomb on it. Every World War II shooter is the same, always the same setting, doing the exact same task every time. Even the developers who decided to go a different route and add the Japanese campaign to the mix eventually fuck it up by adding an endless stream of bonsai attacks and Pearl Harbor defense clones. Where are the games involving the French resistance movement? What about the work of sniper units during the time, or the vast amount of locations that haven’t been covered in a World War II shooter? Developers stay with what they know because that’s what people know, and it is what everyone is comfortable talking about. There are plenty of sections of history that the general public is ignorant on, and by avoiding those sensitive or lesser known sections of history, you are only helping to keep people ignorant.
There have been plenty of World War II shooters that stand out. There have also been plenty of them that only succeed in filling a trash can. The problem is that people are okay with playing a World War II shooter because they are familiar with it, and publishers keep shooting them out. The fact is that this can be said about any shooter type game; however we need to move away from playing a game about something that happened more than 70 years ago.

Also something to consider, in 50 years will we be saying the same thing when it comes to games on the war in Iraq?