The Game Boy: Why Six Days in Fallujah’s Doing It Wrong, and How We Can Make Things Right

Posted 04/21/2009 at 2:03am | by Nathan Grayson

14

Comments

Print

In an understandably controversial move, Konami and Atomic Games recently demonstrated their upcoming “realistic” shooter, Six Days in Fallujah. The game – apparently supervised by the hardened eyes of soldiers who actually fought the debatably good fight – will focus primarily on the Second Battle of Fallujah. And as much as I enjoy the beautifully orchestrated, occasionally tear-jerking fictional plots of games like Call of Duty 4 and Brothers in Arms, I think Konami’s bold leap is a necessary one.

There’s just one problem, though: They’re doing it wrong.
 
Many publications were recently invited into the trenches of the still deep-in-development title, and – as many dejected “first impressions” articles can attest – Fallujah’s gameplay’s paradoxical lack of realism stands out like, well, Rambo in a shootout. Take this bit, for instance:
 
“In another clip, the player broke off from his squad, crouched up behind two insurgents who were firing on US soldiers, and took them out from a few feet away like some kind of renegade commando. I may be ignorant of this particular battle, but I've certainly never heard of any Army ninjas breaking off from their squads and capping insurgents solo. Maybe something like that has happened once or twice; either way, the videogamey nature of the moment seemed entirely out of place,” said Shacknews reporter Nick Breckon.
 
In essence, the game handles like a slightly less testosterone-splattered Gears of War. Characters slide from cover-to-cover, pay bullets no more heed than buzzing flies, and regenerate health after a few moments of downtime. Where’s the grim and gritty reality the game’s developers have been touting so vehemently? I mean, I’ve never had the pleasure of eating lead outside of a videogame (and even then, many of said bullets had faces), but if I had snuffed out lives in the streets of Fallujah, I’d be offended.
 
War isn’t a game. It’s pulse-pounding, strategic, and exciting, sure – but it’s not fun. And that’s why Fallujah falters.
 
But really, it’s not entirely Atomic Games’ fault. Listening to USMC veteran Michael Ergo talk about Six Days in Fallujah, it sounds like the development team entered the fray with good intentions.
 
“It's an all-encompassing experience,” he said, speaking of his time on the battlefield. “There were a lot of times that were intense; there were a lot of times that were boring. I went on patrol and we adopted a puppy. There's so many things that go into my experience in Fallujah that there's no one word that encompasses that.”

It appears, then, that while Six Days in Fallujah ‘s structure is taking pointers from movies like Blackhawk Down and Fullmetal Jacket, it’d be better served by Tivo-ing a few documentaries. After all, realism and entertainment rarely go hand-in-hand, and artistic liberty’s a volatile substance when mixed with freshly controversial subject matter. So why have Konami and Atomic Games decided to flip logic the bird and take the landmine-laden road of potential controversy?
 
Because otherwise, they’d risk tarnishing their record with a “bad” game.

Let’s be honest here: videogaming is an entertainment medium. Books can be “boring” (that is to say, their speech-to-explosion ratio can be greater than 1:1) and still have critical worth, as can movies. But modern-era games, at the end of the day, won’t garner anything more than a morbidly curious glance from the mainstream if their gameplay’s fun factor isn’t dialed up to at least an 8.5 out 10. You can probably guess where I’m going with this now; we need to change our judging criteria if we really want big-budget games that aren’t about wise-cracking, emotionally vacant bullet sponges.

Don’t think Six Days in Fallujah is the only game that’s suffered because gamers refuse to alter their conception of fun, either. Recently released shooter Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard was positioned as a cutting parody of machismo-reliant FPSes like Duke Nukem, and, when it came to tickling players’ funny bones, the game performed admirably. However, as of now, the game’s eating crow with a Metacritic score of 53/100. Why? Because while its comedy routine wowed the crowd, all that goodwill was outweighed by “mediocre” run ‘n’ gun sections. As a result, you can probably surmise, very few people purchased the game.
 
Just as Six Days in Fallujah should be an in-depth, even educational (!) “documentary shooter,” -- with all the chit-chat and downtime that entails -- Eat Lead was a parody shooter. Yet, in spite of its obvious merits, reviewers and gamers judged the game by the same criteria they’d use to judge any other humdrum shooter. And I’m sure that Atomic Games and Konami are afraid Fallujah will suffer a similar fate, so instead of using their realistic setting to its maximum potential, they turned it into, well, just another videogame.

Interactivity is videogaming’s greatest strength, but it doesn’t have to be the be-all, end-all of every gaming experience. If a game is funny, it should be rewarded; same for games that are more fascinating than fun. Today’s videogames are a collusion of factors – writing, sound design, acting, graphics, etc – of which gameplay is only a part. Gameplay, then, shouldn’t necessarily tip the scales when matched against a game’s other aspects – unless, of course, the game’s completely unplayable.

So what I’m proposing is this: Let’s be a little more open-minded from now on. Sure, Game X’s graphics might not sizzle like Crysis’ tropical vistas, and yeah, its gameplay may not be as buttery smooth as Gears of War 2, but so long as it’s not trying to be those games, it shouldn’t be knocked for it. We don’t lump certain documentaries together with John Woo flicks just because they both feature guns, so why do it with videogames? If a game’s clearly attempting to take its genre in a different direction, let’s drop the list of bullet points and cut it some slack. Otherwise, developers will have no choice but to continue rehashing the same variations on a theme, and eventually, games will become boring.
 
Six Days in Fallujah may very well turn out to be another victim of our ill-informed, gameplay-dependant system of critical judgment, but we can still change. Gameplay-schmameplay -- my monocle’s getting a bit dusty, and my beard could use a tug or two; so here’s to a future where games will interest and engage, instead of just providing us with big-boy replacements for action figures and Legos. And the best part? We’ll like it.
   
The Game Boy is the soapbox Nathan Grayson stands atop to pass down proclamations about the world of gaming. This is the column’s first installment, but here’s hoping for many more. Like, multiple installments per week, even, if you’re up for it. Also, they won’t all be this long. Promise.