Arctic Combat
(PC) A
free-to-play first-person online shooter set in a near-future war
between Russia and the United States fought in the Arctic region.
Must
we fight the Russians yet again? Admittedly, this really isn't the
game I should single out for this, since in Arctic Combat making the
main belligerents the United States and Russia is actually neccessary
for the whole “combat in the Arctic” premise. Geographically and
politically speaking, there aren't a whole lot of countries that
would be at least semi-plausible leaders
in a war against the United States in the Arctic region, and a game
where the United States had to fight Unspecified Middle Eastern State
#76-B's invasion of Alaska or struggle for dominance of the Arctic
Circle against the mighty war machine of the tyrannical
Norwego-Canadian Empire would be sort of silly. (Than
again, Homefront
actually
got made.)
 |
|
Screenshot
from early beta version of Arctic Warfare, final release may differ
|
Still,
it's getting a bit repetitive. At this point I'm pretty sure there've
been more video games about Americans fighting Russians released in
the past decade than there were during the era when they were
actually directly hostile to each other. It's like modern videogame
development takes place in some mirror universe where, instead of
dissolving in 1991, the Soviet Union embraced the even more
oppressive and anti-Western ideology of Supercommunism and became
more hostile to the United States than ever.
Vampire Slayer FPS
(Xbox
360
Live Arcade) OK, that's
not a title.
It just isn't. Maybe something like this would fly in the 70s, when
it was perfectly acceptable for a game's title to be a dry summary of
its premise and games like Boxing and Air-Sea Battle filled the
shelves, but those days are past. I picked on Killzonefor
having a title that seems like it was selected at random from a list
of military terms, but at least that's still a title and not simply a
description of the game's subgenre. This is more like releasing Gears
of War,
Europa
Universalis III, and
Dante's
Inferno,
as Burly
Man Third-Person Shooter,
Early
Modern Period Europe Strategy,
and Stuff
I Drew in My Math Notebook When I Was 12.
Look,
for all I know it's a fine game. You shouldn't judge a book by its
cover. But you shouldn't publish your book with a cover that just
says Spy
Thriller Third-Person Omniscient,
either.
