Community MetaSteam | February 2021 - We Don't Do Regional Pricing in This House

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Swenhir

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I do not know much about Fallujah but indeed if the viewpoint is to paint the US as a hero in that war, to apply jingoism to something so recent and at the best of time, morally grey... I think that's being indelicate, without even going into who is making it, which I have no notion about.

I have the same general distaste for CoDc campaigns, but at least they have a degree of self-awareness and don't attempt to claim to portray right and wrong, of the morality of a given war's facets.

prudis said:
lashman the citybuilder?
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You must "save the city from Anarchy". I gather that's a no for him :p.
 
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NarohDethan

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Swenhir said:
I have the same general distaste for CoDc campaigns, but at least they have a degree of self-awareness and don't attempt to claim to portray right and wrong, of the morality of a given war's facets.
Click to expand...
The last two definitely are definitely sus, as they're reframing past US actions as if it 'the enemy' did it, or that they were 'necessary'. Same with World at War.
 
Li Kao

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nordschatten said:
to me it felt like that was the case in the base game already... :grimacing-face: I really liked Cities Skylines until my shoddy road planning killed my city... and I didnt enjoy re-planning roads all the time. I honestly just yearn for SimCity 2000 or 3000 with an elegant interface, some more modern graphics, big maps to really expand, some more depth in what you can build, but no super difficult micromanagent or worrying about the roads & traffic all the time and no (or: not a lot) gating when it comes to what you can build.
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Yeah, it the same for me. I'm out soon after the game begins to throw a fit about traffic. My fixes are never enough.

Tizoc said:
.....
Ace Combat Assault Horizon got delisted

If you were ever interested in Ace Combat 7
Best to get it when you can to be on the safe side. Seems licensing for the jets is the reason for delisting.
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Is there still a way to buy it somewhere ?
 
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Swenhir

Swenhir

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NarohDethan said:
The last two definitely are definitely sus, as they're reframing past US actions as if it 'the enemy' did it, or that they were 'necessary'. Same with World at War.
Click to expand...
Agreed there, both modern warfare and the one based on the cold war are veering into the territory of both recent-ish time periods and non-fiction. I believe that having the "Call of Duty" name attached encourages people not to take them seriously enough for players not to take them at face value, but yeah.

I looked into it since my earlier post. The TL;DR is that the war crimes committed in The Second Battle of Fallujah appears to be way better covered narratively and alluded to in Specs Ops : The Line. On a broader scale, the US employed enriched uranium munitions and use of white phosphorus munitions seemed to be common. That's a double whammy of atrocities on top of the war itself.

That's not to say that the PTSD and trauma of people having fought for the US is invalid, that they don't deserve to be sympathized with and I will say that I wouldn't know how to even function in those circumstances. To me the problem lies on a much bigger scale of decision-making than the average foot soldier, even well-trained and moral down to his bones, can possibly address.

Thus, not even going into who is making that game, the attempt to go through that controversial battle in such an exclusively intimate perspective, going door to door, risks painting the US military as a victim from that limited viewpoint. Unless their narrative chops are wonderful and the intent is to pull a Spec Ops: The Line, it is probably not going to do justice to the issues at hand both in that particular theater and the broader scope of the 2004 Iraq war.

TL;DR : yeah, I get why people dislike the idea of that game.
 
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Nabs

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Dirt 4 is a dollar on Fanatical. I guess it's time to offload those Codemaster keys again.
 
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NarohDethan

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Swenhir said:
That's not to say that the PTSD and trauma of people having fought for the US is invalid, that they don't deserve to be sympathized with and I will say that I wouldn't know how to even function in those circumstances. To me the problem lies on a much bigger scale of decision-making than the average foot soldier, even well-trained and moral down to his bones, can possibly address.
Click to expand...
IMO you cant make a sad soldier game when the objective of the game is to kill brown people and make it look cool while you're are it. It is the same shit as TLOU, oh no guysss the trauma, btw see how cool it looks when you slice the throat of this person. Oh noooo they called the name of the dude you just shot in the head with your newly upgraded rifle you got that you had to make a conscious decision to do it so you could be more effective in combat.

Of course, games about war, especially those when you control a US soldier (well, almost all of them) are especially nasty given how much damage the US army has done to the world. Like, they bomb people left and right but I'm supposed to feel bad for this white dude from Louisiana who was given the choice of working a regular job or murdering brown people and chose the latter because that would bring him more money.
 
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LEANIJA

LEANIJA

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Li Kao said:
Yeah, it the same for me. I'm out soon after the game begins to throw a fit about traffic. My fixes are never enough.


Is there still a way to buy it somewhere ?
Click to expand...
@Cities Skylines: yeah, exactly. A shame too, because if it was a simpler game that didnt rely so much on traffic flow to make everything work, I'd love the game to bits. I just wanna build, not play a traffic management-stragety sim, I'm too dumb for those :p
I still play SimCity 2000 for its simplicity. BTW there is an app up on Steam that will render your SC2000 cities in 3D, its pretty neat:


LGR covered it:


~

Ace Combat Assault Horizon is not on any tracked sites on Isthereanydeal, so your best bet might be grey market sites like G2A...



Ge0force said:
Oh that's you 😋
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Yup...I do mention it here every now and then ;P so ppl arent too confused. I do use the same avatar as here at least.
 
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Wildebeet

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Swenhir said:
Agreed there, both modern warfare and the one based on the cold war are veering into the territory of both recent-ish time periods and non-fiction. I believe that having the "Call of Duty" name attached encourages people not to take them seriously enough for players not to take them at face value, but yeah.

I looked into it since my earlier post. The TL;DR is that the war crimes committed in The Second Battle of Fallujah appears to be way better covered narratively and alluded to in Specs Ops : The Line. On a broader scale, the US employed enriched uranium munitions and use of white phosphorus munitions seemed to be common. That's a double whammy of atrocities on top of the war itself.

That's not to say that the PTSD and trauma of people having fought for the US is invalid, that they don't deserve to be sympathized with and I will say that I wouldn't know how to even function in those circumstances. To me the problem lies on a much bigger scale of decision-making than the average foot soldier, even well-trained and moral down to his bones, can possibly address.

Thus, not even going into who is making that game, the attempt to go through that controversial battle in such an exclusively intimate perspective, going door to door, risks painting the US military as a victim from that limited viewpoint. Unless their narrative chops are wonderful and the intent is to pull a Spec Ops: The Line, it is probably not going to do justice to the issues at hand both in that particular theater and the broader scope of the 2004 Iraq war.

TL;DR : yeah, I get why people dislike the idea of that game.
Click to expand...
On the recruitment subject, the idea is to popularize the idea (especially in teenage boys, who as I know myself, get pretty amped on war movies and games and gunplay) that war is exciting, sacrifice is heroic, and "service" is noble - the few and the proud and all of that. I remember the game and movie Blackhawk Down (it's on GOG) which involves special ops stuff against a bunch of faceless, nobody somalis. It's that sort of narrative that the defense PR likes, where you can somehow make the US out to be the underdogs against people that most in the US don't identify with and thus don't care about... and maybe, for those who need something to do after high school, also wouldn't mind head clicking on IRL. War glorification, if it doesn't involve robots or zombies or orcs or other fictional/fantasy opponents, lowers the popular threshold of tolerance for war, and only makes it more likely to happen.

Not that I think they'll accomplish any of that with this example, but ... look at CoD and Battlefield.
 
NarohDethan

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I mean I personally know a kid who almost enlisted to the army because his dad told him that they would teach him to fire a gun 'like in Halo and CoD'. His mother had to intervene.
 
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Swenhir

Swenhir

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NarohDethan said:
IMO you cant make a sad soldier game when the objective of the game is to kill brown people and make it look cool while you're are it. It is the same shit as TLOU, oh no guysss the trauma, btw see how cool it looks when you slice the throat of this person. Oh noooo they called the name of the dude you just shot in the head with your newly upgraded rifle you got that you had to make a conscious decision to do it so you could be more effective in combat.

Of course, games about war, especially those when you control a US soldier (well, almost all of them) are especially nasty given how much damage the US army has done to the world. Like, they bomb people left and right but I'm supposed to feel bad for this white dude from Louisiana who was given the choice of working a regular job or murdering brown people and chose the latter because that would bring him more money.
Click to expand...
I don't know, I think it's a subjective thing but a minimum of intellectual honesty in the narrative is in my opinion necessary. Reality is horrid with war in general and there's degree of fun-izing and trivializing it no matter the time period if you want to make a game that isn't Arma. I just think Iraq is way, way too fresh for it, not to mention hasn't been addressed by the US in all its murkiness and various issues.

I wouldn't paint "brown people" with a broad brush though. Things are incredibly complicated in the middle-east and I know enough to know it's not simple, but then again so is the case for most videogames mooks. It's always a dehumanization of the other, the issue here is that it's an other that is both contemporary and still very much suffering from the consequences of this war.

I would just take issue with dismissing US soldier's traumas. Again, some of them are horrible assholes and deserved to be tried and imprisoned for the chilling things I've heard be done to civilians, children and even the armed opposition as pointed out in Fallujah's article. But again, some of them are genuine victims of their governments. And what about the non-white ones, which made up 36% of the US military in Iraq in 2004? Would this suddenly make them people in that context? It's all murky to me and I'd just be careful about withdrawing empathy based on such vague criteria. I've talked to veterans, I know I couldn't say the things you do.

War this recent can't be treated lightly and as a "fun" thing by a game with a claim to authenticity in my opinion. But then again, the gaming industry's main player's morality and conscience has been proven to be all but missing nowadays, so here we are.

Wildebeet said:
On the recruitment subject, the idea is to popularize the idea (especially in teenage boys, who as I know myself, get pretty amped on war movies and games and gunplay) that war is exciting, sacrifice is heroic, and "service" is noble - the few and the proud and all of that. I remember the game and movie Blackhawk Down (it's on GOG) which involves special ops stuff against a bunch of faceless, nobody somalis. It's that sort of narrative that the defense PR likes, where you can somehow make the US out to be the underdogs against people that most in the US don't identify with and thus don't care about... and maybe, for those who need something to do after high school, also wouldn't mind head clicking on IRL. War glorification, if it doesn't involve robots or zombies or orcs or other fictional/fantasy opponents, lowers the popular threshold of tolerance for war, and only makes it more likely to happen.

Not that I think they'll accomplish any of that with this example, but ... look at CoD and Battlefield.
Click to expand...
Couldn't agree more. Oversimplification of war to recruit naive kids to get mowed down for the sake of realpolitiks and power-tripping elites is abhorrent, but studios do so love this way of making money.
 
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ZKenir

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MegaApple

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Anything special for this year's Lunar Festival?

Any discount tickets and stuff?
 
madjoki

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www.humblebundle.com

Buy Mafia: Definitive Edition from the Humble Store

Use of this product requires agreement to the following third party end user license agreement: http://www.take2games.com/eula/ Part one of the Mafia crime saga - 1930s, Lost Heaven, IL. Re-made from the ground up, rise through the ranks of the Mafia during the Prohibition era of organized...
www.humblebundle.com www.humblebundle.com

$10 or 10€ Steam or Epic key. Probably mistake as it's 30€ on Steam
 
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fantomena

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madjoki said:
www.humblebundle.com

Buy Mafia: Definitive Edition from the Humble Store

Use of this product requires agreement to the following third party end user license agreement: http://www.take2games.com/eula/ Part one of the Mafia crime saga - 1930s, Lost Heaven, IL. Re-made from the ground up, rise through the ranks of the Mafia during the Prohibition era of organized...
www.humblebundle.com www.humblebundle.com

$10 or 10€ Steam or Epic key. Probably mistake as it's 30€ on Steam
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Is the key a worldwide one?
 

Xclash

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Also, Borderlands 3 Ultimate Edition is 80% off which knocks it down to $20. With Humble discount, it brings it down to $17 before sales tax.
 
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