As you may or may not know, Call of Duty: Black Ops (or CODBLOPS) was released last week, to a fanfare of critical praise from mainstream papers like The Telegraph and The Guardian (“the pinnacle of the military shooter experience”) as well as the usual games sites. Many reviewers remarked how CODBLOPS provides an experience akin to a high budget action movie. Be this as it may, it achieves this by rather questionable means, as is demonstrated in the video below, in which T2DMrBungle completes the seemingly action-packed first mission without firing a shot. On the second-to-hardest difficulty setting.

The “game” – in addition to being the worst sort of action movie knockoff – simply does not require any skill on part of the player. However we define “game”, it must surely include the ability to lose, and the ability to provide a challenge. What we have here is a military theme park ride – a smooth-edged, lubed-up cliche, that forgoes the unique aspects of the gaming medium in favour of slavishly imitating the worst aspects of film.

Why am I posting this? To help demonstrate the state of big budget gaming to people who may not know, and to illustrate that – at the commercial level, at least – gaming is probably worse than you thought. To clarify: it’s sub Michael Bay gun porn with shit for a story requiring only the tiniest squirts of mental effort. It’s hick feed. Dullard distracter. You get the point.

To clarify: when I defend games, I’m not defending this.

Via: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Please don’t get the impression that we hate Roger Ebert around here. I happen to think he writes the best film reviews going, often coming up with refreshing angles and observations, and maintaining an admirably starchy sense of principle.

In this clip, Rog talks to an imaginary friend just out of shot about Grave of the Fireflies, moving on to a more general apologia for anime. (I used a reverse version of this rhetorical manoeuvre in my review of Eden of the East.)

He  is really keen on the technical minutae of the form and how small details in animation can convey character and emotion. The comparisons with techniques used in Japanese poetry and film ring true, despite seeming a bit tenuous.

Gushing about anime will always be untrendy, but this video shows that Roger Ebert is not afraid to geek out, if geeking outshould prove necessary. I lost my temper with him over the “games can never be art” remarks because he seemed to be preying on geeky pastimes to prove an artsy superiority. He has since apologised for the whole thing (albeit not having changed his opinions on the matter) and I will happily grasp that olive branch.

Crosspost with Junior Brain.

Roger Ebert says Video Games Can Never Be Art, inclines his nose slightly in the process. Fellow Orsonian Tavs agrees with Ebert and apologises for it. Here’s what I think:

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