First of all I've not been here long so if a similar topic was posted here recently feel free to link it and call me names. I'm into military sim games and flight simulators. For example DCS, ARMA and Rising storm 2: Vietnam. I really like the gameplay, but I sometimes can't help thinking about the real world atrocities that were committed with the simulated war machine I'm using.
For example, I'm googling the name of an Air-to-Ground missile so that I can find out its effective range or something, and the wikipedia page has paragraphs about how it was "really effective" in bombing bridges in Vietnam, or how it was used extensively in Iraq. Less often it's something more wholesome, like how improper handling of a Zuni rocket resulted in a huge and very destructive fire on a US aircraft carrier while it was deployed in the South China sea during the Vietnam war.
It doesn't help of course how any story or campaign on such games is basically unapologetic NATO propaganda. It's also interesting how games like Call of Duty don't usually trigger this for me, because their mechanics are so far removed from reality it's basically an arcade game with a "realistic" coat of paint, no different from DOOM or whatever.
Anyway, those feelings aren't enough for me to stop playing those games, nor do I think they're fundamentally unethical or something. I'm just wondering if anyone here had similar experiences.
The only military game I've played is the first level of COD: Finest Hour where you're a red army conscript killing Nazis to defend your home in the battle of Stalingrad, and I don't feel remotely conflicted about it. That said i have no desire to play anything else that was funded by the DoD to make war cool and fun lol
Half of the campaign for CoD: World at War is playing as a Red Army Stalingrad survivor who eventually takes part in the storming of the Reichstag. Pretty dope
The other half is playing as an American in the Pacific. Admittedly less cool
That WaW stuff is legitimately the coolest "realistic" fps storyline (sidenote: could that actually have happened?). I wish you could just play that half. Come to think of it, my love for the campaign of WaW may have influenced me a little
Damn maybe I should bust it out again and try to get my hand-eye coordination up to snuff enough to storm the reichstag
I have fond memories of Finest Hour, though the intro is 100% an Enemy At The Gates homage, complete with Soviet human waves running into machine gun nests, commissars executing deserters, and the old “one soldier holds gun, second holds clip, first dies second picks up gun” thing. Still, it’s hype as hell, the soundtrack is amazing, and I won’t deny that I still mark out over the “Kill the German!” speech
Never played the early CoDs unfortunately, but from what I've seen they're much more grounded than the newer ones where the protagonist is straight up Rambo.
I’d kill for a remaster of finest hour. I can’t find a computer port or anything to replay it, and my PlayStation 2 is long gone.