IGN: Six Days in Fallujah complete, awaiting release [update: it's true!]

yea i dont get it either

Something about in-game advertising and having a guy named Abdul serve up M&M Blizzards to the U.S. troops really grinds some people's gears.

I think the problem is that when you are looking at an event that is so recent, and a conflict that was horrific for both combatant forces, and for the civilians caught in the crossfire, that there is a special need for the game to do a serious treatment of the subject matter.

I'd welcome a thoughtful, realistic, game based on this subject, just as I was very happy with how The Hurt Locker turned out.

The development team has (sometimes) claimed that they are handling this with the sensitivity that is due, but the hands-on previews tell a different story. Joystiq and other outlets have reported that you basically have an arcade-y shoot-em-up where the whole thing is played for entertainment, and the Fallujah setting is tacked on to give a modicum of seriousness.

If you thought the "No Russian" scene in Modern Warfare 2 offered profound ruminations on the nature of war and modern terror... if you thought that Metal Gear Solid 4 was one of the great philosophical treatises on violence... then you may feel that Six Days in Fallujah is awesome.

Personally, I am unhappy with the game from what I've seen so far, just as I would be unhappy with a high-larious Martin Lawrence gross-out comedy set during the World Trade Center attacks.

Two reasons. First, games set in WW2 have little issue since survivors who remember the devestation are few and far between. Europe isn't covered by bombed out building and reminders of the war have mostly vanished. What's left is muted and fails to convey the true horror that the population of the European continent experienced. Even though the horrors in 1936 were far greater and more severe than the events of Iraq and Afghanistan (disclaimer: I once agreed with the invasion and have since flipped to the opposition), they've turned into historic footnotes since no one can truly relate to WW2 nor do games remind us of terrifying experiences we had with the event.

Second, despite all the propoganda attempts, we war supporters have been unable to presentit in a black and white, good vs evil form. It's easy to thinkmof Nazis as spawns of Satan since the information flow back then was not as detailed or real time as it is today. Since we recognize today that the presented enemy is made up primarily of good, decent people who are being dragged along against their will by truly evil forces, presenting events as grand triumphs is impossible. The firebombing of Dresden would have created the same disgust we have today when a drone blows up a bus if WW2 had the same degree of media saturation today.

@copa: Pretty much this, yeah.

@copa -

Don't ever let anyone in the military hear your opinion of Hurt Locker. That film was far from realistic. Not only was it consistenky wrong on levels of technical understanding of IED disposal, had non-existent understanding of military tactics, and basically used every bad Hollywood understanding of physics and military life, it made soldiers look like either cowering babies or, in the case of the three protaganists, a bunch of insubordinate soldiers that regularly go off and do their own thing, disobey orders, and get away with it. The only people who think Hurt Locker is realistic or thoughtful are those that learned all they know about what really happens in the military from Hollywood.

The controversy is coming from people who insist that the game is glorifying the war and war crimes. Also, apparently there's some people who are worried that "OMG! MUSLIM FAMILIES MIGHT BUY THE GAME!" and be offended or frightened.

Or become terrorists.

Yes, seriously, there are people in this world who are worried that releasing this game will make random Muslim kids commit terrorist acts.

"@copa -

Don't ever let anyone in the military hear your opinion of Hurt Locker."

I hear you, LaughingTarget. I have read a lot of the criticisms of The Hurt Locker, and I understand that it isn't a documentary, but I didn't go in-depth because I was trying to keep the discussion on the game.

Even if they made a lot of mistakes along the way, Bigelow and Boal took their subject matter very seriously, and if you look at the production history this was not put together as an entertainment cash-in.

That's all I would ask from a game on this topic. I know it would not be 100% accurate. I know that playing the game would not be the same as being in Fallujah. But the whole Fallujah scene was really bloody and really awful, and I would want a game that was very, very serious about acknowledging the gravity of the situation.

If you don't understand the controversy, then you clearly 1) haven't much on this operation 2) likely rely on TV for news. Sadly, you can get more information from Wikipedia than the US mainstream press.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah,_The_Hidden_Massacre

Just saw this today...
Report: High Number of Birth Defects Seen in Fallujah
democracynow.org
In other Iraq news, BBC News is reporting the town of Fallujah is experiencing an unusually high number of birth defects among its newborn children. One hospital doctor reported seeing two or three cases of birth defects each day, which would translate to over a thousand per year. Doctors and parents are said to widely blame US weaponry used during the two major attacks on Fallujah in 2004. The assaults killed hundreds of Fallujah residents and displaced thousands more.

I don't have a problem with it either El Capitán. Bunch of complainers riding the slippery slope of censorship. People are ok with performing carjackings and having sex with hookers in games because it's satirical or fictionalized with no empathy for people who have lost loved ones to carjackings or prostitution. If they called this game Modern Assault: Deseret Disaster no one would give a flying f**k about it. I think this is a case of people being overly sensitive and having double standards when it comes to what is or isn't acceptable in terms of content. How can there be a line to draw simply because this event was recent? People can say all they want that if this were a more deep, thoughtful and emotional experience instead of a run and gun shooter they'd feel differently . . . I don't buy it. The "too soon" mentality boggles my mind.

"Bunch of complainers riding the slippery slope of censorship."

I don't think you understand what censorship is.

The following statement is censorship:

"I think it should be illegal for Atomic Games to distribute this title."

The following statements are NOT censorship, and are in fact that sort of free speech that is protected by anti-censorship:

"I think this game looks really dumb."

"I don't like the way this game looks, I think they should have taken a more serious approach to the subject matter."

"I don't think that certain private publishing companies should choose to invest money in distributing this game."

slippery slope - A tricky precarious situation, especially one that leads gradually but inexorably to disaster.

oops . . . forgot to say you don't know what a slippery slope is with a bunch of smarmy and patronizing quotes.

I still don't think you know what censorship is. Voicing critical opinions is not a slippery slope to censorship.

@copa

Understood. Even though, the movie was horrible. Stripped of its setting we're left with disjointed scene transition, poor plot devices (a big one is antagonist incompetence as a primary method of conflict resolution), series of mini-climaxes that are just there to add tension and have no bearing or purpose in the series (see the random Iraqi cab breaking through a blockade just to be stopped by one guy in a bomb disposal suit and a pistol), and a plot that never seemed to go anywhere.

The point being is I don't want to see Six Days in Fallujah turn out to be anything remotely like Hurt Locker. At least Atomic Games is actively keeping military advisers on board. Hopefully they take their advice seriously. Bigelow and Boal actively ignored the advice, admitted to it, and even alienated the DoD by doing amazingly stupid things during the filming of the movie.

If Six Days is going to be authentic, it had better be authentic, not Hurt Locker authentic.

I totally agree with copa and LaughingTarget. Guys: I want to compliment you two on making a very calm, reasonable explanation of why this game is potentially such a problem.

Personally, I'd love to see a war game that is as carefully scripted and emotionally mature as Heavy Rain. That'd be one hell of an experience. One day, maybe... one day...

(And LaughingTarget: I may not agree with your opinion on The Hurt Locker, but I agree with your taste in anime. Row row fight the powah!)

Correction: current war.

Yeah I think it should hold out too, in the wake of MW2 and with many people who have bought/are about to buy BFBC2 I don't think this game will fair well.

"I'm not sure myself as I can just see it being another Modern Warfare like shooter with a more interesting and real story."

Personally, I'd have no problem with that, as my biggest problem with the CoD games is their lack of any attempt to humanize the combatants and sensationalized narrative. (Well, I'm also just really bad at them, despite being decent at other shooters.) What really intrigues me is that the developers said they were approaching this as a survival-horror game, which sounds like a really interesting and creative way to do a war game, and very likely more realistic than CoD and similar games given the nature of the actual conflicts with the insurgencies in Iraq.

Correlation is not causation. I have no doubt that bulldozing all that stuff into the water wasn't good for people, but to claim that ballistic and explosive weapons caused the damage is quite a stretch. It's an easy scapegoat, but definitely not what I would look to first.

The Hooch is CRAZY !

I don't think that would work for the console ports.

Especially the PS3 port.

No, but if the public is truly interested in playing it it would be the perfect way for potential publishers to gauge interest.

Not directly responding to the comment above, but I wanted to give a shout out to Laughing Target. You don't know how reassuring it is to know that I wasn't the only person in America who thought "The Hurt Locker" was contrived, cheesy and immensely overrated.

Makes sense. EA publishes anything these days. If they weren't worried about Dante's Inferno...

And a film so inconsistently wrong it's insulting to the actual service men and women actually doing it at that. But, insulting American soldiers with a "realistic" film is apparently A-OK.

@LaughingTarget

My sentiments exactly. A commenter noted above how happy they were with how "Hurt Locker" turned out. So realistic and so sensitive...according to who? Film critics I guess...

Regardless of whether the Hurt Locker was accurate or not (I have no idea), it focused on the emotional end of things and the relationships between the characters and was (very) exploitative of the war.

I thinks it's reasonable to assume that this game will likely focus on shooting Muslim people in the face over and over and so will be exploitative (since virtually every war video game is focused on shooting the enemy group in the face).

That's why it's OK to make a movie on the war and (in most cases) not OK to make a game based on it.

@Jason

So the game and the movie are both exploitative...so you agree with me then that there is a double standard?

Jason -

The problem is that the movie doesn't deal with emotions of actual war. The relationships portrayed were insanely unrealistic and difficult to reconcile with the setting and attempted theme. This isn't Rambo or an equally over the top action film. Hurt Locker attempted to set a theme of realism and it turned out to be anything but. Real soldiers don't run through the streets wearing hoodies like cheap, white rapper wannabes on quests to take down the entire Iraqi insurgency in a three man group. Real soldiers don't get drunk and beat up on each other. Real soldiers don't put their comrades in dangerous situations. Real soldiers don't talk about blowing up their fellows. Real soldiers aren't groups of unhinged renegades that get away with their actions without notice by the command. The entire thing was fabricated, and done so absurdly, while being portrayed as real. That's why I have a problem with it. The only thing it exploited were film critics gullibility and naivete.

I was recently reading comments from military personnel on the Hurt Locker IMDB.com message board, and was really surprised to see how critical military people are of the movie over accuracy. They reminded me of sci-fi nerds who argue over Star Wars continuity. Hurt Locker is very much a fictional movie, but it's also probably the most pro-Iraq War, pro-soldier movie that has garnered any mainstream popularity. I guess no one really cares about that though.

Certainly the US military comes off as far more morally good in Hurt Locker than in the HBO series Generation Kill. In Generation Kill, considered highly realistic and with almost no "it's not realistic" criticisms at all on its IMBD board (also filled with US military people), Iraqi civilians are often accidentally killed by American forces.

In The Hurt Locker, I don't recall this happening a single time. In Generation Kill, none of the characters (who are all closely based on real life people) connect with any Iraqi person at all, and 99% of them seem to have no interest in the war beyond a desire to kill people or a desire to simply survive, cash in their GI bill or pay check, and go home. Meanwhile, in The Hurt Locker, the main character is incredibly "heroic" on a moral level. He's shown as addicted to war, sure, but for moral reasons. He forms a connection with an Iraqi boy, and the script keeps telling the audience he's doing it to save Iraqi children.

It just seems weird to me that so many troops are pissed off at The Hurt Locker when it's probably the biggest media of any kind to portray American forces in Iraq in such a decent light. Outside of country music anyway.

Between the buzzwords and cliche phrases, I literally cannot tell what you just said.