October’s First: Video Game Voters Network Disappoints Me

This is my first post in October and it’s already the 18th.  How sad is that?  It’s been a very strange start to the Fall season, both busy with video game reviews and personal, out-of-game stuff.  By the way, the word “stuff” is drastically underrated.

So I’ve finished playing through Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway and wrote my CheatCC review.  I’ll be posting my usual, “Hey, I have a published video game review” post once it’s available.  So, for now, let me just iterate that BiA: HH is a decent World War II tactical shooter, but it lacks replayability.

I think that all of the WWII shooters have lacked the replayability of the older titles such as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and the original Call of Duty.  What leads me to think this is that if they did have replayability… I’d be playing them right now.  Medal of Honor: Airborne (and pretty much ever Medal of Honor since Spearhead) has let me down with its multiplayer.  I found Call of Duty 2 to be extremely annoying after more than 3 months.  And even the older Brothers in Arms games, while being great single-player experiences, lacked a solid multiplayer.

This leads me to my next thought–will Call of Duty: World at War really be my next big WWII shooter?  I like Call of Duty 4 a lot, despite hardly playing it anymore and always being adament that modern-day shooters were boring.  And, from what I hear, World at War is basically just CoD 4 reskinned and upgraded a bit.  The Pacific Theater of WWII has never really translated into a decent video game either.  Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault was a huge flop (I should have listened to the strange 40-year-old guy at GameStop who tried to warn me before buying that game).  In fact, the only WWII game that I enjoyed the Pacific Theater in was Battlefield 1942, and it didn’t even have a real, story-driven, single-player campaign.  I guess hijacking a Japanese aircraft carrier and ramming it into the side of a Japanese destroyer was just too much fun. 

Where was I?  Oh yeah, so World at War will be on my list of games to get, but whether it’s my next big WWII game has yet to be seen.

Left 4 Dead, Valve’s post-apolocalyptic cooperative multiplayer game is coming out Nov. 18.  Be ready for that.

And now, on to a more politically-motivated thought that came to me after reading an e-mail I received from the Video Game Voters Network.  Here’s the message (emphasis mine):

For too long, politicians have seen video games as a legislative punching bag for regulations in ways they would never regulate books, music or TV. Today we see a clear sign of change.
Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for President has become the first presidential candidate ever to advertise for his campaign inside video games. According to the Associated Press, Sen. Obama is advertising in eighteen video games encouraging gamers to register and vote.
Sen. Obama’s advertising leaves no doubts about the political significance of gamers. This outreach to the gamer community sends a clear signal to gamers that their voices are being heard and that the work of the Video Game Voters Network is having an impact.

If you tell five friends TODAY about the VGVN, just imagine how we can grow as a force this November and beyond. Let your friends and family know about the success of the Network. Send them a link to the story, or post it to your social networks like Facebook now.
Make your voice heard on November 4th by voting. As Video Games become an increasingly respected medium, like TV, books and music, we have a growing responsibility to protect our First Amendment rights by defending them. There is no better way to defend video games than by spreading the word about VGVN and casting your vote! 

So, this is what it has come to… fine, I get it.  Some politician uses some of his campaign money to place advertisements in video games and suddenly he is our savior?  Does anyone really think that Obama is going to remove video game bans and take our side just because he has a .JPEG on a billboard in Burnout?

Change is a funny thing.  I love how anyone who even sees the footprint of Obama suddenly becomes motivated to use the word “change.”  Fools.  Video games have always been a safe haven for me.  It’s been a refuge from the real life, from drugs, from alcohol abuse, from making mistakes that would normally be easy to make, and, until now, from politics.

Does anyone really believe that Obama’s focus on video games can become anything else than problem?  The more attention politicians give us and the industry, the worse it’s going to get.  There is a reason why our founding fathers wanted to place a limit on the government.  The more involved they are, the more they think is important, the worse it is for us. 

And, what I thought was once a network of gamers who wanted to keep politicians out of video games, has become nothing more than a Obama lap dog–a perpetuator of the problem.  I’m removing my Video Game Voter Network ad banner and, if you believe that political involvement in video games of any kind is a bad thing, then  you’ll follow my lead and spread the word.