Incomplete Gamer

This month, Capcom’s Blog ran a Street Fighter promotion; the prize up for grabs, the dubious opportunity to get your pixilated mug shot transposed onto the body of a bystander in the up-coming Street Fighter IV video game. Lame. Where’s the glamour, the excitement, the money. Capcom made ¥74.542 billion in 2006. Surely there’s enough small change under the couch cushions to spring for a more exciting prize. Make me a fully animated fighter who talks like me. Fly me to the game launch in Tokyo. Don’t make me a inanimate background character that I’ll never notice ’cause I’m too busy mashing buttons. To be fair, Capcom is not the first video gaming giant with a stingy or unimaginative promotions department.

A while back, the Stars and Stripes (a daily newspaper published for the US military and their families) reported details of Sony’s promotion of the then new turn-based combat, PSP game, Field Commander. Sony ran a competition with copies of Field Commander on offer. If you think coming up with twenty five words or less why you love product X is a bitch, try this contest on for size. Just to be in the running to win a copy of Field Commander you needed to be serving overseas in the US military. And if the chances of being stuck in a war zone, or at best, a very unfriendly neighbourhood weren’t bad enough, instead of twenty five words, Sony wants an essay of up to five hundred words. I don’t mean to be unkind but if you could churn out a decent prize-winning five hundred word essay, you would probably not have enlisted in the first place and opted instead for a safe desk job back home in the States!

Frankly I think it would be a lot less trouble just to rent the sucker. I didn’t think anyone would actually be bothered going to the trouble of entering the competition, but a former colleague of mine, First Corporal Hector de la Garza, a US Marine currently serving in Iraq, sent me a copy of his entry, which I’ve printed below.

Dear Sony,

I know I’m meant to be writing about my video game experiences whilst serving overseas in the US military, but I thought I’d use the opportunity to raise a number of concerns I have about my military experiences, and how they are falling far short of my experiences playing SOCOM and a number of other military themed shooters. Now I know Sony isn’t directly responsible for the production of all games, so if you could pass on my comments to the relevant people I’d be much obliged.

There’s no theme music. Not sure if your developers messed up, or someone higher up in my chain of command forgot to book the military band, but not once while in the field have I heard the rising crescendo of a rousing and appropriate battle themed music. No haunting Middle Eastern dirge either. Nothing. It’s eerie. I’ve tried taking my iPod out on patrol but my CO is a real stickler about regulations. He yelled at me, and told me if he ever saw me wearing a pair of iPod ear buds while on duty he’d ‘fry my bass’…which on reflection seems a little strange cause we can’t get fresh seafood here for love or money, but it was a bit hard to hear exactly what he was saying with the iPod pumping out of the orchestral soundtrack and all.

These terrorists just don’t play fair either. Not once have they stepped out from behind cover, and as for just walking up to them, stamping my feet and making all kinds of noise, without them noticing, well that never happens, although to be honest I’ve only tried that twice. How the hell I’m meant to kill them is beyond me. Again, I’m not sure whether your boys back in the studio messed up, or whether these particular terrorists are just bad ass and very clever, but seriously, something’s not right.

Not playing fair

Either the campaign length here is way way too long or your studios have been skimping on gameplay. Hell, the other night our convoy was ambushed and we were stuck out in the desert for three days. I’m sorry but that’s just rude. There was no pausing the firefight, and you can forget sleep mode. We were awake for 72 hours straight. Again, if the fault lies with the General’s higher up the food chain I’ll put in a formal complaint to my CO and see what can be done, but if not, you make have to rethink your policy of scattering your levels with save points. I’ve tried just wandering off mid-battle for a toilet break, but trust me, the other soldiers tend to get real pissed, especially if it’s number two’s and you’re gone for more than a few minutes.

I don’t mean to be too negative but I’ve been here going on 12 months now, and the gameplay variety is just not there. It’s the same patrol day in day out, and no matter how well we do, we’re just not opening up any other levels. Again, I apologise if the US Army mucked up the mission rotation, but on the chance that your games have got it a bit wrong, could you please look into it. As for do overs, don’t even get me started. Charlie copped a bullet in the head a few weeks back and I’m beginning to think he’s never coming back.

On a positive note, my CO just gave me the results of my performance review. My rating’s about as poor as it was playing the SOCOM 3 single player campaign, so it looks like you at least nailed that one.

Yours sincerely,

Hector de la Garza