Text/Xunyang
During steam's winter sale, there was a new game that made the most of all kinds of game that broke the bone, called "Ready or Not", Chinese translated as "Waiting for The Waiting".
Announced on December 18 last year, the Early Access edition topped Steam's weekly sales charts for three consecutive weeks, coinciding with Steam's biggest sale of the year, with more than 94% of the more than 25,000 reviews to date.
It is a SWAT theme tactical shooting game, players can be single players or team up to challenge the game level, play swat police in various places to rescue hostages, suppress criminal suspects, its simulation of SWAT action can be called hardcore, but its hardcore does not dissuade players, but like a rising star in the field of shooting games.
What's so special about it?
A tactical shooter in the true sense of the word
Some players believe that the gameplay of "Waiting for The Front" is close to the early "Rainbow Six", and players need to plan in advance, cooperate closely, and act cautiously, rather than brainlessly protruding, pursuing the pleasure of shooting and the smoothness and excitement of rhythm. But in essence, the entire game structure and game concept of "Waiting for The Front" are closer to a game released in 2005 - SWAT 4 (domestic translation of "Thunderbolt Group 4").
SWAT, or Special Weapons and Tactics, means Special Weapons and Tactical Forces, SWAT 4 is a SWAT video game developed by International Games, which teamed up with Speculum Studios to develop Cyber Raiders 2.
SwAT 4, although part of the SWAP series or the broader Piece Quest series, has a very different gameplay from its predecessors, positioning itself as a first-person tactical shooter, the pinnacle of the entire series, and at the same time a masterpiece.
In simple terms, SWAT 4 can become the memory of a generation of players inseparable from three points, one, a large number of interactive environmental elements and a rich command system, easy for players to convey information; second, randomly generated enemies and strict rules of engagement, it makes every corner of the level full of uncertainty, the game atmosphere is also dark and depressing; third, although it is a shooting game, its core appeal is not to shoot.
"Waiting for the Front" basically follows these settings of "SWAT 4", some levels even directly borrow the map in "SWAT 4", if you want to make a general review of "Waiting for the SwAT", it is a "SWAT 4" packaged with a modern visual style, but it has done a lot of detail optimization in terms of gameplay and experience.
But SWAT 4 is a game from more than a decade ago, and since then there has not been a similar game of quality and sales in the shooter field, and players lack a slow-paced shooter that emphasizes cooperation, tactical arrangement and tactical execution.
Developers are keen to open up the shooting game to alien and other worlds, players pilot huge mechs and high-tech guns, churning in bunker houses or thousands of square meters of battlefield, with sparks to celebrate the world with holes.
And "Waiting for The Tough Line", which takes the hardcore realistic route, is definitely a different kind of shooting game.
The first is its winning and losing rules, or rather, scoring rules.
Players can choose the difficulty before entering the level, the difficulty rating is not completely based on the number and strength of the enemy to determine, the higher the difficulty, the more complex the situation that the player needs to deal with, such as a criminal suspect with a stronger desire to attack, more traps in the level, and the suspect and the hostage are in the same room.
When the player successfully completes the mission, there will also be a series of indicators at the checkout, such as shooting without warning, civilians or suspects not collecting guns when they are carrying guns, etc. These evaluation criteria strictly follow the real SWAT code. According to the authorities, the design of these rules of engagement and scoring systems is based on "asking the police of various countries for benefits".
The more difficult levels a player needs to pay attention to in order to get a high score or complete a higher difficult level, the more tedious things they do, and the more demanding the requirements for whether they should shoot.
Second, everything is too big or small, the process is cumbersome, and the pace is slow.
How to play "Wait for The Wait"? Take the opening of the door, the player can not be like other shooting games a key to open and close the door, free to enter and exit, before entering the door must first use the tool to check whether there is a trip, whether there is anyone in the house, with the unlocking tool to open the door is best not to push open, leave a slit to observe the situation, if you can, it is best to put the shield in front, if there is a criminal suspect in the house, then there is more preparation that needs to be done, otherwise, the AI of the sharpshooter is enough to annihilate the entire SWAT squad.
There are also seemingly simple but detailed gameplay such as bomb defusing and rescuing civilians.
Third, randomness and AI tuning.
"Waiting for The Front" does not allow players to complete the task through the back plate, the trap, civilian, and suspect positions in the game are randomly generated, and the fast-paced gameplay such as fast-track crossing maps and fast-track passes is not applicable here, at the same time, based on the harshness of the game process (such as the need to issue a warning before shooting to "raise your hand") and the health value setting of two or three shots, the player must be cautious in each step.
In order to further exercise the player's SWAT literacy, the developer VOID Interactive's AI design of the criminal suspect can be described as "madness", they not only have accurate marksmanship, but also cunning and sinister, or disguised as civilians coldly shoot you, or can struggle after being chained, seeking any available tool in the house to create a threat, or have a tailwind ear waiting for the player to fall into the trap, they may emerge from any corner of the scene. Any seemingly innocent person can be in danger, which forces players to strictly follow the SWAT clearance procedures, emphasizing the cooperation and position of teammates.
Source: Anonymous answer to the question "How to evaluate the tactical FPS game "Wait and Go""
In order to support this highly realistic gameplay, "Waiting for The Wait" must also be meticulous in the production of game content.
One is the official claim to realism. "In addition to designing ballistic penetration, rebound, Kevlar fiber and plate dynamic systems, 'Waiting for a Tight Wait' also simulates the actual expansion and thrust of ammunition." Simply put, the simulation of the bullet in different impact surfaces is realistic enough, in addition, the bullet hits different body parts can cause different effects, the legs affect the speed of movement, and the hands affect the accuracy of shooting.
Ballistic intrusion simulation
Source: Numerical Simulation Analysis of Ballistic Penetration of Bulletproof Target Plates
The portrayal of the environment and the equipment of firearms and tools are also directly copied from reality, and there are even many details that people in the industry will laugh at when they see it.
The "nine-hole plate" can simulate various obstacles and achieve multi-angle shooting training
See watermark for source
Other details such as the long gun jam wall, gun design, and bullet change animation are not listed.
Second, highly integrated and rich interactive instructions.
One of the most dissuading reasons for the shooter is its dense operation of the buttons, in addition to the basic movement, running, jumping, squat, the player also needs to load ammunition, switch perspectives, switch guns, interact with the environment, etc., a set of down a whole keyboard is almost filled, and to "Wait for the Strict Array", the player needs to use only a lot more keys.
Night vision goggles, gun safety bolts, sideways tactical actions, if it is a single-player mode, you also need to use several commands AI teammates buttons, in the face of this situation, VOID Interactive through the long press of the button, short press, mouse button sliding, the integration of environmental interaction to reduce the threshold of operation.
The abundance of buttons also means that the player can choose enough operations to deal with a variety of situations, such as disobeying the order of the enemy can use the handle of the gun to hit to show threat, such as a door can be different according to the different interactive positions to achieve different ways to open the door.
Third, enhance the gameplay while refining the essence of SWAT 4.
As mentioned above, Waiting for The Edge creates a differentiated playthrough experience through the difficulty of the game, the game adds some more modern equipment and traps, and the AI enhancement further enhances the fun of the game, it successfully follows the dark, depressing tone of SWAT 4, and its game philosophy of trying to let the player play as a real SWAT officer - it adds more non-lethal equipment, bean bullet shotguns, Taser guns... There is also the most reloaded pepper gun, and the game almost did not throw the phrase "use this gun" in the face of the player.
Game setting details, source devtrackers.gg
All in all, "Waiting for The Wait" is a hardcore immersive tactical shooter with a rather different gameplay, and its core job is not to let the player play the role of a sharpshooter and save the hero of the world, but a SWAT who needs to strictly follow the rules and procedures, and it can add more tactical units or equipment, scenes, and modes to support the volume of the game.
Video games: Realistic nightmares
After talking about the highlights of "Waiting for The Wait", it is necessary to talk about its problem again, that is, will hardcore immersive games be a direction for the development of the game?
At the time of the announcement of Unreal Engine 5, we can see how the leap in hardware and technology has pushed the game further to the film and television level of the development, it promises developers to achieve higher precision visual effects with higher efficiency, full dynamic global illumination allows developers to get rid of the past level design restrictions, they no longer have to because the player randomly destroys the scene, randomly walk around and expose the false attributes of the game world.
The one-shot "God of War" (2018), the "Red Dead Redemption 2" that makes various interactive behaviors cumbersome, and the "Last Cyborg Part II" that cuts the visual details and game details to the extreme, these AAA masterpieces also symbolize the film and television tendency of European and American games, which either follow the realism of graphic technology or the realism of pursuing game behavior.
When the technology is good enough, they will cross the realistic "uncanny valley" and bring unprecedented visual enjoyment and gameplay innovation to the gaming world and even players.
But game realism has not been less criticized from the beginning.
The most common question is, will a realistic game design make the game more interesting?
For the players of "Waiting for the Wind", their answer is likely to be negative, a game that restricts the player's shooting, AI enemies like playing CS, our players have played the game of the family, the slow pace, the step is cumbersome, there is no save point, playing a game that is killed by a shot for half an hour, a game that can't beat the lowest difficulty novice level in one night... It screens players for itself from the start.
Combined with the two consecutive "how to look at the third/first sales of "Waiting for", the current popularity of "Waiting for" is not enough to explain a new shooter trend, the reason why it can catch fire is because this category has a large number of loyal followers, and "Waiting for" to take over the baton of this category just satisfies some players who pursue a heterogeneous shooting game experience.
As GameRes previously wrote in "Hardcore Simulators Also Have Spring", these hardcore immersive games raise the entry threshold for development and play through its professionalism, but also provide different play breadth and depth through its professionalism.
In game realism, what should be criticized may not be the game design that aligns with reality, but the game design that does not align with reality according to the game positioning, in "Dark Souls" and "Waiting for the Strict Formation", players will not complain that the weapon is too long and easy to get stuck, and in the pursuit of fast-paced shooting games, it is inevitable that the replacement of ammunition will be done at a glance.
It is a dialectical question of realism and consistency. As far as the nature of the game is concerned, it is also difficult to achieve a real sense of reality reproduction, take the gun sound in the shooting game, even if it is the so-called pursuit of realism of "Escape from Tarkov", it is not directly using the real gun sound to do the game sound effect, in addition to the basic noise reduction, to go to the high-frequency audio track, it also needs a little processing to extract the texture of the gun sound.
Stupid realism, like Polller's mockery of realism, "means a trivial depiction of the secondary—we need to develop a powerful, vivid, sharp, accurate style in the context of the ordinary, encompassing the warmest, most excited emotions in the most prosaic encounters." (The Art of the Romantics)
Compared with the realism of reproducing the real vision and realistic behavior of reality, another expression of realism reflected in "Waiting for The Front" is more worrying.
Developer VOID Interactive reportedly parted ways with publisher Team 17 in the early stages of the game's release, and the media speculated that it was because the two had a disagreement over the game content of the "campus level", VOID Interactive insisted on including it in the future game content, they believe that the school shooting incident is a real fact, a fact that brings painful memories to the world, and it is included in the game so that people can remember it.
Like their in-game propaganda, "bring order in chaos".
The author of foreign media NME wrote, "Although "Waiting for The Battle" is just a game, when you turn the muzzle of the gun on innocent hostages, how can you not think of the social problems hanging over the game? ...... Over the past few years, the United States has exposed many flaws in the modern police system, and abuses of power are almost everywhere. The only question for "Waiting" is, is that a cool thing to do if you play a SWAT officer? Even if the game does a decent job, I have to doubt that its warhead will get stuck because of 'reality'. ”
The more "Waiting for" moves closer to reality in terms of game behavior and game details, the sharper the real-world problems it raises, and kotaku's editor even criticizes "Waiting for" for being disturbing because of its superficial realism, and he directly characterizes it as "a rigorous system of violence to counter the violence of reality.".
I think that realism in the field of literature may be able to help "Waiting for the Front" to answer this question, although realist literature can be traced back to the imitation theory of ancient Greece, but its connotation is constantly changing, and the subsequent derivation of different views that attach importance to "realistic connotation" and "reproduction", if you want to study carefully, all realism literature is also based on the author's subjective experience.
In his book "Playful Realism", Higashi Hiroki directly quotes the sociologist Inaba Seiichiro, the essence of realism is that it has a higher communication efficiency, so that characters who are more easily perceived by the audience/player can enter and exit different story themes, and convey the story theme to the audience in a more effective way.
Is it possible to achieve the "Realism" of the game by drawing everything from reality? Maybe VOID Interactive needs to rethink this question, just like a foreign policeman's view of police games - "For a long time, (police theme) games have been keen to pursue the complexity of interrogation, the thrill of chasing, the wonder of breaking through doors, what we really lack is a game that can dig deep into the psychology of the police, how they treat criminal suspects, what changes have occurred after years of work, and what kind of psychological burden they have caused by the criminal environment they have been in for a long time." ......”
RealismFirst
Write at the end
There is no doubt that "Waiting for The Front" currently has good quality and market results, and it has become a pillar of the shooter segment, but there are also some profound humanistic problems behind this heat.
From the perspective of a game practitioner, what this popular game can tap into and can learn from may not be its theme, but its gameplay, but it does not refer to the realism, but its cooperative gameplay based on rigorous tactics, which more or less reminds me of the game that was ignited by a video the year before - "Hell Let Loose", in which the UP lord commanded players from different countries and regions to win with fluent three Chinese words. Countless players have joined the game army for this purpose, but the result is that the game's hardcore degree and its own level are insufficient to bring haze to the game environment.
Is the core gameplay and highlight of these games shooting? Not really, but it does give shooters a fresh perspective from other angles, just as the trading market for Escape from Tarkov is to shooters.
Resources:
· ‘Ready Or Not’ is a well-made tacticalFPS that I feel uncomfortable playing
htps://www.nme.com/features/gaming-features/ready-or-not-is-a-well-made-tactical-fps-that-i-feel-uncomfortable-playing-3130625
· Controversial Steam Best Seller Ready OrNot Is An Unsettling SWAT Fantasy
https://kotaku.com/controversial-steam-best-seller-ready-or-not-is-an-unse-1848317351