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RTS Syrian Warfare - Destructive environment is not Dead?

Johannes

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Yup, exactly the first paragraph shows why the whole game idea is wrong basically. The obviously one sided point of view that depicts one side as heroes and the other one as evil terrorists in an ongoing conflict is , to say the least, problematic.

And don't bust my balls, I'm not taking sides, for all I know both have committed extreme attrocities. The worst part is that no one knows what exactly happens there... Well except that there are thousands dying.
Next you'll be saying WW2 games should take a "balanced" approach instead of displaying nazis as the heroes they were.
 
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Yup, exactly the first paragraph shows why the whole game idea is wrong basically. The obviously one sided point of view that depicts one side as heroes and the other one as evil terrorists in an ongoing conflict is , to say the least, problematic.

And don't bust my balls, I'm not taking sides, for all I know both have committed extreme attrocities. The worst part is that no one knows what exactly happens there... Well except that there are thousands dying.
Next you'll be saying WW2 games should take a "balanced" approach instead of displaying nazis as the heroes they were.

I tend to take "balanced" approaches with a kilo of salt. They either mean "I'm going to make propaganda all the same and if you don't drink the kool-aid you're an extremist" or "I don't have the faintest idea what's going on here, so I'm going to pretend I do and give this chump with a t-shirt shop in Coventry the same weight as the legitimate government of a country, wink, wink". And by that I mean there's only one stance but I'm giving it two appearances so that it looks "balanced".

The "I have no idea" would be that ass-faced faggot from Bellingcat, who says that a photo was doctored because there were compression artifacts in it (hint: they were analyzing a JPEG image). But I digress.

Fuck balance.

"So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I personally loathe WW2 games not only for the propaganda involved (aka Americans are the super-heroes) but because, well, the setting gets boring after the first 200 times
 

Explorerbc

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https://steamcommunity.com/app/485980/discussions/0/135510378523720730/?ctp=3#c135510393196391414 said:
Hello again, here's some clarification on the situation from developers in their group on vk.com:

(https://vk.com/wall-118573160_1687 — original in Russian)

TL;DR version: they got their game deleted because of copyright violation claim, which was probably sent by "GFI representative", who actually might be an impersonator. Devs are ready to go to court to prove that their code was rewritten, and that the game cannot be a subject to copyright violation. GFI actually knew about game development and had no complaints on that issue.

Now to the long version, my translation:

«Dear friends! As you know, an unexpected deletion of our game "Syrian Warfare" has occured on Steam Store. Game was deleted during night time, without any notification, we only received a summary letter which stated, that Steam received a claim of copyright infringement from GFi company, developers of original "Warfare" game.

This claim was made by a man whom we do not know, from an email registered on free mail service, and he is not living in Russia. Unfortunately, we were not able to contact GFi for comments. This is a strange situation for us, since GFi representatives knew about our game development, and we even contacted them with a suggestion to buy out all their game resources to spare development time, but they did not respond to that.

Now, only week after release, there is an unexpected complaint from unknown person, and the game is taken from sale instantly. We responsibly declare, that we do not use original game resources and we are ready to prove it in court and show our original resources, graphics, textures, source code, to compare them to original GFi resources.

We are still uncertain that GFi company is behind this claim, and we'd like to receive some comments from them. But knowing that they are unresponsive and their website was not updated since the beginning of year 2015 this task seems rather complicated.

Right now we prepared and sent a counter letter to Valve, where we assured them that we guarantee that our data cannot be subject to copyright claim, and we are ready to stand our rights in courts of any jurisdiction. We'll keep you posted as situation develops».
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Wargamer.com has a review for Syrian Warfare:

REVIEW: SYRIAN WARFARE
BY SEAN COUTURE 28 MAR 2017 0
REVIEW: SYRIAN WARFARE
Released 21 Feb 2017
Developer: Cats Who Play
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Available from:
Steam
Reviewed on: PC

The intrepid web surfers among you probably heard about Syrian Warfare long before my interview with the devs or its mention in our Wargamer’s Guide and boy oh boy do I know how to pick them. I honestly think the kerfuffle around Syrian Warfare might be of more interesting than the actual game itself. Between the claims of exploiting the fresh wounds of a still ongoing conflict and the recent DMCA that took it down for several weeks Syrian Warfare has managed to make itself noticed at the very least.

Placing politics aside for the moment though, this is a RTT (Real Time Tactics) game in which players fight alongside Syrian government forces against groups like ISIS, Al-Nusra, and other western backed militias. I’ve heard many people make comparisons between Syrian Warfare and 1Cs popular Men of War series, but to be honest more often than not I got flashbacks to the 2007 RTT game World in Conflict (albeit this isn’t as polished).

ss-439e2a8227cf58e2a25c44ab64ea4d97fb2fc919.1920x1080.jpg


Instead of controlling individual soldiers (like in Men of War) you control squads who move in groups and can’t be split up. Being RTT Syrian Warfare has no resource gathering or base building. You choose your forces at the start of each mission and must make do, though you do often get reinforcements. Units carry over from mission to mission and gain experience with each enemy they kill. Players earn points after every mission which they can use on purchasing more units for further missions.

Infantry and Tanks are Syrian Warfare’s bread and butter, the former being one of its weakest points and the latter arguably one of its strongest. The game doesn’t seem to have any kind of decent cover system for infantry units, so it doesn’t particularly matter if your men are crawling through waist high grass or sprinting across an open street. Infantry can occupy buildings, which grant them a cover bonus but that seems to be about it. Infantry unit AI can also be rather odd, for instance all of my RPG teams think that when I order them to shoot a tank they have to run up next to the damned thing and have a leisurely chat with the crew before doing their job.

Syrian-2.jpg


Vehicles are a different kettle of fish. Each car, truck, tank etc. is modeled with differing damage models. Guns can be disabled or engines destroyed and depending on their type these systems can be repaired by crewmen. Before long however vehicles will reach a point where they’ve taken too much damage and must be abandoned. One good thing about the system however is that the crewmen are the ones who gain experience, not the vehicles themselves: If your super-veteran T-62 gets disabled all you have to do is keep the crew alive until they find a new tank to operate and all that experience is kept. Like infantry however vehicle AI could us some work. Wheeled vehicles often decide to conduct nine point turns instead of just reverse out of areas and tanks often have trouble with heavily urban environments which is rather frustrating since half the game is made up of those.

Syrian Warfare’s story is of course the main sticking point for most due its setting and the portrayal of said setting. The story is about what I’ve come to expect from the RTS genre in terms of writing and execution. Characters mainly exist to push the story forward and are largely devoid of any depth and were they to be simply wiped from the game all together the experience would remain largely the same. The voice acting is solid even if there are some lines such as “What kind of Arab would I be if I didn’t have an RPG buried in my backyard?” – This is probably meant to humorous, but seriously guys, not cool.

Syrain3.jpg


I played Syrian Warfare on the highest graphical settings throughout my testing and it is nice to look at if a little bland when it comes to colour palette. I’ve never been to Syria so I don’t know what the local fauna looks like but in the game even when you come across areas with a lot of vegetation they still look washed out and dull. Animations can also be a little floaty at times. I had the rather surreal experience of chuckling at a group of Al-Nusra affiliated fighters as they awkwardly bounded towards a building I’d taken possession of. Vehicles look pretty good on the other hand; everything from T-70s, to Toyota pickups or the occasional Su-25 looks like it has had a lot of effort put into creating the model. Explosions are big (probably a little too big for some vehicles) and a definitely fun to watch.

Syrian Warfare feels a lot like an RTS from the late 2000s and I’m not trying to be mean when I say that. For the price and the fact that it's a low budget title Syrian Warfare accomplishes a fair amount. But it also manages to commit several sins that games of that era were known for. The camera neither zooms in close enough nor does it zoom out far enough for starters. Units will also always try to engage enemies in front of them regardless if a friendly unit is blocking their view. In one early mission I went to refuel and as I reached the spot it fired at some enemies in a house causing a massive explosion that took out it, the fuel truck and a squad of my soldiers nearby.

Syrian4.jpg


At and the end of the day Syrian Warfare falls into the same category as Postal 2, Hatred and other controversial titles. After the invisible battles lines in forums and across the web have melted away and the dust has settled people will look back and simply see an alright tactical wargame. There’s every chance it could improve as well, so it’s worth keeping an eye on. There is a fairly obvious pro-Russian/anti-west agenda it’s trying to push but then at the end of the day I played dozens of games back in the 2000s where I starred as Marine-Sergeant James Liberty traipsing around Not-Iraqistan dispensing justice and democracy to the Taliban an unnamed Muslim extremist group. What goes around, comes around.

The Strategy Gamer neither approves of the theme, nor of the game.

Syrian Warfare : When is Too Soon?
Dan Carlin opens up one of his best Hardcore History Podcasts talking about the hatemail he gets whenever he covers a modern story. When he covers Nazi Germany there’s still people who can look down at the numbered tattoos on their arms and remember. It’s tough to speak when the memories are fresh, even 70 years later. You don’t get that from some ancient war. The cultures are too far gone.

So when I saw the game Syrian Warfare I kind of cringed a little bit. If 70 years isn’t long enough, how about something that’s still going on? What does it say about the conflict that there’s been enough time to come up with the idea, Steam Greenlight it, code it, and release it. And this war still continues.

This is a game I had to check out.

Edit : This has been getting lots of traffic and comments. Here’s my TL;DR version : If we took this out of the Syrian theater and instead stuck it in, I don’t know, Korea 1952, or Berlin 1945, it’d be a forgettable game. It fills a spot beyond what an average RTS player might want and not what a more hardcore strategy gamer likes. It’s not a bad game, it’s just not terribly good. Mechanically the game is lacking from what I desire in a strategy game and the context isn’t done in a tactful manner. Even if it was I’m not sure I’d have any interest in it. It’s just not my thing. But it still makes you think, and for that I have to give it some credit.

Syrian Warfare : Choices
“What kind of Arab would i be if i didn’t have a RPG buried in my yard”…

This game can go three ways.

  1. The Ultra-simulation route : Think CMANO except on a Syrian map. Or CM:BS. They did this with the Command Live scenario Old Grudges Never Die. It’s clinical. There’s not much ambiguity on mission even if there is ambiguity about the outcome. At the end you feel rather detached. The focus is more on the powder keg of relations than anything else. Or on the simulation and technology used.
  2. The cheesy route : Think Red Alert with jingoistic Syrian, Russians and ISIS forces. This would be an ultra cartoonish version of any already horrible situation. It would be beyond tacky.
  3. The Story Route : Think the opener of Company of Heroes. The game is a vessel for a story to help you, the player, become immersed in the narrative.
The game itself is definitely an RTS. This is not a Graviteam style game or a Battlefront game. It’s not Combat Mission. It’s a step above a generic RTS as it does have ammo types, some rudimentary supply, and terrain. But that’s about where the good stuff ends.

2017-02-21-18_39_58-SyrianWarfare-1.0.0.0-300x183.jpg


If we took this out of the Syrian theater and instead stuck it in, I don’t know, Korea 1952, or Berlin 1945, it’d be a forgettable game. It fills a spot beyond what an average RTS player might want and not what a more hardcore strategy gamer likes.

We really have to look at it outside of the context of the Syrian conflict. We’ll get to that in a minute. It’s short range. Generic LOS. With a very basic vehicle system. The trucks and armored vehicles have a few destructible points but it doesn’t model hits like Graviteam or Battlefront does. In the few missions I played supply was more of a hindrance than an interesting tactical choice. All I had to do was cycle my guys into the supply truck, count to 5, and bring them out.

The acting is a bit on the cheesy side. The accents range from distinctive Syrian all the way to kitschy British theater actor.

The first mission opens up with you, the protagonist, returning from a months vacation in Lebanon. Two minutes later Al Nusra shoots your boss, the police chief, and you run back to town and fight off the incoming hostiles. Eventually you get some reinforcements and it all feels pretty basic.

Then the bus arrives to take out the survivors. Then the suicide bombers arrive.

Yah. The suicide bombers.

It was at this moment that things started to get uncomfortable for me. I have no issue playing a historical conflict. I draw the line at the 1991 Iraq War. Anything after that is treading into a place where people I know might have served. Current wars are problems to be solved, negotiated, ended. Not to have games made out of them.

If it had the feel like This War of Mine I might be able to forgive the game. But it’s not. It walks an uneasy line between #2 and #3 above. The quote above about the Arab with an RPG buried in his yard immediately caught me off guard. I stuck with the scenario, finished it out, but couldn’t find much more to keep me drawn to the game. The moment the suicide bombers came in was the moment that sealed it for me.

2017-02-21-18_26_38-SyrianWarfare-1.0.0.0-1-300x172.jpg


It’s too soon. I can’t in good conscience play a game where the events could be happening at this very moment. Regardless of your politics no one wants to see a war continue and tear a country, or entire region apart. This is a conflict that has to end one way or the other. I’m not going to stick with a game about it and wonder which faction I’ll get to play next.

I’m not going to say don’t play it. That’s your choice. But I draw the line at a certain place and I won’t be playing it anymore. If the game wasn’t set in Syria I wouldn’t be playing it. If it was a great game in Syria then I wouldn’t be playing it either.

If it was a fictional conflict in some fictional country would it make it easier to play? Oddly enough, yes. The context is now different. Look at ARMA where the conflict is set on some fictional Mediterranean island. It’s now no longer something from CNN or Fox but instead a videogame conflict.

This brings up an interesting question about how modern conflicts are handled. In Combat Mission Black Sea there are no civilians. In War in the East we don’t see the refugees fleeing the front. In Graviteam our units don’t stumble upon civilians seeking shelter from the conflict. How do you handle this in a game? Is it right to simply ignore it? One could argue that we, as strategy gamers, are more interested in the strategic and tactical problems. There’s a part of us that’s interested in war, even fascinated by it, but still revolted by the carnage and destruction.

If I have little regard for my pixel troopers in a game how much regard would I have for pixel civilians? Would making it a victory condition for one side to protect the civilians mean the other player has to kill civilians in order to win?

Does it make this game any better or worse because it includes uncomfortable things? No, I don’t think so. Mechanically the game is lacking from what I desire in a strategy game and the context isn’t done in a tactful manner. Even if it was I’m not sure I’d have any interest in it. It’s just not my thing. But it still makes you think, and for that I have to give it some credit.
 

Nutria

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Strap Yourselves In
I have no issue playing a historical conflict. I draw the line at the 1991 Iraq War. Anything after that is treading into a place where people I know might have served.

Apparently he's never met any old people and therefore they don't need any respect. Kamikazes are all fun and games, but not suicide bombers. It's an idiotic argument no matter how anyone tries to make it. It's like saying that during WWII they shouldn't have made any war movies because it was still "too soon".

I'd like to see something that was made from the ground up with the idea that it's going to be about the war in Syria. This sounds like it just took an engine from an old game and slapped a desert skin on it. Afghanistan '11 does a good job of actually making a game about that particular war, so I'm afraid I would be disappointed by anything less.
 
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I'd like to see something that was made from the ground up with the idea that it's going to be about the war in Syria. This sounds like it just took an engine from an old game and slapped a desert skin on it. Afghanistan '11 does a good job of actually making a game about that particular war, so I'm afraid I would be disappointed by anything less.

That would be because they used the engine of a not-so-old game ("Warfare" IIRC) and made modifications for this one. The older game was also set in the Middle East (Iraq, as the US), but the assets in Syrian Warfare are new.

As for those reviews, the first reviewer at least comes clean and says that even if he doesn't agree with the setting the game's not bad. The second one comes across as a bloody fairy with that "too soon" bullshit that takes the foreground in his excuse for a review (in which he only played the first mission, which isn't as hard as he makes it out to be); he probably should write reviews for The Grauniad or replace John Walker at RPS when he's on vacation. What a massive faggot.

And Afghanistan '11 feels more like a COIN boardgame to me. Not that it's a bad thing, but it's not a tactics game.
 

ArchAngel

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If I was "the people" and one side brought us murdering drones while another had "Ak47 for everyone!" I would love GLA more as well!
 

Commissar Draco

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Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Well Commissar owns SPMBT and he never had any issue with playing it but he is from Fallout and Dagerfall era when games were fun and kept away from both politics and SJW puritanism; this whole drama about suicide bombers is just smoke scream for being shocked after confronting with something so different than usual good US Gis/Israelis fighting evul Ruskies/Iranians/Hezbollah. But to be honest 7 missions in campaign only, lack of skirmishes and option to play as Kurd YPG Comrades/Hezbollah/Iranians or one of those few remaining moderate rebel factions is off putting... Heck in the game you should be able to play Nusra/Isis head chopper its just game for allah sake after all. Not to mention its not turn based hex game. I salute you Comrades but wont spend 20 shekels only to make political statement cause I do loathe RTWP games.
 

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