Realism in games blows.

Everyone's made a lot of big hoo-ha about all these Vietnam games coming out in the last 3 years. Battlefield: Vietnam, Conflict: Vietnam, etc etc. Frankly, I'm getting tired of these games. Why? I'll explain.

When I pick up a game, the first thing I ask myself is if I'm going to enjoy it or not. Its simple: The game could be simple and stupid, but if I enjoy it, I'll like it, no matter if it has Half Life 2 graphics or Atari 2600 graphics. When it boils down to it, a game doesnt have to be spot on perfect. It doesnt have to be realistic. Hell, it doesnt even have to be close to what we'd call "a decent game". It just needs to be fun.

Now, lets take a factor of fun in this. Last time I checked, "Kirk's Life: The Game" was about as fun as "Professional Janitor: The Game", so I'm not going to be expecting my kind of realism in this game. In this vein, I really don't want to play a game that's so real, that I basically could go out and do the same thing in real life.

Lets take two games for example on opposite ends of the spectrum: Conflict: Vietnam, and Katamari Damacy. One makes you feel like you're god of all that is tied down to the earth, and also king of what I consider one of the best video game themes ever. The other game makes you feel like s***, trying to make you feel like you're in the horrors of Vietnam. Leave it to some twisted Psychology major who thinks he knows all about Vietnam (He watched it on the news!) to come up with a game about Vietnam that essentially exploits the stereotypically horrible war.

Lets count out the fun factor here. Conflict: Vietnam? You run around and shoot Vietnamese. Katamari Damacy? You run around with a ball that sucks up anything off the ground. I'm sorry, but in my line of opinon, Katamari Damacy gets the win on this one. Its not real. I'm probaby never, no matter how hard I try, going to turn into a strange green character of sorts. If I wanted to play Conflict: Vietnam in real life, I could just go join the Army and get shipped to Iraq (Note: That would probably be more like Desert Combat, 'cept without the tards). But I don't intend to go join the Army. So why do I want to go into Vietnam with some whiny assholes and shoot some pixellated people?

Lets put it this way. I'm tired of realism in games. Give me a game where I launch Frogs from a catapult in golf as opposed to a game where I go work, eat, sleep, and dream, except more productively than I do in real life. I'll enjoy the former more.

Now, one exception grants itself to the whole deal, and that is shooter games like Doom 3, Half Life 2, Resident Evil 4.. you know, anything with a number or "Source" beside it that came out recently. Games like Counter-Strike Source are always cited about being real. However, you have to remember there is a line drawn in the world of Counter-Strike- a good example would be the Glassfloor maps. Doom 3 is scary for the sake of being scary, so I would expect them to make things as real and scary as possible. However, I'm tired of seeing games like Conflict: Vietnam and America's Army.

GIVE ME FUN OR GIVE ME DEATH.