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March 22, 2002 Link to this post
NYT says Halo not a good military sim (duh)
Lophan passed along an interesting URL from the New York Times website (free registration required) - 'Grinding Terror or Grand Adventure - Choose Your War'. It compares Operation: Flashpoint to Halo, using these two games as representatives of opposing genres of war simulators:
But if Flashpoint gives players the kind of ground-level view of war offered in films like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Steel Helmet," Halo is more reminiscent of movies made during World War II, which depicted war as a noble adventure fought by fearless, tough-as-nails soldiers.
The author concludes that Halo probably won't do a good job preparing soldiers to fight:
In spite of the tedious stretches, Halo is an exciting game and makes war look like so much fun that you might want to run out and enlist. But war is not like that. When Marine recruits whose only experience of war is playing games like Halo sit down to play the military version of Operation Flashpoint, they may be in for a surprise.
I suppose, if the goal of Halo was to make players ready to fight in the real world, I'd understand the point of this article... (Louis Wu 15:17:14 UTC)
