Friday, September 05, 2008

Battlefield Heroes isn't "ripping off" Team Fortress 2

Battlefield Heroes is frequently being compared to Team Fortress 2, and for good reason--it's the only other FPS with a similar style of art, and a very unique style at that.

This has led to frequent criticism that it's just some copy, just some clone, and that for that reason it's going to be inferior. The topic of making decisions about games based on trailers or previews is a dry one, and the people who still engage in such fallacies aren't open to other methods or techniques of evaluation, so right here I'll stop myself and think in my head: fine, let's look at it.

My own excitement about the title has decreased, too, for reasons I'd like to think are more intelligent; still, let's not talk about the gameplay or the rest of it. Let's talk about the art, and why the art doesn't matter that much.

Battlefield Heroes:


Team Fortress 2:


Okay, so it's similar. And? What does that mean about the game? How is it a copy of Team Fortress 2?

Is it also copying TF 2 because you have guns? Because it's an FPS? Because it's a team game? Because it's multiplayer only? Because there are classes?

Look, instead of complaining that Valve is being imitated, maybe we should be rejoicing that there is a new standard, a new paradigm, a new sub-sub-genre: a different style of FPS, titles that are just there to be fun, with extreme violence that is even more unrealistic and is merely humorous at best, and gross at worst.

I mean, if you want, they could give you more of this grit:










These guys are totally ripping each other off. OMG.

Also, you get 100 achievement points or 3 trophies if you can tell me where each of these are from.*






*As Mitch would say: you do not get 100 achievement points or 3 trophies.

4 Comments:

Blogger Matthew Gallant said...

Was it the latest trailer that made you pessimistic? The character animations look awful in motion.

10:39 AM  
Blogger Etelmik said...

Indeed. That was the most discouraging part. It was like Halo / slow-motion quake on PC.

Not the final product though, so I'm hoping it's not what I'm thinking it is.

10:44 AM  
Blogger chesh said...

Gears, Halo, Doom3, don't know, UT3, don't know, don't know, Warhammer 40k. They're all ripping that last one off, incidentally.

12:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I did a double-take between the Doom 3 and Quake 4 screengrabs. I mean, seriously, guys.

(The missing things from chesh's comment: Quake 4, Starcraft, and, I think EDF?)

1:12 AM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home