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Medal Of Honor - Rising Sun Readied For Japan

Posted by simoniker on from the you're-hitting-yourself dept.

Thanks to GameSpot for its coverage regarding EA's imminent launch of Medal Of Honor - Rising Sun for PS2 and GameCube in Japan, and the correspondent's observation that the game's "portrayal of [the] Pacific campaign, where Japan suffered losses, [is] politely overlooked, but not by all." A review in Japanese publication Softbank Games is referenced, which reads: "This game is set in the Pacific, where deadly combat between the Japanese Imperial Army and the American Army unfolds", and GameSpot's correspondent finds "no indication that the reviewer finds anything unusual about playing as a U.S. soldier trying to defeat the WWII-era Japanese army." Other Japanese gamers surveyed had other opinions, with one suggesting that "...this is a game in which you play as a foreign soldier and try to kill troops from your own country. I bet that you couldn't even sell a game like this overseas."

10 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Playing as the bad guy is nothing new ... by dougmc · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Over here in the US, we're used to being able to play as the bad guy. Lots of games let us play the bad guy, or let us become bad as we play (in the case of RPGs.)

    But on the other hand, I don't recall playing many games where you play the Nazis and you attack the US. We need more games like that!

    What can we learn from all this? If you want games made in the future about your current war to be playable as your side, make sure you win the war! There's not too many games out there that only let you play the losing side ...

    1. Re:Playing as the bad guy is nothing new ... by dougmc · · Score: 2, Interesting
      He was just stating the simple truth that it's the winners who write the history books.
      Well, yes and no. I'm sure Japan has written it's share of history books. But that's only possible because the US didn't utterly decimate Japan after they surrendered -- the sort of thing that has happened in the past.

      But there's not many games out there based on real events (or static books, movies, etc.) that only let you play the losing side. Some will let you play both sides, but even then, if you play the side that `lost' you will be able to win a few battles but obviously you're going to lose the war. Like the `Lord of the Rings' RTS that just came out -- you can play the bad side, but you can't win the war, because that would disagree with the books.

      Medal of Honor was created in the US. Japan (or anybody else, I guess) could certainly make a similar game from the Japanese point of view, but if they're going to be at all faithful to history, the game isn't going to let you win the war. And people like to be able to win, so ...

      And I'm amused that I got modded down as flamebait. That's one way of disagreeing with me ...

  2. Re:"...this is a game in which you play as a forei by gl4ss · · Score: 2, Interesting

    or online part of vietcong.. play as vc, shoot the americans.

    or a game where you battle against the british royal air force over the english canal, flying experimental nazi planes? secret weapons of luftwaffe didn't do that bad and iirc a rehash of sorts is coming out pretty soon. or a movie about a german u boat? or a book that pretty much told about how fucked the war was, and didn't glorify the army it told about, could become a classic in a country that lost the war?

    most people aren't fanatics, comptuer game players least of all(except when it comes to those games of course). i'd be more irritared if they partially perverted the history to 'not provoke' me or somebody else. they shouldn't find it disturbing because they should know that it happened already.

    besides japan is hardly the same country it was even such a short time ago as little over 50 years and neither is germany(east germany used to be something _quite_ different just 20 years ago, even though that is a different issue).

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  3. Re:"...this is a game in which you play as a forei by jackbird · · Score: 2, Interesting
    If I log on to a Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory server where there's only room on the axis team, I'll drop.

    Sure, I only get to play half the game, but my experiences with the holocaust survivors I've known make it impossible for me to to play as the Germans.

  4. Re:Not too surprising by zulux · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Japanese have long had a history of whitewashing WWII in their history education.

    We had a Japanese exchange student who never even knew that his country was responsible for the murder of 30,000,000 Chinese people. I think he probably thought "RAPE-OF-NANKING" was a Famicom game.

    Christ, only Austria is less willing to admit any sort of wrongdoing in that war.

    No kidding. In Austria, you can *still* find people who thing that "we would haf won ze var if is wasen't for ze Jew, und zat kriminal Jew-loving Rosa-velt."

    UBERMEN my ass... they can't even read enough to learn history.

    --

    Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.

  5. Re:"...this is a game in which you play as a forei by zulux · · Score: 1, Interesting

    And how were the Allied soldiers any less murdering bastards than the German ones?

    Because they diden't mass murder civilians for sadistic pleasure.

    Face it, the Allies were the *GOOD* guys. They fought for their survival.

    The Gemrans and Japanes fought for EMPIRE. They fought so that they could murder millions of people for their pleasure.

    --

    Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.

  6. We do it better... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    No, in the USA, we make games that let us shoot cops, escape jail, be terrorists...

  7. The losing side... by MMaestro · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I think this game helps show that games should let players play on the losing side more often. We've all played as the super hero space marine that takes on the forces of hell single-handedly (Doom), we've played the anti-social kid turned hero (FF8), and we've all played some faceless, mysterous, nameless, gender undefined, jack-of-all-trades, appeared out of nowhere person who ends up saying the world (text based games, Ultima, and countless others).

    What I'd like to see is a game where you're a U.S. soldier during the early stages of the WWII Battle of the Bulge and you're actually running away from tank divisions rather than cutting through hundreds of mindless, deaf guards. I wanna play as a German soldier during WWII trying to get to the western front to avoid being captured by the Russians. I think games like this would be a nice change of pace from the standard "one-man army" type of games we've been seeing for a while (yes Call of Duty featured a large number of allies to help you but you ended up doing most of the work anyway.)

  8. Re:"...this is a game in which you play as a forei by cicatrix1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So, in essense, we won because our attrocities outweighed their attrocities? We did in such a short time what they had done over a much longer period of time and so they realized that rape and pillage as they might, they just couldn't kill civilians as fast as we could? That's a real sweet ending. We are clearly MUCH better than they are.

    --

    I know more than you drink.
  9. Re:"...this is a game in which you play as a forei by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    source about Cinderalla please. I went to the brothers grimm webpage that linked to the text, translated side by side with the original german text and they didn't have anything on this.