The Wargamer

THE GROGNARDS’ ETERNAL QUEST FOR THE UBER-GAME!

I’ve been active as a published-and-paid critic since 1964, when I somehow bluffed my way into being appointed Assistant Editor of the Book Section of the “Charlotte Observer”, and since then, using the platforms given me by more than 35 publications, I’ve been steadily cranking out by-lined reviews (not only of books, but also of music—live and recorded—classical and pop and jazz), drama, film, dance, opera, and, of course, electronic games and simulations—some 3, 200 by-lined published pieces so far. Rarely has one writer produced such a monumental pile of ephemera!

Like every honest critic, I freely admit to having slung my share of bullshit, but only time and reader feedback can triage the glib and superficial from the elegant and informative. For better or worse, I’ve never just “phoned-in” a game review; that’s why I STILL get a fish-hook-in-the-belly anxiety attack when I sit down to write one of these damned things, even after almost half-a-century of doing it. If that sensation ever goes away, so will my credibility as a reviewer.

But I have, over time, acquired a decent measure of craft, self-discipline, and even a few nuggets of wisdom. One of the notions that’s become Gospel to me is this: You should distrust—instantly—any critic who comes on to his readers with strong protestations of “Objectivity”. Like “saintly” behavior, “objective criticism” is a chimerical ideal, rarely achieved by anyone, and almost never by a reviewer who flaunts his journalistic chops under that hoary (or would that be “whorey”?) old bumper sticker. It is for the readers to decide how trustworthy you are, and to judge from what I have heard and read over four decades, most readers greatly prefer a critic who’s honest and up-front about his biases and then proceeds to be as fair and even-handed as he can in spite of them. At least you know where his opinions are coming from and can factor that into his published critiques. A critic’s work will almost always be truer and more entertaining/instructive to read if he expresses his true personality, rather than dispense dogmatic “wisdom” while professing to serve some impossibly Olympian ideal of absolute impartiality.

All of the above rhetoric—which is probably making at least one regular Forum contributor writhe in irritation, not to mention that chap who admonished me for not limiting my vocabulary to words a well-trained rhesus monkey could understand—is by way of telling you in advance that I’ve was once so emotionally and intellectually stoked by what I’d seen of Pacific Storm—during the two-plus years I lusted to play it—that being “fair” in this review of the game’s sequel, is going to involve a careful balancing of many subjective factors. If you want something short, direct, and couched in words guaranteed not to challenge anyone with a two-digit IQ, I suggest you skip the following and search out the dozens and dozens of adolescent fan-boy “reviews” popping up on the Internet like pimples on an acne-plagued geek the week before the Senior Prom. In fact, until I did a methodical search of those “reviews”, last week, I had not realized just how shockingly low the standards of Internet journalism had fallen in just a few years... My God, these things appear to have been written (and PUBLISHED!) by clueless young enthusiasts who seem to have learned about the glorious English language through text-messaging! Are there no “editors” for this tsunami of barely-literate slop? Or do the people who wear that title simply have no clue as to what a good “editor” is supposed to DO? Despite my bitterness about the way they forced me off the masthead, and despite my continuing wish to see Chris Anderson roasting slowly and eternally in the vilest pits of Hell, the ONLY literate, witty, truly informative review of this game I’ve been able to find on the ENTIRE DAMNED INTERNET was the one posted by “PC Gamer”—even during the slimiest days of its decline, that magazine has always taken pride in the quality of its writing, and I was pleased to see that, at least, still obtains. But how much longer can good standards remain viable, or even worth the trouble of sustaining, when the vast majority of consumers no longer KNOW or CARE what “good writing” is?

But I still do, obviously (it’s the only major skill I’ve ever had, after all); and Jim Zabek does; and I think the majority of our regular readers still do (especially the ones whose posts are genuinely funny, insightful, or wickedly clever in their put-downs; worthy colleagues, all!)

So here’s where I’m coming from, dear readers: ever since the editorial bullpen at PC Games Strategy Guide (the bi-monthly ancestor of today’s PC Gamer) began regular coverage of wargames, those of us who had drifted into the “Game Journalism” (it’s still too immature a genre to have those quotation marks removed, but I continue to hope…) always came into it from some other field of ephemeral scribbling. In those antediluvian days, early 1987, everybody in the PC games’ trade came from “somewhere else”, because electronic entertainment was too new and anarchistic to have any traditions or career-paths. Our collective sense of wonder was still so unsullied that we never questioned the grubbiness of our salaries; it was enough to know we were getting paid a living wage (at least by the standards of, say, Zimbabwe) to have so much FUN!

And all of us—Matt Firme, Steve Poole, Tom McDonald, Selby Bateman, and some other semi-legendary names—used to fantasize about the wonders of future technology, especially about some as-yet-ill-defined super wargame in which the player could do everything: micro-manage his economy, sack incompetent officers and groom potential Napoleons, as they rose in the ranks, conduct diplomacy, initiate ruthless spying/assassination missions/set priorities for research and development (projects that could be as realistic in their technologies, or as science-fictionally extravagant, as our imaginations could conceive), amass powerful fleets and air armadas, field puissant panzer formations and doggedly tough infantry units, and of course be able to turn over the Boring Stuff (logistics, infrastructure building, and spread-sheet economics) to a superbly flexible, reliable, and almost-human artificial intelligence, one that would never do anything blatantly stupid, that could path-find like Prince Henry the Navigator, and, like a faithful electronic dog, behave consistently as though it were an extension of our own subconsciouses. Oh, yes, and this utopian super-game would offer one more level of Gaming Goodness: when you got in the mood for some serious bang-bang, you would be able to jump, instantaneously, into a tank, dive bomber, or battleship turret and actually take a bash at the enemy. If your superb gunnery skills affected the outcome, the larger strategic program (smoothly running by itself in your absence) would factor your kills into the Big Picture and keep things from falling into chaos on the operational level, until you were ready to resume playing from that perspective.