Want more content folks ... follow these links. Check out the current discounts on my offline vids and articles www.collativelearning.com/ Get a copy of my video game To The Death store.steampowered.com/app/2758570/To_The_Death/ ... and follow the game on the Ager Games RUclips channel www.youtube.com/@robagergames ... and at the To The Death FB page facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555615927786 Follow me on Twitter / X twitter.com/RobAger Signing up as a monthly supporter on Patreon gets you arround 12 hrs more content www.patreon.com/RobAger PLEASE ALSO POST YOUR RESPONSES TO THE VIDEO CONTENT ABOVE SEPARATELTY FROM THIS PINNED COMMENT, THANKS.
One game I do recommend that deals with some very heavy stuff is ‘Fear And Hunger’ it’s a very brutal but also very satisfying game because learn more for future runs about what to do and what to avoid.
It also suffers a bit from bad English, but the atmosphere is intense. I got the sequel recently but haven't started it yet, apparently it's less demanding in terms of gameplay, which kind of appeals because as much as I loved Fear and Hunger, you really have to obsess over it and study the wiki to make progress (and even then I still got filtered by Sylvain at the end).
isn't rejecting all political ideologies a sort of political ideology in itself? I believe that having an ideology is somewhat unavoidable, even if one is not conscious about it
I don't think so. Political ideologies are typically drafted out as a set of verbal assumptions that are passed on to others who read and adopt it instead of forming their own opinion based on the evidence of each unique situation. The approach I'm talking about is to massively prioritize sensory evidence over assumption. Sensory evidence isn't ideology. It comes from outside.
@@collativelearning I still don't think this is enough to avoid ideology though. You will still make decisions guided by abstract values such as equality, freedom, order, etc. Maybe you reject the big, traditional ideologies (liberalism, socialism, etc), but I don'tt think you can say you have no ideology whatsoever
@@Carlos12353I get your point certainly. A man can never completely dissociate from ideological assumption ... ... but the effort to do so and, in turn, be as objective about the actual evidence as possible is a fundamentally different attitude. Chosen ideology is a position in which assumptive ideals are willingly prioritized at the expense of refusing to acknowledge counter-evidence. This is why it's so hard to shake most ideologists out of a flawed world view. You can throw all the counter-evidence at them and they will deny it, usually by changing the subject, and often by trying to turn the debate into an emotional one, or an outright character assassination attack on those presenting the counter-evidence. Note how quite a few communist-identifying folks in this comment section (that's not referring to you btw) attempt to position me as a capitalist or right winger as a means to artificially prop up their chosen ideology. They do this despite my denunciation of all ideologies. They do it to avoid acknowledging the well-documented history of communist crimes against humanity, their version of holocaust denial actually. They also do it by pointing to minor instances of communist regimes doing decent things from time to time, as if that somehow excuses the atrocities committed under the same ideological doctrine. Nazi-apologists do the same. Quite simply, ideologies block out counter-evidence in the form of denial. I seek to block out ideology instead. It certainly opens me up to a broader range of evidence and views. I'm able to consider a given situation from multiple ideological positions, as well as acknowledge evidence that doesn't fall into any of those positions, because I'm not chained to one doctrine. You could refer to it as perhaps a meta-ideology, but it's still a fundamentally different attitude. However, it requires a great acceptance of uncertainty about reality. People like to feel certain, which is why they turn to institutional religions and ideological movements.
The Frankfurt School would claim that ideology reaches your unconscious ideas too. Meaning you can't really completely escape ideology even to your dreams.
If you liked this game I think you would really enjoy a little game that came out in 2021 called 'The Forgotten City'. It brings up a lot of questions about morality systems and how so many people try and fail to create these 'catch-all' ideologies to address every situation. It has a similar level of jank (it was worked on by three people over a period of about seven years) but the story is very well-written. It's also got an incredible level of detail in the map which makes it a real joy to explore.
@@kelvincasing5265 yeah they were all pretty good. What I really liked about the game was the attention to detail. Every time I thought "that doesn't make sense" or "that's clearly a plothole" it was addressed in some way.
Is it easy for you to play games and watch movies and just enjoy them or do you always find yourself analyzing every little detail? I really love your work.
Oh I have a lot of casual, non-analytical enjoyment of games and movies. I just don't talk about those experience because they're not interesting enough to put on the channel.
@@collativelearning rob you think it would be best for you to talk to the creator and work with them to make a part 2 ? or at least a expansion for direction and story???? i think you will be perfect for that job!
@@vortexart5587, this reminds me of a scene in a movie called Back to School where Rodney Dangerfield hires Kurt Vonnegut to write his essay on Kurt Vonnegut and gets an “F.” I actually think Rob mentions something similar in analyzing Kubrick’s films. Often creators draw upon the collective unconscious (as Carl Jung calls it) and don’t have any formulated construct of deeper meaning in their work. Just so we’re clear, I’m just repeating what Rob Ager has said in other videos, I’m not that smart, nor do I wish to present his work as my own. 😂
It would be fun to see you do some Let's Plays one of these days. Watching you play Alien Isolation would have been a treat. Might also consider Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
@@collativelearning Yeah, I got the prologue for the game as well from the same digital store even before that. I'll check it out for sure , now that your analysis of the game has piqued my interest in it. 💯
Die Young is a good game as it is. Played it through about 3 years ago, a lot to like about this game, but definitely needs improvement here and there (I remember the final boss took me forever to kill, he had loads of health). I especially wished the second portion of the game with the enemy compound and the underground mines had more intense parkour elements, it literally felt like a downclimb from the massive mountain climb midway through. That could also be down to budget issues. I definitely would love to see an updated expansion or a sequel, there is enough scope to add and refine the gameplay. A good feature to add would be chasing parkour enemies who run, jump and climb with you at the mountain areas, or maybe sniping enemies as you traverse the climbing obstacles. Also think the "Perception" ability should be a craftable medicinal item instead, and there should be craftable weapons for taking down the bigger enemies more easily (and the bigger enemies should be seen more often towards the end of the game). Btw, just remembered the drug addict / schizophrenic enemies keep walking around shouting "Chicken nuggets! CHICKEN NUGGETS!!!"
Yeah the second half of the game didn't have the engagement of the mountain climbing part and I agree it was likely budget. I did like the enemy bases part of the second half but the mines were a real drop in game quality.
I felt the game addressed issues such as human trafficking, abuse of power, and the exploitation of vulnerable individuals as much as communism. The island's sinister organization represents a critique of those who prey on the weak and defenceless, and the lack of children hints at the grim reality of child trafficking and exploitation that occurs in the world, particularly on a famous Island owned by Epstein. The location near Turkey draws attention to the real-world issues of human trafficking, which has been a concern in parts of Turkey and surrounding areas. The fact it’s made by Italian developers suggests it contains subtext inspired by Italy's post-World War II history, serving as a commentary on the consequences of political violence, manipulation, and the struggle for freedom and justice that occurred in the years of lead.
I think some clarification could help as the references to socialism, communism and capitalism seem to be colloquial usages rather than academic...that is to say pretty wrong. First, communism and socialism are interchangeable in academia as they, along with capitalism, are simply economic formations/systems. To put it another way, you can have authoritarian capitalism, democratic capitalism, etc just as you can have authoritarian and democratic communism. The way these concepts were brought up in the video are very much the propaganda version of themselves, a lingering byproduct of McCarthyism. The fact is communism nor capitalism have any ideology because they are simply organizing principles of distributing goods and services. Each one inherently aligns with certain ideological concepts that people may embrace or reject and thus may appear as if they're ideologies, but they are not. In all, capitalism is adjacent to anarchy as it is about atomization of resource management down to individuals...one person can own all of the resources and capitalism can still be considered in effect. Communism and socialism is a collective based approach to resource management in that ownership of many resources are public. An example using land as to the two economic systems is such: A person's yard would be capitalism. They own the land personally and can allow anyone to come and enjoy the yard they want or they can tell everyone to keep off the grass. It is also their responsibility to maintain the yard. Now communism is a public park. Anyone can access the park because everyone pays into it and therefor everyone owns it. A special public funded crew maintains it and all of the maintenance e decisions happen via committee or vote. So there you go. No government fully uses socialism or capitalism. Every country is a mixed market economy. Both economic systems have advantages and disadvantages based on your own personal values and what you believe to be more important when it comes to distribution of resources.
You are right about every country having mixtures of capitalism and socialism, and capitalism itself is arguably not really an ideology (if civilisation collapses, people will still try trading and bartering with each other). It can be said that everyone is a capitalist in some shape or form, with varying degrees of charitable behaviour towards others. However, an "ideology" is defined as "a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy." In other words, an ideology can involve "organizing principles of distributing goods and services". And as Rob said, the Communist / socialist promise of everyone owning the publicly funded services is false and are too easily exploited by those who are in charge of maintaining them, especially by capitalists in communist / socialist clothing. I mean, according to Marx's theories, his version of a truly Communist society involve centralisation of banks in the governments' hands and people having no inheritance rights. So does those make the Communist governments capitalists? Like you said, no county is completely capitalist or socialist, and it's just as well because this allows us a lot more choice of what we can do for ourselves and for the world. The world is never completely static, and would only be if we blind ourselves to supporting very one sided ideologies.
@moviearchaeologist9655 It's pretty easy to fall into a trap ascribing intent to these systems especially since dirty propaganda tactics are used by folks who wish to go further with each economic system. Marx's version of communism was not really meant to be literal or even the ideal form of it. It was the continuing discussion after the first part of his writings which was all about critiquing capitalism and in general, that's all Marxism really is, another critical theory by which to view the world. It's really frustrating how proponents of profits and capitalism seem to believe communism is a boogie man when they in fact benefit from a wide variety of communist principles....roads, schools, even private insurance has elements of communism since the stated goal of insurance is to ease hardships by distributing wealth from folks acordingly...though America has obviously figured out that without regulation and constraints, it is quite useful for fleecing patrons in their most distressed times. Anyway, there will never be "true" versions of either system. But hopefully society can continue to try out new cocktails to improve life for everyone in some way.
@@heavysystemsinc. Well, roads and public schools already existed before the Soviet Union took form, and without any Communist / socialist standpoint. Regulations and constraints can be useful, especially for important health and safety logistics, but regulations and legal constraints can be pushed with capitalist agendas, we have corporate lobbying by corporations asking and bribing politicians to propose laws that usually have intent of restricting and damaging small business competition. And there have been calls in recent years for pushing regulation on what can or can't be said on social media, which runs the risk of suppressing freedom of speech. I'd say the actual problem is monopolisation, which can manifest under capitalism or Communist ruling.
I dont think that the reason this game wasn't talked a lot about by the mainstream gaming media outlets was due to its "anti-communist" message, I think it was due to the fact that the game was a low budget indie project made by a little known Italian studio and was highly unpolished and mediocore. If it were the case that mainstream outlets were not talking about it because it was anti-socialist then why did a game like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War get good reviews by the likes of IGN when that game has an overtly anti-communist message?
I don't think that's the case and here's why. I haven't played any of the CoD games since the second one near two decades ago. I find them too linear. However, CoD Black Ops Cold War has been attacked in the media as being "Far right" because of its apparent anti--Commie stance (not that being anti-Commie makes one "Far right", but that's the typical idiot logic given by reviewers who consider themselves "socialist"). It's been viciously attacked on that level, but being that the CoD series is so popular the gaming media couldn't ignore it. It would be too obvious given the anticipation from the large fanbase of the franchise. Die Young isn't part of a known franchise so it's easier to ignore. And, despite your view that it's an unpolished, mediocre game, it has a decent rating on Steam of 80%. IGN etc review lots of other new and non-franchise games by indie developers that are much lower quality and they often give those games very low ratings. I'm not saying this proves its anti-Commie stance is the reason it has been ignored, but I strongly suspect it's a factor. I don't know if you've noticed, but in PR content that isn't considered to contain the "right message" first gets ignored, but when ignoring fails to contain the "influence" and "spread" of the content / message ... that's when the knives come out. That's the standard management approach to undesirable info.
This game has been on my wishlist for years. I was always put off by the jank inevitably mentionned by all reviewers and none of them seemed "excited" by the story. Your review just made me want to finally take the plunge, especially for 2,93€ on steam right now
We need more games that's speak to the horrors of socialism/communism to balance the critique. So many young people today lean communist and its terrifying because they have no fucking clue just how bad it really is in human hands.
Unfortunately, this game sounds like a victim of the hyper-saturation of the video game market. Too many games, just not enough people to play them all. Doesn't help that it's hard to even hear about a lot of them. The rich get richer, and the poor are stuck in obscurity.
It's simply because videogame journalism is corrupt. The media will only give coverage to games that either have a big publisher behind them, or to indie games that promote the "correct" (leftist) ideologies. And they'll do everything to bury games like Die Young.
The game is a victim of not being a great game. It's not like we're saturated with too many games like Baldur's Gate 3 or The Witcher 3. It's saturated with games that suck. But a single creative person can create a game like "Fear and Hunger" which was in obscurity for a couple years because he had no money for marketing Then twitch streamers discovered it and the guy who made 95% of the game by himself is a wealthy man. The game cost almost nothing to make too. So he turned a profit even before it became super popular. He also made a sequel, and that's been selling on Steam like crazy. One of the best games of the year. It's definitely in the top 10.
As a viewer and a former citizen of a 'Communist' country, I appreciate your thinking on the 'Communism' you referred to. But I think you're missing the point. Here's what I mean: socialism and communism don't in and of itself mean cultism or state control, not so much as capitalist dirigisme or fascism or other systems that require a strong state command. At their cores, they just mean: the ownership of the means of production by those very people who use them (i.e. the workers), not the state nor the capitalists. A lot of socialists like to think of it as the extension of the principles of democracy to the workplace: if it's the citizens of a country that ought to govern it, then those who work at the workplace ought to manage it. Yes, the left-wing has a tendency of hating on the rich, but that's mostly because of the power imbalance that exists, resulting from a lack of say or control over matters in which they have real-life stakes in. They're skeptical of the rich the same way George Orwell (himself a socialist), or Bertrand Russell, or Thomas Paine, or Jean-Jacques Rousseau do: it's the natural indignation at the utter inequality of power in society, and the results of it. What happened of course (as it always does) was that the leadership who claim to follow certain ideologies not only follow them religiously, but also gets to manipulate opinion and shape things as they see fit. One can see it in how fascism was promoted with the name tags of Hegel and Nietzsche, neither of whom promoted anything about mass murder, or how free-market capitalism was with that of Adam Smith (who was actually quite radical; read the rest of the WON and other works, he was anything but a doctrinaire, certainly didn't say anything about the free market doing the greatest good given no regulations), or how bolshevism/state socialism (as opposed to libertarian socialism) was with those of Marx and Engels (Marx has had radically different views on the same matters throughout his life; at one point, he even suggested that socialism was viable only given the confines of a republican parliamentary system). These ideologues (i.e. Lenin, Mao, etc.) need their followers to interpret their gurus in only one way, and didn't allow any deviations, mostly for their own sake for power. Something happened along the way, and then socialism and communism lost their original meanings.
Thanks for your thoughts. I'm familiar with the theoretical communism arguments you've presented. First of all, let me just say that I take most of the ideological labels with a pinch of salt because hardly any of them deliver what they claim to deliver and many of them practice the injustices they claim to oppose. And so the labels can be arbitrarily adopted on a whim. A doctrine must ultimately be judged by its real world results. As you've cited, communism (which is an extreme form of socialism) in practice puts too much unaccountable power in the hands of too few people. It results in a level of authoritarianism on par with the monopoly capitalists and fascists its practitioners claim to oppose. I use the phrase "monopoly capitalists" because trade in itself tends to be a good thing - civilization can't grow and thrive without it. Trade doesn't require a powerful state. It just requires some basic enforcable laws to ensure what is being sold matches what is claimed to be sold, and that agreements to trade are fulfilled, etc. Monopoly capitalism frequently involves the state working hand in hand with big business to suppress or eliminate their market competitors ... often referred to as corporate socialism. The same thing happens with academia. The state and big business often enables academic monopoly of ideas via funding bias or even legal suppression of non-institutional research and debate. The problematic pattern among all of this is that stronger state intervention hardly ever leads to a fair system. It virtually always facilitates monopolies and authoritarianism. It shifts ever greater power into the hand of a select few (be they legislators, bankers or state-corporate partnerships) and naturally those who benefit will claim that their activities are for the greater good. In the case of communism, the resulting monopolization of resources is even worse because the entire competitive market can be shut down by law. And the great lie that is used to justify that is the one you, in my opinion, naively cited ... the claim that communism hands the means of production to the mass workers. It doesn't. It hands it to the authoritarians running the communist system. The people have no say in this. And they have even less say because communism tends to discard elections - removing the people's voting power. It has to do this because populations tend to vote communists out because their doctrine, in practice, takes away their land and anything else they might have built for themselves. Most people would rather live in a system of greater inequality if that system also means most people aren't in poverty. The original intended meanings of Marx or whoever are irrelevant in face of the consistent authoritarian manifestations when the practice is attempted. I'm not saying I have the answers as to how our system should work, but then I don't believe utopia or universal equality are possible in the first place, being that nature itself has made us and every other creature competitive on the basis of genetic advantages. And there's the plain fact that some people simply don't want to contribute to their neighbour's well being as others, and so they are less deserving of the fruits of civilization. I've found a lot of people I've met (not all of course) who believe in communism are quite selfish, even tight-fisted, people who don't work (ironically) and simply want a government system that steals from actual workers and provides them with an equal share, as if they had contributed.
@@collativelearning First, I do agree about the labels. Second, I also agree that we should be looking at the real world results. If we examine the real world and its history, it should be acknowledged that no regimes so far have really been socialistic or communistic by definition (except maybe the Republican Spain during the civil war of the 1930s, which is not a great example because of the context). But the principles of socialism or communism have always been practiced throughout history. Before capitalism, and besides feudalism, slavery, and sporadic townships) pretty much all production was carried out on the producers’ own terms, except that it’s in the units of ‘families’ or ‘individuals’. In the modern day, there was the system of kibbutzim in Israel, in which the collective workers, albeit somewhat privileged ones (which was probably why they had the power) owned the means and the ends of production, until recently that is. There are also a number of worker’s collectives that conduct business without a capitalist bureaucracy. It’s essentially self-management. Some studies claim that they are more efficient and suffer from less burnout than a conventional capitalistic enterprise. I’ve not find any counter-evidence so far. Plenty of problems still, but so is everything else. I don’t find anything even remotely similar in what’s been called Communist Russia or China or Cuba, thus they aren’t and shouldn’t technically be considered socialist imo. There’s the difference between functional and ‘in-name-only’ label. But only given this, as well as a rejection of what’s called ‘the end of history’ ideology, I’d say that a socialistic enterprise is at least workable on a smaller scale, if not viable on a larger one. That’s obviously not the magical solution to all problems, but I think that’s a step forward, in the same way how a democratic republican system is a step forward away from the old world of kings and masters. The fact that socialism was never really adopted as a regime doesn’t mean that it won’t be in the future, the same way how large-scale democratic institutions weren’t even conceivable in the Middle Ages. Think of capitalism that I referred to the same way as oligarchy: the produce and the profits go to those at the top first and foremost, and then redistributed down to the workers, who enabled the production and its continuation in the first place. Rules and regulations are to be designed by those at the top, while the workers only have some negotiation power at best. There’s an obvious imbalance of power that exists. And it’s not as simple as who has how much wealth and who hasn’t. See economist Robert A. Brady’s work for how political power is distributed and codified within the business/workplace.
@@cheekylix Are you sure the principles of socialism and communism have been practiced throughout history? I don't believe that. Even within family units farming their own land there is a hierarchical power structure - typically the man, or occasionally the woman, would be dominant in decision making. Sometimes there's violence and abuse occurring within the family in relation to these power hierarchies. In small tribes the males will often be savagely competitive with each other for dominance over the herd. We see all this in animal species too. As for the workers collectives, they too have to have a hierarchy. I live in a community where "socialism" is a very popular ideal and there are local groups of that nature (friends of mine have been part of them), but from what I've seen those groups have hierarchies and people can be barred from the group by its "leaders", justifiably sometimes. The agendas of the meetings are largely chosen by the leaders. The notion of a "non-capitalist" collective seems to only be workable in very small groups where everyone sort of knows each other on some personal level, but to me it works on unconscious principles such as bad behaviour becoming rapidly known to all, unconscious tallies of how much each person is contributing and taking from the group - if someone isn't doping their share they get rejected. They maybe votes on key issues, but the rules of the voting procedure are set by the most influential or dominant leaders - usually based on superior intellect and confidence. And the voters get swayed and manipulated by those who can most intelligently manipulate the language of the debate. I don't take the adoption of previously inconceivable democratic institutions as evidence communism will one day work. Democracy hasn't led repeatedly to war, poverty etc on levels as bad as what came before. Democracy is clearly more workable in practice than communism. Though we have the, now common, problem of authoritarianism that pretends to function democratically. I view socialism as an important component of a functional society. But it should be used sparingly to try and get the most disadvantaged out of poverty and to give everyone a starting point in life that gives them a decent chance. This mostly has to be done by state intervention, but beyond that the in-built competitive nature of humans has to be directed, via the market trading system, to motivate people and companies to generate goods and services. Without it people are not motivated to work.
One of the "mistakes" the developer made when promoting this game was ignoring larger youtubers and review sites, and handing out keys for the game to smaller youtubers instead. I was one of those, and made a let's play on it, and I really enjoyed the prologue (the free demo) as well. However, my channel only ever reached around 180 subscribers, and even though they promoted it on their website, the view count was far from being impressive. (If you want to see it with my German commentary, the let's play is still available on my channel, it's not monetized so I won't get any money for it: ruclips.net/p/PLGJw-dbWoYqIN4_h4qj4HBdd3tcPbedai ) Only two points on your review I have to disagree on: If I remember correctly, the combat was intentionally keept "wonky", because the protagonist is a young socialite who may be physically fit, but completely lacks combat experience. So her swinging a crowbar actually is meant to feel weak and unresponsive. And as for the rats, they usually symbolize sickness, which fits the game quite well. They're everywhere and they also are a problem in regards of food supplies for the inhabitants of the island. The attack dogs are trained to be agressive to humans, but not rats. So the rats prosper and multiply, and the people slowly wither away. Further, the protagonist behaves like a rat for most of the game, hiding away, stealing food from the already hungry islanders, and only resorting to violence if absolutely neccessary and safe to get away with. Otherwise, well summarized and explained, this game is a hidden gem for all the wrong reasons, and if you're into parcour games with lots of stealth and a very intriguing island to discover, you should definately check out this game. Right now it's on sale, but even without you get it for around 10€, and the prologue is free to play if you want to check out the gameplay first.
Communist governments have also only replaced pretty terrible, often fascistic, systems. I'd be curious if the game gets into what the society was like before the communists took over. Perhaps it serves a warning that this could happen to a functioning society or perhaps it follows historical precedent. The concepts you describe make it seem like its happening pretty early in the communists rule. Communism also seems to have some history of becoming more moderate. USSR after Stalin, modern China, Vietnam etc etc.
There's a reason why they destroy the history of the places they take over. There's a reason why they build ugly, grey structures. Destroy the past to create a new horrible future.
Socialist Yugoslavia established very humane and decent humanist society after WW1 for the most of its people, before it was tor apart by nationalist forces, themselves being just a cover for counter -revolutionary criminal capitalist forces and neo-colonialism coming from the modern imperialist centers. Restored pre-communist "democratic-capitalist" order destroyed national industry, education, culture, health, birth-rate, material standard and life security... but that was the point from the start. Hurray for democracy supporting corrupted, criminal and fascist regimes all over the world, if they are deemed useful for domestic economy and corporations.
@@collativelearning They're releasing a remaster of it on Steam at some point in the next year or so. But honestly the gritty old-school graphics probably add to the atmosphere
@@poob8686I've read that they'll make changes for "modern audiences", so i doubt that it will be faithful to the source. But we will see when it comes out. I hope they'll just update the graphics and the gameplay systems while keeping the rest as close to the original as possible.
The PC version is easily sourced (for free). I'd go straight over to Town of Silent Hill, first, before getting the PC version, for the mod pack/ installer, known as Silent Hill 2 Enhanced Edition. Please, please do not play the HD Remake.
I love how people criticize communism, which never existed in it's form that Marx imagined, and at the same time enjoy all of the social welfare and individual rights all of which became possible because of all the socialist revolutions and struggle in the past. And socialism will lead to communism eventually.
It never existed in Marx's intended form because it's an impossible dream. The problem is that setting up and maintaining such a system requires the will of the people be crushed forever. Give them a say and they vote their way out of it. We don't owe all our rights to communist / socialist revolutions at all. People were fighting for their rights centuries before socialist writings. Our freedoms certainly don't come from socialism. And of the welfare system ... it's not that good. Most of us EARN our living. And some who are on welfare do so as a lifestyle choice, living off the taxes the rest of us pay. I used to work in homeless hostels for drunks, drug addicts and anti-social (ironic term lol) types and saw this first hand for years.
@@collativelearning I used to think that way, but have now been humbled by my own homelessness and been lucky enough to see the other side. If you think people are “choosing” that lifestyle, 9/10 times you simply aren’t thinking hard enough as to how they ended up there, or the hopelessness that resulted in them believing it is the correct choice. Might be important to state that I’m in the USA, where our issues with homelessness are a lot worse. Even if the homelessness issue is different in your country they are probably are still worth respecting. We have our egos telling us we’re better than them but when it comes down to it forces beyond your control could tear apart your support system and turn you into a homeless person within a few months.
That guy marx said racist things so he's canceled. So did Che and Stalin. That's it, commienism is canceled! 😤😤 If anything, you commies are just annoying. More annoying than vegans. 😂
Any critiques on Capitalism? How about our supposed Republic here in USA which has led to the destruction of the family, values, god, common courtesy, decency, morals, exploitation of the middle class, and led to disaster capitalism which needs war to support the military industry then destroying the country to support building it.
You're actually critiquing the corruption within our system, not the system itself. Capitalism by definition should have pretty much no government influence in the economy and definitely, absolutely no helping weapons manufacturers by colluding to start wars and similar actions, those actions are more socialist in nature.
@@elliottalderson6443 funny how when people critique government systems they never find any fault with their own but always some other which they have a simplistic view on
@@gizmogremlin1872Man don’t be ridiculous by making poor excuses…it is a critique on the system, see corruption as a testing mechanism, people will take advantage of the flaws in a system, these flaws should be solved by even combining features from other systems as it happens in real politics….now your description of capitalism is wrong and your understanding of what is socialist in nature completely misleading, capitalism is all about maximizing profits in its purest form, influence by government or not is another thing or combination…
@@CMR10500 Sorry but basically everything you said is either completely incorrect or complete nonsense. How can my descriptions be wrong when I've made really zero description? No capitalism has basically zero to do with "maximizing profits" it has everything to do with private ownership rather than government control over trade. Bottom line here you seriously have not the slightest clue what you are talking about. In the future if you want to convince someone you may have an actual point... try to not spew nonsense about "profits" because it is a dead give away that you have let your veiw be completely spoon fed to you by leftist activists who either also have no clue what they are talking about and or just purposely lie to push their ideals. Good day.
One of my favourite games ever, I translated it in french ^^ Many people are surprised how much I love it because, of course, combat system and animation are not the best but the landscape is so beautiful, the atmosphere so special, without speaking about parkour which is really cool too. This is really a game like no other. I would love to see a game like that with more ressources.
There's a Red Dawn-inspired game called Freedom Fighters. 2:30 Two words: Nazino Island (Stalin's "cannibal island") 8:45 Ironic phrasing seeing as how collectivists are always preaching about "sacrifice."
I'm having a have a look now. From what I can tell it has a bit of a cult following (ironically) even though it hasn't managed to reach commercial success levels.
I bought this game just as my open world, parkour survival game fatigue just started. As such I didn't get far from the well where we started. I don't know whether the anti-communist sentiment might entice me since I usually skipped most story cutscenes in almost all of my games. There is one game that made me feel conflicted at the end. It was the third person zombie survival game with big bikes instead of parkour, Days Gone. It's weird seeing a bunch of American survivors waving AK-47s in triumphs over the defeated M-16 totting militia. I mean America is the land of AR-style gun platform and militia is a big part of the country's history but in this game they are defeated by a disabled man, a couple of lesbians, pseudo-slave owners and a flip-flopping protagonist.
@@seandavis9320Move to North Korea or Venezuela. You'll love it. By the way, liberals who, ya know read books actually love capitalism. Ask your average college professors if they think we should eliminate capitalism. They believe in a mixed economy because they know socialism and communism = 100 million dead from starvation or re-education (concentration) camps over the course of 70 years.
@WarriorTheDawg69People will say shit like that but I don't see a single one of them moving to North Korea or Venezuela or any other anti-capitalist country. Kids are so stupid. Liberals who read books don't hate capitalism because liberals believe in a capitalist system with regulations and a progressive income tax. But your average college graduate doesn't know the difference between liberalism, socialism, and communism. They're so dumbed down that the film Idiocracy now looks like a documentary.
2:18 Bioshock vibes there. The written propaganda on the walls was always a favorite part of mine in Bioshock. I think there was also a feature that you could turn on that would tell you the purpose or meaning of the propaganda. Never played this game but it does look interesting and a little similar to Bioshock. Might be worth checking on. The 2nd Bioshock game was also a critique of Communism.
“The 2nd Bioshock game was also a critique of communism”. Funny you say that, I took the FIRST Bioshock to be the ultimate stab at not just communism but fascism and the works of Ayn Rand whose works I’ve not read yet.
@@unknownartist4782 well yes, the first Bioshock was a critique of Ayn Rand. I mean the one part early in the game looked like it was lifted right from "Atlas shrugged". The first game was more I think a stab at Rands philosophy and Capitalism unrestrained. Whereas the 2nd game was more a stab at the ills of Collectivism and Communism. I don't totally agree with everything in the first games message but I do agree it was very well done.
the first bioshock was an explicit critique of free-market capitalism with a dash of 'hey the soviets did bad stuff too' thrown in so they could maintain the plausible image of being positioned in a critical posture toward both ideologies. but it's textually a criticism of libertarianism; you traverse the entire game through the carcass of a failed ideology.
@@copsuicide "the first bioshock was an explicit critique of free-market capitalism with a dash of 'hey the soviets did bad stuff too' thrown in so they could maintain the plausible image of being positioned in a critical posture toward both ideologies" What's wrong with showing soviets were just as bad? Their ideology killed, er... shall i say STILL KILLS AND LOCKS UP millions. Would you rather have had the game purely call out "capitalist", "Right-leaning", "fascist" ideologies and take an ass-kissing, apologist stance with "left-leaning" ideology? I love ANY media, whether game, movie, stage play etc. that absolutely calls out BOTH sides of extreme socialist ideology.
ok so i am not super well read on communism, though i have heard some ideas about it. but i feel it weird to say a system will definitely not work. though one thing also is i have heard from people who do believe in communism in some way (Richard Wolff for instance) that many people who do believe in it in some way don't necessarily believe in it in like this super specific it has to be exactly to the letter as Marx suggests or nothing. Most have agreed that that is a bit unrealistic to go that far. Also Capitalism as well would likely completely fail if you get to that level where it's completely down to the markets and no social systems at all. but we don't generally say that all capitalism at any level will never work.
Communism is a economic doctrine, not a way to organize a state. Communism is opposed to capitalism, authoritarianism is opposed to democracy (or anarchy if you consider the extremes of the spectum). So the game is anti-authoritarianism if you will, not against communism. Irc this game does not take a stance against abolishing the private property of the means of production and the dismantling of market forces 😉😉😉
Haha, the old "ownership of means of production" argument. The only way to eliminate that is to eliminate production entirely. The state is itself private - it's just a bureaucratic system that centralizes hands in the power of the few, as does corporatism. the game is anti-authoritarian with a specific anti-communist stance because communism is a form of authoritarianism.
@@collativelearning The USSR was a piss poor attempt at communism. The point of communism is to abolish class hierarchy and the state - the bureaucratic tool of the capitalist class. Every piece of media critical of the USSR seems only to focus on Stalin's authoritarianism as if it's a critique of the actual doctrine of dialectical historical materialism. The USSR was a betrayal of the doctrine, and thus most every piece of anti-USSR media boils down to a strawman argument intended to uphold the capitalist class, and not an actual argument against communism.
@@collativelearning I disagree. Our system of private property is only upheld by the police. If that weren't the case, then people with 20 different homes would be being squatted in. If a boss at a factory wished to lay off 100 of their 200 workers, that boss would be possibly killed by the workers without the police or army. It makes little sense for a playboy boss from a rich family who inherited this wealth to own a factory when the workers and managers do 100% of the work and he simply sits on his money. The only reason this is even a thing is because of our laws that protect inheritance. Capitalism as we know it is upheld by the state. Protecting property would be more like The Magnificent Seven if it didn't. It's also possible that capitalism is inherently corporatist centralizing (our current world) because of economies of scale. It seems rather intuitive that people own their own workplaces, frankly. After all they do all the work and are there all the time. You don't necessarily need investment in the sense that our society does it. You could have a system where unions make investments for example. I'm not even sold on communism or socialism but our current system is very dependent on specific decisions made regarding private ownership of property. The idea of passing on wealth across decades and even centuries (as in the fortunes of Musk or Gates or whoever) is unprecedented.
@@collativelearning Corporatism is basically another word for Capitalism, if a state does not have any substantial laws to keep corporations at bay, then it happens but corporations are after capital so...and there are authoritarian systems by their nature but actually Communism is not by definition. It has to be combined with authoritarianism and other militaristic systems in order to work as a dictatorship, as it did happen with soviet union and it keeps happening in China and North Korea. Communism and Democracy are quit fragile systems and require a lot of educated people in order to sustain. On the other hand Capitalism restricts Democracy and has also its own authorities to battle and the reason that capitalism does not become stagnant on its failures is the combination with democracy and socialism.
@@petert2481 as a game developer, if you add children to a game, you must make sure that the player won’t be able to harm/kill the child characters in any way or form. it’s just too much trouble to deal with.
Exactly, It’s for the same reason you just cut people in their entirety from open-world racing games or put them behind invisible barriers, otherwise the game would become just become GTA, except you’re permanently locked in your vehicle 🤣 However, based on what Rob is saying, the developers seem to have used this limitation to actually provide a bit of world building and it makes the whole scenario that little bit more unsettling.
I've seen it on steam but was turned off by the jank, but since you recommend it I'll give it a try. Also: When it comes to video games I recommend checking out Shadow of the Colossus (either the PS3 or PS4 version. The original on PS2 is technically impressive, but runs quite poor). It had quite an impact on me growing up and I personally consider it pure art. It also does have symbolism, so I think it would make an interesting experience for someone as analytical as yourself. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it.
i really like this game, it's super charming. I'm not really into parkour but I like puzzles and parkour section puzzles are rather intricate. The island is gorgeous but yeah the combat and a.i are a bit budget. Hope to see a part 2 one day.
Hey, about the framerate use the free program called handbreak. You can change the framerate of a video to have a universal framerate in a video editor.
Two amusing observations: 1: If they used the word "Communism" in the game, it'd just provoke an endless storm of "🤓Ackshually it wasn't *real* Communism, *real* Communism has never been tried!!" 2: The only words you said in the whole video with which I disagree at all are near the end, where you juxtapose Communism with Materialism. Communism is EXPLICITLY Materialist, it just has (superficially) different ideas about what to *do* with that material lol. The justifying rhetoric for why YOU are a poo farmer who has to give his life for me and *I* get to sit on a throne made of jewels has slightly changed, yes, but that's not all - even when mythical "Real Communists" are doing their selfless and altruistic work, it is still about nothing else but balancing the chequebook of material resources. Great video. Subbed! 👍
I didn't have v-synch on and the video frame rate is 25fps, but the gameplay footage was 60fps, so you're not seeing a proper representation technically. As for the metaphor, it's not janky. If you're into communism you need to pull your head out the sand.
I'm very curious to know in which way the dialogues are badly written. You talked about bad dubbing. Maybe it's because of that that the script sounds weird? I mean, in the end, if you understood the story, and you liked it, the script shouldn't be that bad, right?
Primarily, Ideologies are what you make up after you've taken power and done things with your power, in order to justify your actions they might also mean something in twenty years to the nerds that write and read the history books
I love your content. I watch just about every video. The only thing I wish you'd improve is your understanding of socialism and communism. Stalinism, Maoism, etc... are not communism; but rather state capitalism. Workers controlling the things they produce and being fairly compensated for their work is communism, also known as actual democracy. I think you can boil things down to an understanding and identification of what exploitation and oppression is, and them combatting it where ever it rears its head. The society that evolves from this way of thinking can only be an improvement from what we have now-regardless of what it is called.
"Workers controlling the things they produce and being fairly compensated for their work" is one of the false promises of communism, along with "From each according to ability, to each according to need" (which discourages work and encourages playing the victim). Stalinism, Maoism etc is the reality because the pursuit of communism requires an authoritarian state. That's why New York bankers did so much to fund and support the Bolsheviks. They love the authoritarian control it gives. As corrupt as our western systems are (and I truly can't stand that corruption), they are far better for the people than the attempts at Communism that have been made. Socialism is basically best as a cushion to support and prop up people who have a bad start under market capitalism. but to run an entire system on it is unworkable.
Problem is how exactly do you distribute the food without a central overseeing everything, thereby indirectly controlling the means of production? And how do you deal with people who want to own private property?
@@saisameer8771 You can't because whoever you put in charge virtually always distributes far more to themselves and their partner interests than to the people. They also use their distribution power to restrict people's access to resources on the basis that they don't like things those people are doing, such as speaking out against the regime's corruption. "How do you deal with people who want to own private property?" Under communism in Russia it was once illegal for an artist to own their own paintings. I saw an exhibition of such work here in Liverpool at the Tate Gallery many years ago. I was shocked. And virtually all of the "art" was just a load of written communist slogans that looked like they'd been agreed on by a committee. They had basically banned art completely by claiming ownership of one's own artistic creation, or even putting your name on your own painting, was ... OMG CAPITALIST !!!!!
What an interesting game, I've never even heard of it strangely enough. Going to give it a try given it's currently on sale. I'd like to see a videogame critique of Communism since I feel it's an ideology that seems to get a delusional amount of support even after WW2 and the like.
And by anti-Communist, you mean the ruling class doesn’t want the people to own the means of production? Or should I take your meaning as totalitarianism, not communism.
Communism has never given the masses ownership of the means of production and it can't. The state itself is a private entity - it's a bureaucratic cover that gives more power to the individuals running it. It's like next level corporatism.
There is so much irony in the fact the ruling global powers are literally neoliberal fascists whose ideology more closely resembles actual Marxist philosophy than anything with idiots like you parading it around as if it's some sort of solution to the problem. It's so incredible this stupidity
I have to say that I am a little confused and disappointed that you are against socialism, I could have sworn that your other videos expressed your views as left wing. Anyhow, I would like to point you in the direction of Cuban socialism- they are the real deal.
I said in the vid that fascism and communism are both hateful ideologies (which they are - ethnic hate and hate of people who are perceived as "rich", hence both extremes practice anti-semitism), and I've never claimed to be left or right wing. I have said many times I don't believe in the left right wing model as I see the two sides as behaviorally the same (mass murder, oppression, thought control, exploitation) with different verbal excuses for the atrocities they commit. A friend of mine wrote a well received paper on the Cuban medical system. They have far more GP doctors than in UK, but those doctors also serve as watchdogs who have people incarcerated, ensuring psychological obedience to the regime. Cuban socialism isn't ideal. It's not even desirable.
@@collativelearningyou really don't know what you are talking about do you? Just look at the two wikipedia pages, even with the inherent biases we have against anything truely left wing, it will only talk about ethno communisme and stuff as fringe, because the basic concepts do not rely on anything other than an economic organization. Fascism however is BASED on genetic purety, supression of opposition, and is "Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism" Lumping communism in with fascism is very disingenuous, and contributes to the normalization of white-supremacist, truely antisemitic/anti missegenation/eugenic ideas. Btw you can say "I don't believe in the right wing - left wing spectrum". That's basically saying 'I don't believe in the academic research and classifications of these different schools of thought' It's not something you believe in or not, it's a way to describe complex ideas in a normalized way that people can understand, like we do in every field of scientific and academic research.
@@i2sokZ You're ignoring the well documented history of communist atrocities that mirror those of fascism. The Doctor's Plot under Soviet rule was a massive campaign against Jews. See Pol Pot's regime too for mass ethnic murder. Communism, by default, opposes democracy. Under democracy communism gets voted out because its version of "equality" makes everyone poor, except the bureaucrat leaders of course. Capitalism creates massive inequality, but the vast majority have more than under communism, which does not reward those who put more effort into their work than their lazy neighbour. Trying to convey communism as an opposition to fascism/totalitarianism is disingenuous and contributes to the normalization of its version of antisemitism, its ultra centralization of power under a self-serving bureaucracy, its utter suppression of independent thought, its starvation of the masses, its book burning suppression of history, its own forms of nationalism (as evident under the Soviets and Chinese among others) and its deification of the illusionary entity "the state" as God (yes, communism is a religion in that respect). As for academic classifications ... those change from era to era and place to place. Academia gets used to provide false intellectual "consensus" of whatever the ruling regime is. This happened under the Nazis, the Soviets, and currently in the West - in all instances the funded academics know whose hand feeds and most of them fall in line accordingly. If you want to see an honest depiction of the hateful communist mindset then go read Catechism of a Revolutionary by Sergey Nechayev. It's a commie manifesto endorsing murder, betrayal of family, and all means of destruction. It's so extreme it's on the level of cult ideology, terrorists and serial killers. And it has been massively influential among communist revolutionaries. If there's one of us who doesn't know what they're talking about ... it's you, "opposing" one form of tyranny by supporting another :)
Far Cry is guns. This is parkour. I'm a fan of the Far Cry series, but the stories and themes tend to be half-baked. This one has a more challenging story.
do a play-through of death stranding for review pls. similar themes to 2001 + has lovecraftian elements and strangely engaging gameplay. 10/10 experience
I never said it was. I said I suspect it might have been. And it's not silly. Look at the idiotic attacks that were made on the video game Kingdom Come Deliverance, which showed the ideological biases of the attackers.
@@collativelearning wtf do you have to say about CoD being one of the most famous and well acclaimed video games series of all times, despite it being literal US army, anti-communist, pro western economic liberalism propaganda? These goobers think DEI initiatives and capitalist greenwashing/rainbow washing makes "all game devs/reviewers SOCIALIST" 😂😂
i think there are some games out there deserve to be analyzed and one of em is operation flashpoint. i interpret it as a game that shows that war is boring and simultaneously dangerous as well especially at a post ww2 time period where most of battle is more in the hands of tech rather than actual combat. i suggest that game its an interesting game the way it depicts warfare in the 1980s. Also cheers! i love your film analysis
some of the dumbest motherfuckers i have ever met in my life were playing flashpoint almost exclusively for like 4 months. i mean dumb not as a synonym for young or immature, i mean they were adults who could barely change the battery on a car who fell in love with the game and how it demanded you play a certain style. people will never not be surprising to me.
"Nobody is better than anyone else". This is one of those statements we frequently hear that are both funny (for being ridiculous) and outrageous (for being dangerous). Its like those silly arguments uneducated children try to use to fool other children into accepting some unfair bargain - and I say children because mature people are usually far better at hiding their dishonest/shameful intentions when trying to cheat someone. Yet, this kind of thing has a lot of appeal among adults, many of them capable of seeing how absurd this is - but their desire to keep a straight face while stating this (in order to reap the benefits) is enough to make them believe it with their hearts.
Wonder if there are many games that are *mechanically* a specific political ideology. For example I was going to make a game where villagers are individuals and need to eat and work and such. Each village would be socialist, simply for efficiency and simplicity. Actually, now that I think about it, such management type games are almost always modeled after either feudal or hunter-gatherer type economies. Oh, that's right, the economic stimulators are usually capitalist. The X games, for example.
I enjoy Rob's content very much. Due in no small part to his intelligence and personality. And the fact he dislikes all political philosophies just makes me like him more. Keep up the great work, sir!
I’d love more than anything to see you dissect any of the Souls games Rob. I’ve been gaming for nigh on 35 years now, and I don’t necessarily think viewing gaming through the same lens you’d look at other forms of media with is the right choice. I know the souls games inside and out (including information pertaining to the key personnel involved in conceptualization, development, post production etc) and so an analysis sharing your viewpoint there would let me know for sure whether you’re as spot on with your gaming analyses as you are with films. I guess to summarize, I’m impressed and mostly in agreement with the majority of your film analyses, but your videos on specific games have not resonated as strongly.
Cheers. I played the souls one about half way through and I know they have their devoted fans, but I wasn't enjoying the experiences. I hated the checkpoint system having me repeated chunks of the game just so I could take another shot at trying to identify a boss's weak spot.
Very interesting. I’ve sort of drifted away from video-games in recent years, but this seems worth a shot. I’ll look in to it, thanks for the recommendation!
@@bizzwoofer to promote what? Capitalism and democracy? We don't really have any democracies. And if it's capitalism you want to espouse the benefits of, can you explain how most western capitalist systems are all that different from the inaccurate version of communism that you're talking about? I feel like you haven't taken the time to think through this.
Because, more than any other vid game I've ever played, it 's story presents communism as murderous, evil and deceptive. Thought that was obvious from the vid.
Nice analysys though tbf this game has very mediocore gameplay so that could explain lack of coverage and I wouldn't rely on steam reviews since they often tend to be much more positive than game deserves because of binary rating system.
Want more content folks ... follow these links.
Check out the current discounts on my offline vids and articles www.collativelearning.com/
Get a copy of my video game To The Death store.steampowered.com/app/2758570/To_The_Death/
... and follow the game on the Ager Games RUclips channel www.youtube.com/@robagergames
... and at the To The Death FB page facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555615927786
Follow me on Twitter / X twitter.com/RobAger
Signing up as a monthly supporter on Patreon gets you arround 12 hrs more content www.patreon.com/RobAger
PLEASE ALSO POST YOUR RESPONSES TO THE VIDEO CONTENT ABOVE SEPARATELTY FROM THIS PINNED COMMENT, THANKS.
I would love to see Rob analyze more games.
He should do alien isolation!
@@RapidActionAnimations lol
@@RapidActionAnimations he could open a new chanell just dissecting kojima or dark souls
@@RapidActionAnimations He's already done Alien Isolation afaik. He rated it very highly.
I'll second that.
One game I do recommend that deals with some very heavy stuff is ‘Fear And Hunger’ it’s a very brutal but also very satisfying game because learn more for future runs about what to do and what to avoid.
It also suffers a bit from bad English, but the atmosphere is intense. I got the sequel recently but haven't started it yet, apparently it's less demanding in terms of gameplay, which kind of appeals because as much as I loved Fear and Hunger, you really have to obsess over it and study the wiki to make progress (and even then I still got filtered by Sylvain at the end).
isn't rejecting all political ideologies a sort of political ideology in itself? I believe that having an ideology is somewhat unavoidable, even if one is not conscious about it
I don't think so. Political ideologies are typically drafted out as a set of verbal assumptions that are passed on to others who read and adopt it instead of forming their own opinion based on the evidence of each unique situation. The approach I'm talking about is to massively prioritize sensory evidence over assumption. Sensory evidence isn't ideology. It comes from outside.
@@collativelearning I still don't think this is enough to avoid ideology though. You will still make decisions guided by abstract values such as equality, freedom, order, etc. Maybe you reject the big, traditional ideologies (liberalism, socialism, etc), but I don'tt think you can say you have no ideology whatsoever
@@Carlos12353I get your point certainly. A man can never completely dissociate from ideological assumption ...
... but the effort to do so and, in turn, be as objective about the actual evidence as possible is a fundamentally different attitude. Chosen ideology is a position in which assumptive ideals are willingly prioritized at the expense of refusing to acknowledge counter-evidence. This is why it's so hard to shake most ideologists out of a flawed world view. You can throw all the counter-evidence at them and they will deny it, usually by changing the subject, and often by trying to turn the debate into an emotional one, or an outright character assassination attack on those presenting the counter-evidence. Note how quite a few communist-identifying folks in this comment section (that's not referring to you btw) attempt to position me as a capitalist or right winger as a means to artificially prop up their chosen ideology. They do this despite my denunciation of all ideologies. They do it to avoid acknowledging the well-documented history of communist crimes against humanity, their version of holocaust denial actually. They also do it by pointing to minor instances of communist regimes doing decent things from time to time, as if that somehow excuses the atrocities committed under the same ideological doctrine. Nazi-apologists do the same.
Quite simply, ideologies block out counter-evidence in the form of denial. I seek to block out ideology instead. It certainly opens me up to a broader range of evidence and views. I'm able to consider a given situation from multiple ideological positions, as well as acknowledge evidence that doesn't fall into any of those positions, because I'm not chained to one doctrine. You could refer to it as perhaps a meta-ideology, but it's still a fundamentally different attitude. However, it requires a great acceptance of uncertainty about reality. People like to feel certain, which is why they turn to institutional religions and ideological movements.
@@collativelearning I don't agree completely but I understand your views better now, thanks. And interesting video as usual!
The Frankfurt School would claim that ideology reaches your unconscious ideas too. Meaning you can't really completely escape ideology even to your dreams.
If you liked this game I think you would really enjoy a little game that came out in 2021 called 'The Forgotten City'. It brings up a lot of questions about morality systems and how so many people try and fail to create these 'catch-all' ideologies to address every situation. It has a similar level of jank (it was worked on by three people over a period of about seven years) but the story is very well-written. It's also got an incredible level of detail in the map which makes it a real joy to explore.
I saw some reviews of Forgotten city. looked good.
Pretty good yeah, many different endings
@@kelvincasing5265 yeah they were all pretty good. What I really liked about the game was the attention to detail. Every time I thought "that doesn't make sense" or "that's clearly a plothole" it was addressed in some way.
I’ve played the Skyrim mod version didn’t know the devs made their own game
Is it easy for you to play games and watch movies and just enjoy them or do you always find yourself analyzing every little detail? I really love your work.
Oh I have a lot of casual, non-analytical enjoyment of games and movies. I just don't talk about those experience because they're not interesting enough to put on the channel.
@@collativelearning rob you think it would be best for you to talk to the creator and work with them to make a part 2 ? or at least a expansion for direction and story???? i think you will be perfect for that job!
@@vortexart5587, this reminds me of a scene in a movie called Back to School where Rodney Dangerfield hires Kurt Vonnegut to write his essay on Kurt Vonnegut and gets an “F.” I actually think Rob mentions something similar in analyzing Kubrick’s films. Often creators draw upon the collective unconscious (as Carl Jung calls it) and don’t have any formulated construct of deeper meaning in their work. Just so we’re clear, I’m just repeating what Rob Ager has said in other videos, I’m not that smart, nor do I wish to present his work as my own. 😂
It would be fun to see you do some Let's Plays one of these days. Watching you play Alien Isolation would have been a treat. Might also consider Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Indiegala had given this game away for free a few years ago and I think I still have it in my library, so I know what I'll be playing next.
I think they gave away a prologue introductory level, which isn't as good as the actual game. Maybe that's what you got for free?
@@collativelearning Yeah, I got the prologue for the game as well from the same digital store even before that. I'll check it out for sure , now that your analysis of the game has piqued my interest in it. 💯
Die Young is a good game as it is. Played it through about 3 years ago, a lot to like about this game, but definitely needs improvement here and there (I remember the final boss took me forever to kill, he had loads of health). I especially wished the second portion of the game with the enemy compound and the underground mines had more intense parkour elements, it literally felt like a downclimb from the massive mountain climb midway through. That could also be down to budget issues.
I definitely would love to see an updated expansion or a sequel, there is enough scope to add and refine the gameplay. A good feature to add would be chasing parkour enemies who run, jump and climb with you at the mountain areas, or maybe sniping enemies as you traverse the climbing obstacles. Also think the "Perception" ability should be a craftable medicinal item instead, and there should be craftable weapons for taking down the bigger enemies more easily (and the bigger enemies should be seen more often towards the end of the game).
Btw, just remembered the drug addict / schizophrenic enemies keep walking around shouting "Chicken nuggets! CHICKEN NUGGETS!!!"
Yeah the second half of the game didn't have the engagement of the mountain climbing part and I agree it was likely budget. I did like the enemy bases part of the second half but the mines were a real drop in game quality.
I felt the game addressed issues such as human trafficking, abuse of power, and the exploitation of vulnerable individuals as much as communism. The island's sinister organization represents a critique of those who prey on the weak and defenceless, and the lack of children hints at the grim reality of child trafficking and exploitation that occurs in the world, particularly on a famous Island owned by Epstein. The location near Turkey draws attention to the real-world issues of human trafficking, which has been a concern in parts of Turkey and surrounding areas. The fact it’s made by Italian developers suggests it contains subtext inspired by Italy's post-World War II history, serving as a commentary on the consequences of political violence, manipulation, and the struggle for freedom and justice that occurred in the years of lead.
I think some clarification could help as the references to socialism, communism and capitalism seem to be colloquial usages rather than academic...that is to say pretty wrong.
First, communism and socialism are interchangeable in academia as they, along with capitalism, are simply economic formations/systems. To put it another way, you can have authoritarian capitalism, democratic capitalism, etc just as you can have authoritarian and democratic communism.
The way these concepts were brought up in the video are very much the propaganda version of themselves, a lingering byproduct of McCarthyism. The fact is communism nor capitalism have any ideology because they are simply organizing principles of distributing goods and services. Each one inherently aligns with certain ideological concepts that people may embrace or reject and thus may appear as if they're ideologies, but they are not.
In all, capitalism is adjacent to anarchy as it is about atomization of resource management down to individuals...one person can own all of the resources and capitalism can still be considered in effect. Communism and socialism is a collective based approach to resource management in that ownership of many resources are public.
An example using land as to the two economic systems is such:
A person's yard would be capitalism. They own the land personally and can allow anyone to come and enjoy the yard they want or they can tell everyone to keep off the grass. It is also their responsibility to maintain the yard.
Now communism is a public park. Anyone can access the park because everyone pays into it and therefor everyone owns it. A special public funded crew maintains it and all of the maintenance e decisions happen via committee or vote.
So there you go.
No government fully uses socialism or capitalism. Every country is a mixed market economy.
Both economic systems have advantages and disadvantages based on your own personal values and what you believe to be more important when it comes to distribution of resources.
You are right about every country having mixtures of capitalism and socialism, and capitalism itself is arguably not really an ideology (if civilisation collapses, people will still try trading and bartering with each other). It can be said that everyone is a capitalist in some shape or form, with varying degrees of charitable behaviour towards others.
However, an "ideology" is defined as "a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy." In other words, an ideology can involve "organizing principles of distributing goods and services".
And as Rob said, the Communist / socialist promise of everyone owning the publicly funded services is false and are too easily exploited by those who are in charge of maintaining them, especially by capitalists in communist / socialist clothing. I mean, according to Marx's theories, his version of a truly Communist society involve centralisation of banks in the governments' hands and people having no inheritance rights. So does those make the Communist governments capitalists?
Like you said, no county is completely capitalist or socialist, and it's just as well because this allows us a lot more choice of what we can do for ourselves and for the world. The world is never completely static, and would only be if we blind ourselves to supporting very one sided ideologies.
@moviearchaeologist9655 It's pretty easy to fall into a trap ascribing intent to these systems especially since dirty propaganda tactics are used by folks who wish to go further with each economic system. Marx's version of communism was not really meant to be literal or even the ideal form of it. It was the continuing discussion after the first part of his writings which was all about critiquing capitalism and in general, that's all Marxism really is, another critical theory by which to view the world. It's really frustrating how proponents of profits and capitalism seem to believe communism is a boogie man when they in fact benefit from a wide variety of communist principles....roads, schools, even private insurance has elements of communism since the stated goal of insurance is to ease hardships by distributing wealth from folks acordingly...though America has obviously figured out that without regulation and constraints, it is quite useful for fleecing patrons in their most distressed times.
Anyway, there will never be "true" versions of either system. But hopefully society can continue to try out new cocktails to improve life for everyone in some way.
@@heavysystemsinc. Well, roads and public schools already existed before the Soviet Union took form, and without any Communist / socialist standpoint. Regulations and constraints can be useful, especially for important health and safety logistics, but regulations and legal constraints can be pushed with capitalist agendas, we have corporate lobbying by corporations asking and bribing politicians to propose laws that usually have intent of restricting and damaging small business competition. And there have been calls in recent years for pushing regulation on what can or can't be said on social media, which runs the risk of suppressing freedom of speech.
I'd say the actual problem is monopolisation, which can manifest under capitalism or Communist ruling.
OK, for those who think it's too long to read, the guy says:
COMMUNISM = GOOD
CAPITALISM = BAD
VOTE HARRIS IN 2024
I dont think that the reason this game wasn't talked a lot about by the mainstream gaming media outlets was due to its "anti-communist" message, I think it was due to the fact that the game was a low budget indie project made by a little known Italian studio and was highly unpolished and mediocore. If it were the case that mainstream outlets were not talking about it because it was anti-socialist then why did a game like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War get good reviews by the likes of IGN when that game has an overtly anti-communist message?
I don't think that's the case and here's why. I haven't played any of the CoD games since the second one near two decades ago. I find them too linear. However, CoD Black Ops Cold War has been attacked in the media as being "Far right" because of its apparent anti--Commie stance (not that being anti-Commie makes one "Far right", but that's the typical idiot logic given by reviewers who consider themselves "socialist"). It's been viciously attacked on that level, but being that the CoD series is so popular the gaming media couldn't ignore it. It would be too obvious given the anticipation from the large fanbase of the franchise. Die Young isn't part of a known franchise so it's easier to ignore. And, despite your view that it's an unpolished, mediocre game, it has a decent rating on Steam of 80%. IGN etc review lots of other new and non-franchise games by indie developers that are much lower quality and they often give those games very low ratings. I'm not saying this proves its anti-Commie stance is the reason it has been ignored, but I strongly suspect it's a factor. I don't know if you've noticed, but in PR content that isn't considered to contain the "right message" first gets ignored, but when ignoring fails to contain the "influence" and "spread" of the content / message ... that's when the knives come out. That's the standard management approach to undesirable info.
@@collativelearningbingo, this is true and easily observable.
This reminds me of the game YOU ARE EMPTY, a Slavic jankfest that takes place in an oppressive Soviet style setting.
30 Labour voters disliked this video.
This game has been on my wishlist for years. I was always put off by the jank inevitably mentionned by all reviewers and none of them seemed "excited" by the story. Your review just made me want to finally take the plunge, especially for 2,93€ on steam right now
We need more games that's speak to the horrors of socialism/communism to balance the critique. So many young people today lean communist and its terrifying because they have no fucking clue just how bad it really is in human hands.
Please do more games reviews. This was very interesting and entertaining to watch.
The false paradise motif remembers me of your video on Mirror's Edge. Do you, as a gamer, feel particularly drawn to such environments?
Yeah I love mirror's Edge and need to finish my study of that one.
Unfortunately, this game sounds like a victim of the hyper-saturation of the video game market. Too many games, just not enough people to play them all.
Doesn't help that it's hard to even hear about a lot of them. The rich get richer, and the poor are stuck in obscurity.
It's simply because videogame journalism is corrupt. The media will only give coverage to games that either have a big publisher behind them, or to indie games that promote the "correct" (leftist) ideologies. And they'll do everything to bury games like Die Young.
The game is a victim of not being a great game. It's not like we're saturated with too many games like Baldur's Gate 3 or The Witcher 3.
It's saturated with games that suck. But a single creative person can create a game like "Fear and Hunger" which was in obscurity for a couple years because he had no money for marketing Then twitch streamers discovered it and the guy who made 95% of the game by himself is a wealthy man. The game cost almost nothing to make too. So he turned a profit even before it became super popular.
He also made a sequel, and that's been selling on Steam like crazy. One of the best games of the year. It's definitely in the top 10.
Are there free helicopter rides?
Tasteless
Only one way
@@Doomer1984 haha
@@tph2010corner cryer
@@Doomer1984 We call that the Lysenkoist discount.
As a viewer and a former citizen of a 'Communist' country, I appreciate your thinking on the 'Communism' you referred to. But I think you're missing the point. Here's what I mean: socialism and communism don't in and of itself mean cultism or state control, not so much as capitalist dirigisme or fascism or other systems that require a strong state command. At their cores, they just mean: the ownership of the means of production by those very people who use them (i.e. the workers), not the state nor the capitalists. A lot of socialists like to think of it as the extension of the principles of democracy to the workplace: if it's the citizens of a country that ought to govern it, then those who work at the workplace ought to manage it. Yes, the left-wing has a tendency of hating on the rich, but that's mostly because of the power imbalance that exists, resulting from a lack of say or control over matters in which they have real-life stakes in. They're skeptical of the rich the same way George Orwell (himself a socialist), or Bertrand Russell, or Thomas Paine, or Jean-Jacques Rousseau do: it's the natural indignation at the utter inequality of power in society, and the results of it.
What happened of course (as it always does) was that the leadership who claim to follow certain ideologies not only follow them religiously, but also gets to manipulate opinion and shape things as they see fit. One can see it in how fascism was promoted with the name tags of Hegel and Nietzsche, neither of whom promoted anything about mass murder, or how free-market capitalism was with that of Adam Smith (who was actually quite radical; read the rest of the WON and other works, he was anything but a doctrinaire, certainly didn't say anything about the free market doing the greatest good given no regulations), or how bolshevism/state socialism (as opposed to libertarian socialism) was with those of Marx and Engels (Marx has had radically different views on the same matters throughout his life; at one point, he even suggested that socialism was viable only given the confines of a republican parliamentary system). These ideologues (i.e. Lenin, Mao, etc.) need their followers to interpret their gurus in only one way, and didn't allow any deviations, mostly for their own sake for power. Something happened along the way, and then socialism and communism lost their original meanings.
Thanks for your thoughts. I'm familiar with the theoretical communism arguments you've presented.
First of all, let me just say that I take most of the ideological labels with a pinch of salt because hardly any of them deliver what they claim to deliver and many of them practice the injustices they claim to oppose. And so the labels can be arbitrarily adopted on a whim.
A doctrine must ultimately be judged by its real world results. As you've cited, communism (which is an extreme form of socialism) in practice puts too much unaccountable power in the hands of too few people. It results in a level of authoritarianism on par with the monopoly capitalists and fascists its practitioners claim to oppose. I use the phrase "monopoly capitalists" because trade in itself tends to be a good thing - civilization can't grow and thrive without it. Trade doesn't require a powerful state. It just requires some basic enforcable laws to ensure what is being sold matches what is claimed to be sold, and that agreements to trade are fulfilled, etc. Monopoly capitalism frequently involves the state working hand in hand with big business to suppress or eliminate their market competitors ... often referred to as corporate socialism. The same thing happens with academia. The state and big business often enables academic monopoly of ideas via funding bias or even legal suppression of non-institutional research and debate.
The problematic pattern among all of this is that stronger state intervention hardly ever leads to a fair system. It virtually always facilitates monopolies and authoritarianism. It shifts ever greater power into the hand of a select few (be they legislators, bankers or state-corporate partnerships) and naturally those who benefit will claim that their activities are for the greater good.
In the case of communism, the resulting monopolization of resources is even worse because the entire competitive market can be shut down by law. And the great lie that is used to justify that is the one you, in my opinion, naively cited ... the claim that communism hands the means of production to the mass workers. It doesn't. It hands it to the authoritarians running the communist system. The people have no say in this. And they have even less say because communism tends to discard elections - removing the people's voting power. It has to do this because populations tend to vote communists out because their doctrine, in practice, takes away their land and anything else they might have built for themselves. Most people would rather live in a system of greater inequality if that system also means most people aren't in poverty.
The original intended meanings of Marx or whoever are irrelevant in face of the consistent authoritarian manifestations when the practice is attempted. I'm not saying I have the answers as to how our system should work, but then I don't believe utopia or universal equality are possible in the first place, being that nature itself has made us and every other creature competitive on the basis of genetic advantages. And there's the plain fact that some people simply don't want to contribute to their neighbour's well being as others, and so they are less deserving of the fruits of civilization. I've found a lot of people I've met (not all of course) who believe in communism are quite selfish, even tight-fisted, people who don't work (ironically) and simply want a government system that steals from actual workers and provides them with an equal share, as if they had contributed.
@@collativelearning
First, I do agree about the labels.
Second, I also agree that we should be looking at the real world results. If we examine the real world and its history, it should be acknowledged that no regimes so far have really been socialistic or communistic by definition (except maybe the Republican Spain during the civil war of the 1930s, which is not a great example because of the context). But the principles of socialism or communism have always been practiced throughout history. Before capitalism, and besides feudalism, slavery, and sporadic townships) pretty much all production was carried out on the producers’ own terms, except that it’s in the units of ‘families’ or ‘individuals’. In the modern day, there was the system of kibbutzim in Israel, in which the collective workers, albeit somewhat privileged ones (which was probably why they had the power) owned the means and the ends of production, until recently that is. There are also a number of worker’s collectives that conduct business without a capitalist bureaucracy. It’s essentially self-management. Some studies claim that they are more efficient and suffer from less burnout than a conventional capitalistic enterprise. I’ve not find any counter-evidence so far. Plenty of problems still, but so is everything else. I don’t find anything even remotely similar in what’s been called Communist Russia or China or Cuba, thus they aren’t and shouldn’t technically be considered socialist imo. There’s the difference between functional and ‘in-name-only’ label. But only given this, as well as a rejection of what’s called ‘the end of history’ ideology, I’d say that a socialistic enterprise is at least workable on a smaller scale, if not viable on a larger one. That’s obviously not the magical solution to all problems, but I think that’s a step forward, in the same way how a democratic republican system is a step forward away from the old world of kings and masters. The fact that socialism was never really adopted as a regime doesn’t mean that it won’t be in the future, the same way how large-scale democratic institutions weren’t even conceivable in the Middle Ages.
Think of capitalism that I referred to the same way as oligarchy: the produce and the profits go to those at the top first and foremost, and then redistributed down to the workers, who enabled the production and its continuation in the first place. Rules and regulations are to be designed by those at the top, while the workers only have some negotiation power at best. There’s an obvious imbalance of power that exists. And it’s not as simple as who has how much wealth and who hasn’t. See economist Robert A. Brady’s work for how political power is distributed and codified within the business/workplace.
@@cheekylix Are you sure the principles of socialism and communism have been practiced throughout history? I don't believe that. Even within family units farming their own land there is a hierarchical power structure - typically the man, or occasionally the woman, would be dominant in decision making. Sometimes there's violence and abuse occurring within the family in relation to these power hierarchies. In small tribes the males will often be savagely competitive with each other for dominance over the herd. We see all this in animal species too.
As for the workers collectives, they too have to have a hierarchy. I live in a community where "socialism" is a very popular ideal and there are local groups of that nature (friends of mine have been part of them), but from what I've seen those groups have hierarchies and people can be barred from the group by its "leaders", justifiably sometimes. The agendas of the meetings are largely chosen by the leaders.
The notion of a "non-capitalist" collective seems to only be workable in very small groups where everyone sort of knows each other on some personal level, but to me it works on unconscious principles such as bad behaviour becoming rapidly known to all, unconscious tallies of how much each person is contributing and taking from the group - if someone isn't doping their share they get rejected. They maybe votes on key issues, but the rules of the voting procedure are set by the most influential or dominant leaders - usually based on superior intellect and confidence. And the voters get swayed and manipulated by those who can most intelligently manipulate the language of the debate.
I don't take the adoption of previously inconceivable democratic institutions as evidence communism will one day work. Democracy hasn't led repeatedly to war, poverty etc on levels as bad as what came before. Democracy is clearly more workable in practice than communism. Though we have the, now common, problem of authoritarianism that pretends to function democratically.
I view socialism as an important component of a functional society. But it should be used sparingly to try and get the most disadvantaged out of poverty and to give everyone a starting point in life that gives them a decent chance. This mostly has to be done by state intervention, but beyond that the in-built competitive nature of humans has to be directed, via the market trading system, to motivate people and companies to generate goods and services. Without it people are not motivated to work.
One of the "mistakes" the developer made when promoting this game was ignoring larger youtubers and review sites, and handing out keys for the game to smaller youtubers instead.
I was one of those, and made a let's play on it, and I really enjoyed the prologue (the free demo) as well. However, my channel only ever reached around 180 subscribers, and even though they promoted it on their website, the view count was far from being impressive. (If you want to see it with my German commentary, the let's play is still available on my channel, it's not monetized so I won't get any money for it: ruclips.net/p/PLGJw-dbWoYqIN4_h4qj4HBdd3tcPbedai )
Only two points on your review I have to disagree on:
If I remember correctly, the combat was intentionally keept "wonky", because the protagonist is a young socialite who may be physically fit, but completely lacks combat experience. So her swinging a crowbar actually is meant to feel weak and unresponsive.
And as for the rats, they usually symbolize sickness, which fits the game quite well. They're everywhere and they also are a problem in regards of food supplies for the inhabitants of the island. The attack dogs are trained to be agressive to humans, but not rats. So the rats prosper and multiply, and the people slowly wither away. Further, the protagonist behaves like a rat for most of the game, hiding away, stealing food from the already hungry islanders, and only resorting to violence if absolutely neccessary and safe to get away with.
Otherwise, well summarized and explained, this game is a hidden gem for all the wrong reasons, and if you're into parcour games with lots of stealth and a very intriguing island to discover, you should definately check out this game. Right now it's on sale, but even without you get it for around 10€, and the prologue is free to play if you want to check out the gameplay first.
Great points. Thanks :)
Sure, the marketing was probably not good enough. Congratulations for your job though ^^
It’s not just EXTREME socialism it’s JUST SOCIALISM. PERIOD.
Communist governments have also only replaced pretty terrible, often fascistic, systems. I'd be curious if the game gets into what the society was like before the communists took over. Perhaps it serves a warning that this could happen to a functioning society or perhaps it follows historical precedent. The concepts you describe make it seem like its happening pretty early in the communists rule. Communism also seems to have some history of becoming more moderate. USSR after Stalin, modern China, Vietnam etc etc.
There's a reason why they destroy the history of the places they take over. There's a reason why they build ugly, grey structures. Destroy the past to create a new horrible future.
Socialist Yugoslavia established very humane and decent humanist society after WW1 for the most of its people, before it was tor apart by nationalist forces, themselves being just a cover for counter -revolutionary criminal capitalist forces and neo-colonialism coming from the modern imperialist centers. Restored pre-communist "democratic-capitalist" order destroyed national industry, education, culture, health, birth-rate, material standard and life security... but that was the point from the start. Hurray for democracy supporting corrupted, criminal and fascist regimes all over the world, if they are deemed useful for domestic economy and corporations.
How else would they survive?
"Communism also seems to have some history of becoming more moderate." No they don't. That's shit Communists say to make the long story short.
Cope harder
I remember briefly seeing somebody, probably an FPS-focused channel, trying it out a couple years ago.
I never even heard of this game before.
Love these videos Rob. It’s great to get some idea of your day to day thoughts on the topics that interest you
Have you ever played Harvester or Tecmo's Deception: Invitation to Darkness? Those would be interesting to see an analysis on.
Rob doing a Silent Hill 2 analysis would be something else!
I'd need a means of playing it. PS 2 game wasn't it?
@@collativelearningmessage me, I can help set you up
@@collativelearning They're releasing a remaster of it on Steam at some point in the next year or so. But honestly the gritty old-school graphics probably add to the atmosphere
@@poob8686I've read that they'll make changes for "modern audiences", so i doubt that it will be faithful to the source. But we will see when it comes out. I hope they'll just update the graphics and the gameplay systems while keeping the rest as close to the original as possible.
The PC version is easily sourced (for free). I'd go straight over to Town of Silent Hill, first, before getting the PC version, for the mod pack/ installer, known as Silent Hill 2 Enhanced Edition. Please, please do not play the HD Remake.
I love how people criticize communism, which never existed in it's form that Marx imagined, and at the same time enjoy all of the social welfare and individual rights all of which became possible because of all the socialist revolutions and struggle in the past. And socialism will lead to communism eventually.
It never existed in Marx's intended form because it's an impossible dream. The problem is that setting up and maintaining such a system requires the will of the people be crushed forever. Give them a say and they vote their way out of it. We don't owe all our rights to communist / socialist revolutions at all. People were fighting for their rights centuries before socialist writings. Our freedoms certainly don't come from socialism. And of the welfare system ... it's not that good. Most of us EARN our living. And some who are on welfare do so as a lifestyle choice, living off the taxes the rest of us pay. I used to work in homeless hostels for drunks, drug addicts and anti-social (ironic term lol) types and saw this first hand for years.
@@collativelearning I used to think that way, but have now been humbled by my own homelessness and been lucky enough to see the other side. If you think people are “choosing” that lifestyle, 9/10 times you simply aren’t thinking hard enough as to how they ended up there, or the hopelessness that resulted in them believing it is the correct choice. Might be important to state that I’m in the USA, where our issues with homelessness are a lot worse. Even if the homelessness issue is different in your country they are probably are still worth respecting. We have our egos telling us we’re better than them but when it comes down to it forces beyond your control could tear apart your support system and turn you into a homeless person within a few months.
noo, stop educating the masses! they can’t be hearing things like this!
Keep crying
That guy marx said racist things so he's canceled. So did Che and Stalin. That's it, commienism is canceled! 😤😤
If anything, you commies are just annoying. More annoying than vegans. 😂
Any critiques on Capitalism? How about our supposed Republic here in USA which has led to the destruction of the family, values, god, common courtesy, decency, morals, exploitation of the middle class, and led to disaster capitalism which needs war to support the military industry then destroying the country to support building it.
You're actually critiquing the corruption within our system, not the system itself.
Capitalism by definition should have pretty much no government influence in the economy and definitely, absolutely no helping weapons manufacturers by colluding to start wars and similar actions, those actions are more socialist in nature.
Funny how Rob says most people's explanation of government systems are simplistic and here you come with this comment.
@@elliottalderson6443 funny how when people critique government systems they never find any fault with their own but always some other which they have a simplistic view on
@@gizmogremlin1872Man don’t be ridiculous by making poor excuses…it is a critique on the system, see corruption as a testing mechanism, people will take advantage of the flaws in a system, these flaws should be solved by even combining features from other systems as it happens in real politics….now your description of capitalism is wrong and your understanding of what is socialist in nature completely misleading, capitalism is all about maximizing profits in its purest form, influence by government or not is another thing or combination…
@@CMR10500
Sorry but basically everything you said is either completely incorrect or complete nonsense.
How can my descriptions be wrong when I've made really zero description?
No capitalism has basically zero to do with "maximizing profits" it has everything to do with private ownership rather than government control over trade.
Bottom line here you seriously have not the slightest clue what you are talking about.
In the future if you want to convince someone you may have an actual point... try to not spew nonsense about "profits" because it is a dead give away that you have let your veiw be completely spoon fed to you by leftist activists who either also have no clue what they are talking about and or just purposely lie to push their ideals.
Good day.
One of my favourite games ever, I translated it in french ^^ Many people are surprised how much I love it because, of course, combat system and animation are not the best but the landscape is so beautiful, the atmosphere so special, without speaking about parkour which is really cool too. This is really a game like no other. I would love to see a game like that with more ressources.
There's a Red Dawn-inspired game called Freedom Fighters.
2:30 Two words: Nazino Island (Stalin's "cannibal island")
8:45 Ironic phrasing seeing as how collectivists are always preaching about "sacrifice."
Played Freedom Fighters back in my teens, that was okay. And Nazino Island, ooooh...
@@moviearchaeologist9655 Freedom Fighters has a great soundtrack by Jesper Kyd!
Hey Rob, OT but are you a fan of The Sopranos and have you ever thought about doing an analysis series on it? Thanks!
I'm having a have a look now. From what I can tell it has a bit of a cult following (ironically) even though it hasn't managed to reach commercial success levels.
Do you like Margaret Thatcher, Rob?
I'm indifferent to her.
I bought this game just as my open world, parkour survival game fatigue just started. As such I didn't get far from the well where we started. I don't know whether the anti-communist sentiment might entice me since I usually skipped most story cutscenes in almost all of my games.
There is one game that made me feel conflicted at the end. It was the third person zombie survival game with big bikes instead of parkour, Days Gone. It's weird seeing a bunch of American survivors waving AK-47s in triumphs over the defeated M-16 totting militia. I mean America is the land of AR-style gun platform and militia is a big part of the country's history but in this game they are defeated by a disabled man, a couple of lesbians, pseudo-slave owners and a flip-flopping protagonist.
thanks for the warning, almost bought it
I love anti-communism.
I love anti-capitalism
@@seandavis9320Move to North Korea or Venezuela. You'll love it.
By the way, liberals who, ya know read books actually love capitalism. Ask your average college professors if they think we should eliminate capitalism. They believe in a mixed economy because they know socialism and communism = 100 million dead from starvation or re-education (concentration) camps over the course of 70 years.
@WarriorTheDawg69People will say shit like that but I don't see a single one of them moving to North Korea or Venezuela or any other anti-capitalist country.
Kids are so stupid. Liberals who read books don't hate capitalism because liberals believe in a capitalist system with regulations and a progressive income tax.
But your average college graduate doesn't know the difference between liberalism, socialism, and communism. They're so dumbed down that the film Idiocracy now looks like a documentary.
@@seandavis9320now mix them together like peanut butter and chocolate
2:18 Bioshock vibes there. The written propaganda on the walls was always a favorite part of mine in Bioshock. I think there was also a feature that you could turn on that would tell you the purpose or meaning of the propaganda. Never played this game but it does look interesting and a little similar to Bioshock. Might be worth checking on. The 2nd Bioshock game was also a critique of Communism.
“The 2nd Bioshock game was also a critique of communism”. Funny you say that, I took the FIRST Bioshock to be the ultimate stab at not just communism but fascism and the works of Ayn Rand whose works I’ve not read yet.
@@unknownartist4782 well yes, the first Bioshock was a critique of Ayn Rand. I mean the one part early in the game looked like it was lifted right from "Atlas shrugged". The first game was more I think a stab at Rands philosophy and Capitalism unrestrained. Whereas the 2nd game was more a stab at the ills of Collectivism and Communism. I don't totally agree with everything in the first games message but I do agree it was very well done.
the first bioshock was an explicit critique of free-market capitalism with a dash of 'hey the soviets did bad stuff too' thrown in so they could maintain the plausible image of being positioned in a critical posture toward both ideologies. but it's textually a criticism of libertarianism; you traverse the entire game through the carcass of a failed ideology.
@@copsuicide we traverse everyday through a carcas of a failed ideology
@@copsuicide "the first bioshock was an explicit critique of free-market capitalism with a dash of 'hey the soviets did bad stuff too' thrown in so they could maintain the plausible image of being positioned in a critical posture toward both ideologies" What's wrong with showing soviets were just as bad? Their ideology killed, er... shall i say STILL KILLS AND LOCKS UP millions. Would you rather have had the game purely call out "capitalist", "Right-leaning", "fascist" ideologies and take an ass-kissing, apologist stance with "left-leaning" ideology? I love ANY media, whether game, movie, stage play etc. that absolutely calls out BOTH sides of extreme socialist ideology.
ok so i am not super well read on communism, though i have heard some ideas about it. but i feel it weird to say a system will definitely not work. though one thing also is i have heard from people who do believe in communism in some way (Richard Wolff for instance) that many people who do believe in it in some way don't necessarily believe in it in like this super specific it has to be exactly to the letter as Marx suggests or nothing. Most have agreed that that is a bit unrealistic to go that far. Also Capitalism as well would likely completely fail if you get to that level where it's completely down to the markets and no social systems at all. but we don't generally say that all capitalism at any level will never work.
marx was a weird, interesting to read sometimes but Lenin was the real chad though
All "isms" are interchangeable. The illusion of difference helps to divide people.
Nice summary.
What do you think about Disco Elysium? Or do you plan to play it?
Not played it but i love turn-based games of that nature
Communism is a economic doctrine, not a way to organize a state. Communism is opposed to capitalism, authoritarianism is opposed to democracy (or anarchy if you consider the extremes of the spectum). So the game is anti-authoritarianism if you will, not against communism. Irc this game does not take a stance against abolishing the private property of the means of production and the dismantling of market forces 😉😉😉
Haha, the old "ownership of means of production" argument. The only way to eliminate that is to eliminate production entirely. The state is itself private - it's just a bureaucratic system that centralizes hands in the power of the few, as does corporatism. the game is anti-authoritarian with a specific anti-communist stance because communism is a form of authoritarianism.
@@collativelearning The USSR was a piss poor attempt at communism. The point of communism is to abolish class hierarchy and the state - the bureaucratic tool of the capitalist class. Every piece of media critical of the USSR seems only to focus on Stalin's authoritarianism as if it's a critique of the actual doctrine of dialectical historical materialism. The USSR was a betrayal of the doctrine, and thus most every piece of anti-USSR media boils down to a strawman argument intended to uphold the capitalist class, and not an actual argument against communism.
@@collativelearning I disagree. Our system of private property is only upheld by the police. If that weren't the case, then people with 20 different homes would be being squatted in. If a boss at a factory wished to lay off 100 of their 200 workers, that boss would be possibly killed by the workers without the police or army. It makes little sense for a playboy boss from a rich family who inherited this wealth to own a factory when the workers and managers do 100% of the work and he simply sits on his money. The only reason this is even a thing is because of our laws that protect inheritance. Capitalism as we know it is upheld by the state. Protecting property would be more like The Magnificent Seven if it didn't. It's also possible that capitalism is inherently corporatist centralizing (our current world) because of economies of scale.
It seems rather intuitive that people own their own workplaces, frankly. After all they do all the work and are there all the time. You don't necessarily need investment in the sense that our society does it. You could have a system where unions make investments for example.
I'm not even sold on communism or socialism but our current system is very dependent on specific decisions made regarding private ownership of property. The idea of passing on wealth across decades and even centuries (as in the fortunes of Musk or Gates or whoever) is unprecedented.
@@collativelearning Anarcho communism begs to differ
@@collativelearning Corporatism is basically another word for Capitalism, if a state does not have any substantial laws to keep corporations at bay, then it happens but corporations are after capital so...and there are authoritarian systems by their nature but actually Communism is not by definition.
It has to be combined with authoritarianism and other militaristic systems in order to work as a dictatorship, as it did happen with soviet union and it keeps happening in China and North Korea.
Communism and Democracy are quit fragile systems and require a lot of educated people in order to sustain.
On the other hand Capitalism restricts Democracy and has also its own authorities to battle and the reason that capitalism does not become stagnant on its failures is the combination with democracy and socialism.
Super Marx Brothers 😂
Hehe
Should read Marx. He is very ironic, the problem is that people usually dont read the old german
🤣🤣
ruclips.net/video/Lad5bc6Gpb4/видео.html
@@ZN1942 I’ll have you know I’ve read all of Groucho’s memoirs 🥸
7:44 just wanted to add: in fact, there is no children at all in A LOT OF GAMES, for obvious reasons.
@@petert2481 as a game developer, if you add children to a game, you must make sure that the player won’t be able to harm/kill the child characters in any way or form. it’s just too much trouble to deal with.
True, though Skyrim has them. However, most games also don't have drawings left behind by missing children ;)
Exactly, It’s for the same reason you just cut people in their entirety from open-world racing games or put them behind invisible barriers, otherwise the game would become just become GTA, except you’re permanently locked in your vehicle 🤣
However, based on what Rob is saying, the developers seem to have used this limitation to actually provide a bit of world building and it makes the whole scenario that little bit more unsettling.
@@collativelearningyeah that’s also true.
A video game review, I'm ready.
Edit: Currently 70% of on Steam summer sale: 2,92€.
Sounds based
Super based.
probably going to get this with the summer sale, thanks for covering this.
Was the game a real sophisticated criticism? From the sound of it it's more of attacking a straw-man.
I don't think it is. Some of the real life horrors of Communism are much worse than what's in the game.
@@collativelearning Enlighten me, what are the REAL horrors of Communism.
I've seen it on steam but was turned off by the jank, but since you recommend it I'll give it a try.
Also: When it comes to video games I recommend checking out Shadow of the Colossus (either the PS3 or PS4 version. The original on PS2 is technically impressive, but runs quite poor). It had quite an impact on me growing up and I personally consider it pure art. It also does have symbolism, so I think it would make an interesting experience for someone as analytical as yourself. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it.
I never heard for Mirrors Edge before Rob mentioned it and I loved it. Now I will play Die Young as soon as possible..
It's two dollars on steam right now
i really like this game, it's super charming. I'm not really into parkour but I like puzzles and parkour section puzzles are rather intricate. The island is gorgeous but yeah the combat and a.i are a bit budget. Hope to see a part 2 one day.
Thanks Rob, I've got a lot of games on my "to play" list but I'll definitely check this out.
Rob, i get this feeling that Mirror's Edge was one of your favorite video games of all time and now you are looking for other games like it. LoL 😂😆
I actually didn't enjoy Mirror Edge very much (I never finished it) and I loved Die Young
what you said apply on capitalism too tho
Hey, about the framerate use the free program called handbreak. You can change the framerate of a video to have a universal framerate in a video editor.
Yeah dude anti communism is famously unpopular and surpressed lol you are so wrong
Two amusing observations:
1: If they used the word "Communism" in the game, it'd just provoke an endless storm of "🤓Ackshually it wasn't *real* Communism, *real* Communism has never been tried!!"
2: The only words you said in the whole video with which I disagree at all are near the end, where you juxtapose Communism with Materialism. Communism is EXPLICITLY Materialist, it just has (superficially) different ideas about what to *do* with that material lol. The justifying rhetoric for why YOU are a poo farmer who has to give his life for me and *I* get to sit on a throne made of jewels has slightly changed, yes, but that's not all - even when mythical "Real Communists" are doing their selfless and altruistic work, it is still about nothing else but balancing the chequebook of material resources.
Great video. Subbed! 👍
Looks a lot like a libertarian utopia instead of a communist one
You might be interested in "anarchism without adjectives".
Cope harder
Do bioshock next please before the movie comes out!
Title of the video has me liking it already
this game looks as janky as the metaphor its trying to make.
I didn't have v-synch on and the video frame rate is 25fps, but the gameplay footage was 60fps, so you're not seeing a proper representation technically. As for the metaphor, it's not janky. If you're into communism you need to pull your head out the sand.
I'm very curious to know in which way the dialogues are badly written. You talked about bad dubbing. Maybe it's because of that that the script sounds weird? I mean, in the end, if you understood the story, and you liked it, the script shouldn't be that bad, right?
The breadtubers finally found your channel.
This video was basically a mating ritual/gathering for them
Goddammit rob i thought you were based, and did not expect this when I clicked..
Seize the means of film analysis
Primarily, Ideologies are what you make up after you've taken power and done things with your power, in order to justify your actions
they might also mean something in twenty years to the nerds that write and read the history books
I love your content. I watch just about every video. The only thing I wish you'd improve is your understanding of socialism and communism. Stalinism, Maoism, etc... are not communism; but rather state capitalism. Workers controlling the things they produce and being fairly compensated for their work is communism, also known as actual democracy. I think you can boil things down to an understanding and identification of what exploitation and oppression is, and them combatting it where ever it rears its head. The society that evolves from this way of thinking can only be an improvement from what we have now-regardless of what it is called.
"Workers controlling the things they produce and being fairly compensated for their work" is one of the false promises of communism, along with "From each according to ability, to each according to need" (which discourages work and encourages playing the victim). Stalinism, Maoism etc is the reality because the pursuit of communism requires an authoritarian state. That's why New York bankers did so much to fund and support the Bolsheviks. They love the authoritarian control it gives.
As corrupt as our western systems are (and I truly can't stand that corruption), they are far better for the people than the attempts at Communism that have been made. Socialism is basically best as a cushion to support and prop up people who have a bad start under market capitalism. but to run an entire system on it is unworkable.
Problem is how exactly do you distribute the food without a central overseeing everything, thereby indirectly controlling the means of production? And how do you deal with people who want to own private property?
@@saisameer8771 You can't because whoever you put in charge virtually always distributes far more to themselves and their partner interests than to the people. They also use their distribution power to restrict people's access to resources on the basis that they don't like things those people are doing, such as speaking out against the regime's corruption.
"How do you deal with people who want to own private property?" Under communism in Russia it was once illegal for an artist to own their own paintings. I saw an exhibition of such work here in Liverpool at the Tate Gallery many years ago. I was shocked. And virtually all of the "art" was just a load of written communist slogans that looked like they'd been agreed on by a committee. They had basically banned art completely by claiming ownership of one's own artistic creation, or even putting your name on your own painting, was ... OMG CAPITALIST !!!!!
What an interesting game, I've never even heard of it strangely enough. Going to give it a try given it's currently on sale. I'd like to see a videogame critique of Communism since I feel it's an ideology that seems to get a delusional amount of support even after WW2 and the like.
Bioshock 2 was also a critique of Communism and the dangers of Collectivism.
After the war that they largely won, you mean? :D
Play, SOMA !!!
Believ me, you will have a field trip with this one.
And by anti-Communist, you mean the ruling class doesn’t want the people to own the means of production? Or should I take your meaning as totalitarianism, not communism.
Communism has never given the masses ownership of the means of production and it can't. The state itself is a private entity - it's a bureaucratic cover that gives more power to the individuals running it. It's like next level corporatism.
There is so much irony in the fact the ruling global powers are literally neoliberal fascists whose ideology more closely resembles actual Marxist philosophy than anything with idiots like you parading it around as if it's some sort of solution to the problem. It's so incredible this stupidity
@@collativelearningeven by centrist standards that is a pessimistic statement.
Cry harder
@@beanmcqueencope and seethe
I have to say that I am a little confused and disappointed that you are against socialism, I could have sworn that your other videos expressed your views as left wing. Anyhow, I would like to point you in the direction of Cuban socialism- they are the real deal.
I thought he was smart and based as well 😢
You have been misled about so many things. You really need yo start paying attention
I said in the vid that fascism and communism are both hateful ideologies (which they are - ethnic hate and hate of people who are perceived as "rich", hence both extremes practice anti-semitism), and I've never claimed to be left or right wing. I have said many times I don't believe in the left right wing model as I see the two sides as behaviorally the same (mass murder, oppression, thought control, exploitation) with different verbal excuses for the atrocities they commit.
A friend of mine wrote a well received paper on the Cuban medical system. They have far more GP doctors than in UK, but those doctors also serve as watchdogs who have people incarcerated, ensuring psychological obedience to the regime. Cuban socialism isn't ideal. It's not even desirable.
@@collativelearningyou really don't know what you are talking about do you?
Just look at the two wikipedia pages, even with the inherent biases we have against anything truely left wing, it will only talk about ethno communisme and stuff as fringe, because the basic concepts do not rely on anything other than an economic organization.
Fascism however is BASED on genetic purety, supression of opposition, and is "Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism"
Lumping communism in with fascism is very disingenuous, and contributes to the normalization of white-supremacist, truely antisemitic/anti missegenation/eugenic ideas.
Btw you can say "I don't believe in the right wing - left wing spectrum". That's basically saying 'I don't believe in the academic research and classifications of these different schools of thought'
It's not something you believe in or not, it's a way to describe complex ideas in a normalized way that people can understand, like we do in every field of scientific and academic research.
@@i2sokZ You're ignoring the well documented history of communist atrocities that mirror those of fascism. The Doctor's Plot under Soviet rule was a massive campaign against Jews. See Pol Pot's regime too for mass ethnic murder.
Communism, by default, opposes democracy. Under democracy communism gets voted out because its version of "equality" makes everyone poor, except the bureaucrat leaders of course. Capitalism creates massive inequality, but the vast majority have more than under communism, which does not reward those who put more effort into their work than their lazy neighbour.
Trying to convey communism as an opposition to fascism/totalitarianism is disingenuous and contributes to the normalization of its version of antisemitism, its ultra centralization of power under a self-serving bureaucracy, its utter suppression of independent thought, its starvation of the masses, its book burning suppression of history, its own forms of nationalism (as evident under the Soviets and Chinese among others) and its deification of the illusionary entity "the state" as God (yes, communism is a religion in that respect).
As for academic classifications ... those change from era to era and place to place. Academia gets used to provide false intellectual "consensus" of whatever the ruling regime is. This happened under the Nazis, the Soviets, and currently in the West - in all instances the funded academics know whose hand feeds and most of them fall in line accordingly.
If you want to see an honest depiction of the hateful communist mindset then go read Catechism of a Revolutionary by Sergey Nechayev. It's a commie manifesto endorsing murder, betrayal of family, and all means of destruction. It's so extreme it's on the level of cult ideology, terrorists and serial killers. And it has been massively influential among communist revolutionaries.
If there's one of us who doesn't know what they're talking about ... it's you, "opposing" one form of tyranny by supporting another :)
Would love to see a Metal Gear Solid analysis 😊
I wanna see rob talk about the tw1n towers being in so many films
Looks like a somewhat low rent Far Cry clone to me
Far Cry is guns. This is parkour. I'm a fan of the Far Cry series, but the stories and themes tend to be half-baked. This one has a more challenging story.
@@collativelearning i might give it a shot sometime. I trust your taste and your critiques and analysis have always been spot on.
It isn't, this is a parkour game with no guns
do a play-through of death stranding for review pls. similar themes to 2001 + has lovecraftian elements and strangely engaging gameplay. 10/10 experience
Really would be curious to how Rob would like Hotline Miami
Did try playing it, gave me a bit of a headache. Btw, I'm currently playing Cannon Fodder which has similar gameplay
it’s so silly to say this random steam indie game was suppressed by gaming journalists because it contains veiled critiques of communism. come on man.
I never said it was. I said I suspect it might have been. And it's not silly. Look at the idiotic attacks that were made on the video game Kingdom Come Deliverance, which showed the ideological biases of the attackers.
lol yeah. used to enjoy this guys analyses but this is just ridiculous
Have you seen how crazy far left gaming journalists are?
@@collativelearningThe malicious media slandering Kingdom Come Deliverance made me buy multiple copies of it. 😂
@@collativelearning wtf do you have to say about CoD being one of the most famous and well acclaimed video games series of all times, despite it being literal US army, anti-communist, pro western economic liberalism propaganda?
These goobers think DEI initiatives and capitalist greenwashing/rainbow washing makes "all game devs/reviewers SOCIALIST" 😂😂
i think there are some games out there deserve to be analyzed and one of em is operation flashpoint. i interpret it as a game that shows that war is boring and simultaneously dangerous as well especially at a post ww2 time period where most of battle is more in the hands of tech rather than actual combat. i suggest that game its an interesting game the way it depicts warfare in the 1980s. Also cheers! i love your film analysis
some of the dumbest motherfuckers i have ever met in my life were playing flashpoint almost exclusively for like 4 months. i mean dumb not as a synonym for young or immature, i mean they were adults who could barely change the battery on a car who fell in love with the game and how it demanded you play a certain style. people will never not be surprising to me.
@@copsuicide theyre brain dead or something i guess
They should just make China simulator
Mirror's Edge for that :)
You could play Die Young: Prologue
Subnautica baby, you know you want to
Enjoyed that game too.
Rob, play Darkwood and make a video! Its kinda of a Surreal Lovecraftian Soviet Dystopian like...
"Nobody is better than anyone else". This is one of those statements we frequently hear that are both funny (for being ridiculous) and outrageous (for being dangerous). Its like those silly arguments uneducated children try to use to fool other children into accepting some unfair bargain - and I say children because mature people are usually far better at hiding their dishonest/shameful intentions when trying to cheat someone. Yet, this kind of thing has a lot of appeal among adults, many of them capable of seeing how absurd this is - but their desire to keep a straight face while stating this (in order to reap the benefits) is enough to make them believe it with their hearts.
Wonder if there are many games that are *mechanically* a specific political ideology. For example I was going to make a game where villagers are individuals and need to eat and work and such. Each village would be socialist, simply for efficiency and simplicity.
Actually, now that I think about it, such management type games are almost always modeled after either feudal or hunter-gatherer type economies. Oh, that's right, the economic stimulators are usually capitalist. The X games, for example.
Thank YOU for a new video game analysis!
you should consider playing the last of us and doing an analysis on that one.
This could be reminiscent of Vietnam war
I’ll certainly check this one out! Awesome review
I enjoy Rob's content very much. Due in no small part to his intelligence and personality. And the fact he dislikes all political philosophies just makes me like him more. Keep up the great work, sir!
I’d love more than anything to see you dissect any of the Souls games Rob. I’ve been gaming for nigh on 35 years now, and I don’t necessarily think viewing gaming through the same lens you’d look at other forms of media with is the right choice.
I know the souls games inside and out (including information pertaining to the key personnel involved in conceptualization, development, post production etc) and so an analysis sharing your viewpoint there would let me know for sure whether you’re as spot on with your gaming analyses as you are with films.
I guess to summarize, I’m impressed and mostly in agreement with the majority of your film analyses, but your videos on specific games have not resonated as strongly.
Cheers. I played the souls one about half way through and I know they have their devoted fans, but I wasn't enjoying the experiences. I hated the checkpoint system having me repeated chunks of the game just so I could take another shot at trying to identify a boss's weak spot.
Very interesting. I’ve sort of drifted away from video-games in recent years, but this seems worth a shot. I’ll look in to it, thanks for the recommendation!
"I dislike all political ideologies"
Amen
Should be more anti communist games.
Why?
@@UFO_computerscapitalist brainwashing. Can't exploit people without convincing them to act against their own interests
Couldn't agree more. Not just games either, everything.
I think americas seen enough anti communist media since the 50s lmfao, why would you want more
@@bizzwoofer to promote what? Capitalism and democracy? We don't really have any democracies. And if it's capitalism you want to espouse the benefits of, can you explain how most western capitalist systems are all that different from the inaccurate version of communism that you're talking about? I feel like you haven't taken the time to think through this.
Feels like "We Happy Few"
Have you played Aliens: Dark Descent?
Not yet. Saw some reviews.
@@collativelearning Incredible game, you should try it ^^
So... why exactly is it the most anti-communist?
Because, more than any other vid game I've ever played, it 's story presents communism as murderous, evil and deceptive. Thought that was obvious from the vid.
Nice analysys though tbf this game has very mediocore gameplay so that could explain lack of coverage and I wouldn't rely on steam reviews since they often tend to be much more positive than game deserves because of binary rating system.
Looks like it could transition to 3D type game imo
I bought it, and has anyone told you that you look like Robert Ginty?
Been told over the years I look like Robert Ginty, Dennis Quaid, Roddy Piper, Han Solo.
I'll have a go of it, kill some cap...time. Interested to know if you played The Thing on PC Rob?
Best game ever.