Warco: The Darker Side of Virtual War

It doesn't take too much to realize that First Person Shooters are at the top of the gaming market. Games like Call of Duty and Battlefield are selling by the millions. They are cinematic and realistic in a graphical aspect. They are not, however, realistic in the way war truly is. I'd say the best parallel to this is movies. We have movies like 'Rambo' and 'Delta Force', the film industry's versions of the Call of Duty game, then we have movies like 'The Hurt Locker'. What is the videogame equivalent of serious war movies?

  Say hello to "Warco".

  Warco, short for "War Commentator", is a first person shooter (FPS) game set in fictitious war-torn countries and regions very closely and obviously paralleling the armed conflicts occurring now in countries like Afghanistan and Libya. Except there's one catch: you don't have a gun.

  Armed only with a video camera and your wits, you take the place of a combat reporter thrown into the midst of very dangerous, and very real, conflicts. Judging from the development trailer, this is not a "run into the midst of battle and let your amour take care of it" game (it's a valid genre name). On the contrary, it requires you to think strategically to find the best way to get the shot without getting killed. And it's anything but childish and arcade-like. Soldiers' bodies convulse as they die before your eyes. Bloody civilians weakly moan for help, help that you can't give.

  Is it needlessly violent? If the videogame industry is going to continue making violent, but childish, shooters, then there must be a rebuttal of sorts. "War-games" have been played for ages, and it's not something that's going to, or should, in my opinion, change. War has always had a shroud of romanticism around it, and that is one of the reasons we never forget. But there should be another influence in gamers' lives. If that influence now has to be supplied by games, then so be it. Warco is this influence. It is true and harsh. It is the way war really is.

  So I don't know about you, but I am eagerly anticipating this game. We need more games of this sort; the original sort. I, for one, am tired of the one-man army format. The amazing Half-Life franchise perfected it to the decimal. We don't need another company jumping on that train. We need more Warco.

  Find out more at http://defiantdev.com/warco/.

  Feo.