What is better when it comes to game play, realism or arcade style? Everyone would immediately say realism. It is not that we do not like arcade style game play but we would rather have the game seem more real. So this brings up the big debate about all games.

Realistic style of game play is like you are actually doing it. You are actually the person that you are playing, you can die in a few shots you get tired, so on and so forth. In DoD:S or a few other of those WWII games you can sprint and jump but you have a bar of energy that gets depleted when ever you do so. It makes it so you have to rest and stop to recuperate or be more strategic when you sprint around. The game is trying to make you more human in a sense that you can not possibly run, or sprint, forever.

Whereas an arcade style of game play makes it so all you have to worry about is playing the game. You really have no limits as to what you can do provided it is in the physics of the game or the laws of the game world. Arcade style is just a short way of saying that the developer wanted to get his point across saying, “We can do this this and this.” The developer is more worried about the user having fun with the game then worrying about if the game is realistic enough. A few good examples of this type of style are Counter-Strike and the upcoming Team Fortress2.

Now that we have the two of them covered, I was recently in the community (now known as SteamFriends) US DoD:S server and someone was getting mad at me for jumping around and running around to stay alive and kill him. He kept badgering me on how I am just as bad as the hackers for not playing the game like it is real. Well, I for one did not want to die, so I ran and jumped so I would not die and he would get killed eventually.

That incident brought up a very good point though. What style do I like more? I like a mix of both. I love the realistic effect but I like the arcade style of game play. If I had the chance to play realistically then I would gladly take that chance to do it but it is not feasible for it to happen online or in a public setting. The only I think that it would ever work would be in a LAN setting with a bunch of your friends that think that would be fun, but if one of the friends gets too ‘arcadey’ then you can always take him out back and flog him like the good old days!

If someone wants the game as realistic as it can get then it will never happen because it is a game. A game has rules that can be bent or broken no matter what the developer does. It will always be a game. You want realism? Join the army. Until then stop your complaining and play the game in the manner of your choosing because in the end it is up to the people who play the game that decide how the game will be played.