Athenæum

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05/25/2004: Stuff That Does't Suck Stuff That Doesn't Suck

The Ultimate War Sim
from PointlessWasteofTime

A brilliant satire of the current war situation coached in terms of a Real Time Strategy game.

5. I want that "Public Support" meter to rise and fall according to Troops Lost, Length of Conflict, Innocents Killed and Whether or Not There is Anything Else On TV That Week. I want to lose 200 Public Support points because, in a war where 8,000 units have been lost, one of my Mutalisks happened to be caught on video accidentally eating one clergyman. Then, later, my destruction of an entire enemy city goes unnoticed because the Nude Zero-Gravity Futureball championship went into overtime.

objectives (20k image)7. I want my Mission Objectives to change every 30 seconds, without anyone letting me know. I want little talking heads to pop up on my screen - commanders, politicians, allies, military intelligence - each giving me different sets of victory parameters, all of them conflicting and many of them written in bullshit ass-covering doublespeak.

18. I want to be able to build a POW camp structure where enemy soldiers and suicide bombers are held should they somehow survive battle or should their suicide bombing only be half-successful. I want to right-click on the building and open an option that says "Interrogate Prisoners," which will make parts of the map open up and reveal enemy positions, saving my own units from ambushes.

Then, I want a little cutscene to pop up to announce that photos of my prisoner interrogations have emerged, sparking international outrage because several prisoners were upset and humiliated and some even physically harmed.

The whole world is shocked. Because people were physically harmed.

In a war.

So, I leave the battlefield...

...and brush the flaming chunks of bomb victims off my boots to address the worldwide outrage over the enemy soldiers who had their self-esteem damaged. The game will bring me up on a Court-Martial, everybody pointing out that it was I who clicked the little Interrogation icon. I want to lose tons of Public Support points and have every game objective suddenly put in doubt.