At the risk of putting words in someone else's mouth, I don't think it's that Drinker doesn't understand that it's a parody, if anything, the common refrain is usually:
"Don't you get it? You're playing as a fascist, it's clearly a parody!"
"Okay, and?"
For a more detailed look at the discourse surrounding the game. I recommend Harmful Opinions' video on it:
Which honestly colors what I'm seeing here, again, this may not be what is being said, but it strikes me more as "you seem baffled as to why someone would enjoy playing the game, and the only possible reason is because you don't mind/notice the fascism" which usually comes with a healthy dose of obnoxious, odious, frighteningly unearned looking-down-at-the-barbaric-peasants-through-your-nose style elitism that I've come to oh so enjoy from games journos.
As if someone could never enjoy playing a game because it's just fun to play.
Now, is that what Will Borger is saying? I don't think so, but it's certainly what was being bandied around at the time, and I'll be brutally honest here, if you want to blame someone for not hearing out a game journalists these days, the safest bet is to blame game journalists, they more than earned that reputation, because nine times out of ten, any drama you see is instigated by them.
It's a shame. Like you, I'm a lefty but I do find some substance in Drinker's criticisms. It's clear he understands how Story works, unlike some right wing shills like say, Nerdrotic. But just seeing these kind of cheap pops to the conservative audience makes me less inclined to listen to him when he's being reasonable.
I have no idea what the drinker is trying to say here. Why on super earth would IGN be mad that HD2 is blowing up? Why would they want to stop it? They also really liked the first game, which was also all about spreading managed democracy but it did not blow up.
The drinker can be entertaining, but I don't hold a lot of value in him as a critic. As in, you don't really get much out of his reviews. I can say the same thing of about most of the youtube "critics". They are all preoccupied with vomiting out content. The videos are short and mostly bereft of nuance and most of the run time of the video is just going over the plot beat for beat. Critics like Film Crit hulk that actually write a lot of stuff filled to the brim with analysis and critique are really hard to find.
The stuff that drinker does is just much better handled by channels like pitch meeting, where they do an excellent job of getting to the meat of the problem with a movie, but the point really isn't to critique or be nuanced, it's just to laugh.
It's bugs. you can only be so satirical of real life things when you have GIANT BUGS. people do know this. but also. it's rather silly to go on and on and on about how totalitarianism is bad ... or nationalism is bad in extremes. then agains ome people just want to be. they know. and just want to get up in the subversive act of play.
At the risk of putting words in someone else's mouth, I don't think it's that Drinker doesn't understand that it's a parody, if anything, the common refrain is usually:
"Don't you get it? You're playing as a fascist, it's clearly a parody!"
"Okay, and?"
For a more detailed look at the discourse surrounding the game. I recommend Harmful Opinions' video on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0iL2NTyWaY
Which honestly colors what I'm seeing here, again, this may not be what is being said, but it strikes me more as "you seem baffled as to why someone would enjoy playing the game, and the only possible reason is because you don't mind/notice the fascism" which usually comes with a healthy dose of obnoxious, odious, frighteningly unearned looking-down-at-the-barbaric-peasants-through-your-nose style elitism that I've come to oh so enjoy from games journos.
As if someone could never enjoy playing a game because it's just fun to play.
Now, is that what Will Borger is saying? I don't think so, but it's certainly what was being bandied around at the time, and I'll be brutally honest here, if you want to blame someone for not hearing out a game journalists these days, the safest bet is to blame game journalists, they more than earned that reputation, because nine times out of ten, any drama you see is instigated by them.
It's a shame. Like you, I'm a lefty but I do find some substance in Drinker's criticisms. It's clear he understands how Story works, unlike some right wing shills like say, Nerdrotic. But just seeing these kind of cheap pops to the conservative audience makes me less inclined to listen to him when he's being reasonable.
Have you watched Sargon’s video comparing the Helldivers universe to Starship Troopers? It’s quite good: https://youtu.be/J55UH8CqqOc
I have no idea what the drinker is trying to say here. Why on super earth would IGN be mad that HD2 is blowing up? Why would they want to stop it? They also really liked the first game, which was also all about spreading managed democracy but it did not blow up.
The drinker can be entertaining, but I don't hold a lot of value in him as a critic. As in, you don't really get much out of his reviews. I can say the same thing of about most of the youtube "critics". They are all preoccupied with vomiting out content. The videos are short and mostly bereft of nuance and most of the run time of the video is just going over the plot beat for beat. Critics like Film Crit hulk that actually write a lot of stuff filled to the brim with analysis and critique are really hard to find.
The stuff that drinker does is just much better handled by channels like pitch meeting, where they do an excellent job of getting to the meat of the problem with a movie, but the point really isn't to critique or be nuanced, it's just to laugh.
It's bugs. you can only be so satirical of real life things when you have GIANT BUGS. people do know this. but also. it's rather silly to go on and on and on about how totalitarianism is bad ... or nationalism is bad in extremes. then agains ome people just want to be. they know. and just want to get up in the subversive act of play.