gametaroo!

Over the years, videogames have thrown all kinds of awesome weaponry our way - bionic arms that can toss cars over buildings; gravity guns; mining equipment that handily slices off limbs and swathes of stonking great machine-guns that allow us to squeeze off round after round like some kind of pumped up action hero.  Such tools of destruction make up a large part of the life-blood of videogames – an art-form with a (possibly unhealthy) obsession with blowing things up and shooting things down; they are the paint brushes with which we must approach the canvas of videogame worlds and therefore play a key part in our relationship with them.

But not all the weapons that are laid at our disposal are so grandiose…so attention seeking.  It is with this in mind, that I would like to celebrate the humble fixed gun emplacement.  Though featured in countless games, they manage to nestle quietly – almost unseen – amongst the showboating, screen-grabbing antics of more portable, eager-to-please pieces of virtual weaponry.  They can be found dotting battlefields –  be it the war-torn deserts and mountain-scapes of the Battlefield series; the cold, purple, futuristic architecture of Halo or the grimy, greasy horrors of KillZone and Gears of War - silently, inconspicuously waiting for a player to step up to the plate and take on the challenge that they present.

Even Halo’s much-mocked Grunts know the place to be is standing behind a flippin’ HUGE great MOUNTED laser cannon…

By their very nature, fixed-position weaponry come with a sense of drama, intrigue and danger that simply isn’t possessed by more standard guns, offering up a curious dichotomy of extreme firepower tempered by extreme vulnerability.  The former element is easily identified in the firestorm that fixed-weaponry can usually unleash.  The latter is a little more complex; firstly, there is the inability to move - assuming control of such a device you become a frozen giant; a heavy-weight boxer whose feet have been glued to the canvas.  On top of this, more often than not the aiming of your weapon is also restricted, meaning that you will always be left relying on a degree of luck, waiting patiently for a foe to wander naively into your line of fire so you can unleash the power that lies at the tip of your trigger finger.  And then there’s the fact that, for enemies with a penchant for sneaking around the back, the fixed-position gunner is little more than a bento-box waiting to be snacked on; standing there stock still like an Eye of Sauron that can only look in one direction, giving pesky hobbits liberty to wander up and dispose of their accursed jewellery as if it were a Sunday afternoon stroll.

So, while great power may well bring great responsibility, the gamer stepping up to the fixed gun emplacement has to realise that with great power can also come a whole world of hurt.  To my mind, no game demonstrates the above quite as well as DICE’s Battlefield series.  In Battlefield (I think it’s fair to speak on general terms…rather than naming specific instalments), successfully utilising fixed gun emplacements requires a combination of skill, timing, knowledge of the maps and a comprehension of the ebb and flow the battle that rages around you.

Battlefield Bad Company 2’s Arica Harbor - down the barrel of a gun.

Take the machine gun emplacement situated on a bridge mid-way through the Arica Harbor [sic] on Battlefield Bad Company 2’s Rush mode.  As your team is pushed back, jumping onto this gun at the right time gives you an enviable view of the battlefield and, for a time, a chance to rest safely in the knowledge that enemies will only approach from west.  Scanning the horizon, enemy helmets pop into view, and you squeeze off a few rounds, snagging some easy kills as the unsuspecting soldiers fall at the hail of death spitting from the your gun.  From the first moment you fire off a shot, however, you are sitting on a time bomb, as your position has more than likely been inadvertently announced in turn making you a tempting target for nearly every sniper on the opposing force.  The question you face now is this – do you stay still, and attempt to ride out the ever growing threat for long enough to snatch a few more kills? Or, do you cash in your achievements thus far, and take the cowards (or…indeed…the sensible) route and scarper to the nearest bunker? Should you decide to stay put, these questions will continue to rattle around your head, with each kill bringing an even greater sense that you may be pushing your luck too far; that at any moment a sniper round will take your virtual head off, or a knife will plunge into your exposed derriere.   Ah…the sweet loneliness of the fixed-position gunner…

Which brings us to a rather worrying trend in the wonderful world of fixed gun emplacements – namely fixed gun emplacements that…well…aren’t fixed.   In a move that the developers would have you believe was carried out in the name of progress, four huge, recent first person shooters – KillZone 3, Crysis 2,Halo’s 3/ODST/Reach- have seen fixed-guns heartlessly ripped from their sockets to be brandished by heroes who are unable to stay in one place for more than a few seconds.

KillZone 3’s W.A.S.P. Launcher where it should be…fixed in place! 

From a design perspective, I would contest the wisdom of this; the act of ripping fixed weaponry from their mount may well give you the gratification of strapping an oversized weapon to your hip, but it also removes the mystique that surrounds them; they become just another gun to be used up and discarded. The act also denigrates their fixed-origins to a mere annoyance; something to hinder and complicate the process by which you can add them to your arsenal.   Like any art-form, the most successful videogames have a range of contrasting shades; effectively destroying the concept of fixed weaponry brings about the loss of hugely intriguing element, and, I would argue, is not necessarily something to be celebrated.

So, here’s to the true fixed gun emplacement - the plucky little gun that sits stoically in warzone after warzone like an oasis of calm in a sea of chaos, waiting to deal out death – and victory – for those with the courage to take the reins.  First (and third!) person shooters really wouldn’t be the same without ‘em.    

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Post script

Despite my dissatisfaction with the dawn of non-fixed/fixed gun emplacements… Gears of War III’s recently unveiled Co-Op Chain Gun has me intrigued. This incredibly beefy weapon looks to offer an evolutionary step on from fix-gun emplacements without losing what makes them so special. Wielded by two players – one lugging around a shoulder mounted cannon while a second carries a large ammo spindle – it may not truly be stationary, but it should offer the same kind of risk vs reward balance that makes fixed weaponry so unique.  Kudos to Cliff Belizinki and co for a nice little bit of design.