This Is Fun is a game where you hold the stick to go forward until an enemy pops up, then you pull the trigger to shoot them. It's a good game. It's...

No, wait, let's try that one again.

This Is Fun is an exciting game of cat-and-mouse where you play as a world-weary desert soldier with a big gun and a bad attitude. You must fulfill your duty and gain honour on the battlefield by killing those insurgents...

Damnit.

There's got to be some way we can make this rubbish sound exciting. What do kids these days want? Achievements? Open world, perhaps? Dubstep, even?

Ah! Of course. Satire.

It's always cool if it's ironic.

--

This Is Fun is yet another satirical game made by an uninspired shoe and/or team of uninspired shoes at the world's biggest entertainment company. We aim to deliver a frustration-free batch of safe, profitable fun, approved by our leading council of cynical old businessmen. And by safe, we mean safe. We don't want the player to be unnecessarily frustrated, so to take that to its completely logical conclusion there will be no frustration or difficulty in this game at all. Bullets will be completely unable to deal more damage than your natural Wolverine regeneration unless there are a dozen enemies shooting you at once, and to circumvent this hazard we've capped the total amount of enemies spawned to 3 - to avoid any confusion or panic that may arise from having to deal with more than one enemy at a time. This has somehow caused a lot of bugs, but we'll work on that in future patc- DLC. DLC is what I meant.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "World's Biggest Game Company, I've played many shooters before, each more adrenaline-filled than the last. What will your game offer that's different?" Well, good bundle of money with legs, I'll tell you what we're doing differently. Nothing! That's right, we're going for a revolutionary approach here by not even attempting to disguise our cash cow with gimmicks or extraneous features. It's the real deal! And even better...

--

This Is Fun is a lie that has to be told.

The above is the first half of this game. The player goes through the most ridiculously safe, boring, feature-bloated modern shooter yet. The incentive to keep going comes from the comic relief of the CEO of World's Biggest Game Company, who will be directly communicating to you through the UI, as you are the first - and only - playtester for their newest game. Suffocatingly egotistical and sure, the nameless CEO will hype up essentially nothing with advanced graphics that somehow look worse than before, along with a semi-constant Cave Johnson-style stream of demeaning praise and encouragement - similar to the Stanley Parable, filled with repetitive and patronising tasks with promise of something fun later.

As the game progresses, though, the bugs and glitches of the untested prototype - or "finished product" - will start to cause the game world to fall apart, and as it all crumbles down and the flaws are exposed the CEO will start to panic more and more, trying to hold his fake world together and force the player to enjoy it. His efforts ultimately fail, though, when the player's communication with him is cut off entirely due to a 30FPS-capped videofeed-related bug. As the player is left alone in the middle of an unfinished level with nothing but frozen AI and windy ambiance, they are for the first time free to do and go as they wish; to put their gun down and walk away, to the boundary where the level falls apart and beyond.

After wandering in the void for a brief while, the player will come upon something unexpected. A small island of colour and creativity in the distance, and upon drawing closer, an island of movement. The player will have found the secret hideaway of a small core of developers within the company who, just about ready to quit their inspirationless job, are discreetly working on their own project that follows a similar vein to games in the late 90s/early 2000s era, full of oddball humour and vibrant characters, with motion, sound, and colour everywhere. Upon arriving, the player is welcomed as playtester for this game instead, and the player can choose to either return to the drab, mundane shooter and wait for it to be patched or stay here and try the new game with the bright-eyed developers instead.

Just before the game's last level can end, though, the colourful world will suddenly be ripped away as the CEO re-establishes control and scraps the budding theme park of a game entirely. The developers are dropped from contact, and the CEO teleports you back into his world, with a "brand new" level for you to test - the first level in reverse with a copypasted boss near the end. This level doesn't have an end as the CEO continues to rearrange set pieces to make "new levels", and hints will be dropped with decreasing subtlety that the only way to beat this game is to do as the excommunicated core of developers would suggest, and stop playing this game.

==

Image: Medal of Honor: Warfighter (2012, Danger Close/EA) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOHyD49DaeA

Now that we have a firm grip over the market in terms of audience control, it is time for the Call of Shooty franchise to break some serious ground. We need to stay ahead of the competition now, after all. We're talking some serious changes to the FPS genre while still keeping that Call of Shooty hyperrealistic gritty charm that fans have come to trust.

In this title, they'll play as the field medic.

What's better than shooting enemies with bullets? Unshooting allies with unbullets! Follow your allies around and be very mindful of when one of them may call medic - you need to be on the scene within seconds, or they could die of blood loss, disease, infection, or boredom! When one does, cleanse with rubbing alcohol and apply the gauze in rapid succession through gripping quick time events before time runs out and they die arbitrarily in an effort to simulate feelings of genuine tension!

With at least four challenging levels and all of them nonstop pulse-pounding action, it's a warzone out there. Keep your soldiers alive as they clamour for your attention at the most inconvenient of times to victory!*

(*Note: victory optional. For players who feel overly put-upon by the victory requirements, downloadable content will be made available that unlocks victory)

Flavour screenshot: Call of Duty (Infinity Ward, 2003) screenshot from Forbes article by Erik Kain http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/07/10/it...

Inspiration screenshot: Team Fortress 2 (Valve, 2007)