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Aug 16th, 2009 at 21:21:24 - Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) |
For the third time when I started playing this game I started up with my saved game again and continued to kill the people in the cafeteria. I found the game to still be boring and repetitive. The difficulty is that the game itself is very simple and the reality of what happened at the real shooting is too sad to make this seem fun in any way. In the cafeteria there were a lot of people running around who I got into battle with and ended up killing all of them. As I went to exit the room there was a flashback that one of the characters had about how he sat alone at the lunch table always. He said he hated all of the people at school because they always ignored him and eventually he realized that he was "above them all". After this cut scene finished it returned to the current time in game and they decided it was time to take what was keeping them from death. If this game was being compared to another game like Doom, it is way too easy to compare it. In Doom it is easy to be killed but in this game it makes it almost impossible to lose or have to play over. I never found where to go or what to do in the end of how to finish the game.
Perhaps that really is the message of this game, that taking a life in a high school was too easy and there are some lessons that have to be learned from Columbine. Maybe it really isn't about the guns but dealing with how students interact with each other and recognizing if there are problems and treating people in the ways that they need to be dealt with as preventative measures. The game over all seemed like it was put together as a school project and that it was designed just to show a students interpretation of what it feels like and all of the stereotypes and biases that still exist in the minds of teenagers that are propagated by the mainstream media. The tragedy of the Columbine incident goes further then the fact that the disturbed teenagers had guns. The tragedy began when the disturbed teenagers were not treated for having these things in their mind. They were never dealt with or talked to about these problems they had. The anger and the rage that was inside of them could have been seen by many people they know and perhaps it was simply ignored. The real lesson is how we interact and deal with people.
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Aug 16th, 2009 at 16:58:56 - Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) |
When I started playing the game this time I decided to take a shortcut to get directly to the action so I loaded up my saved game in the parking lot of the school from last time. This game is not really a random killing game because the characters have labels based on their stereotype. For example, you have the jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, chatty girls, and an English teacher who gets killed because she didn't like your writing in class. During the combat in the RPG part of the game, you can choose in a menu like any other game to attack them with either a knife or guns. While I was playing I used guns most of the time because it seemed to be the most effective way of killing the people, making the game move faster. As you level up from getting combat points, you do more damage and kill people more quickly and easily.
The difficulty that I had getting into this game was that to some extent it was one sided because not all of the characters would fight back. When some of the characters got killed they were supposed to actually imitate the real people who were in this tragedy. The fun of a general RPG is that it really is a fantasy and an escape from real life. Even though the characters can come to life when you repeat the game or play again, we all know that in reality these people are gone. This game has to be extremely painful for the family members who have lost relatives from the shooting. Perhaps the message that the creators of the game were trying to send is that when the characters ended up killing themselves they go to hell. I didn't get to this part in playing yet, but when I watched the trailer it was mentioned that this is what happens to the two main characters who kill themselves at the end of their shooting.
Ultimately, the idea behind any RPG is that you can identify with the characters, have fun with the action involved in the game, and appreciate the animation or skill level that is required to play the game. However, I found that because what this game represented it was really not a game to me but I viewed this as an assignment more then a game. I don't know if I would have ever chosen to play this game on my own but it is very clear from the name of it what the intention is to get people to think about guns. There has always been a lot of controversy about whether video games encourage and promote killing. It seems that the underlying message here is that if you have people who have mental health problems it doesn't matter if they have access to guns or not, there can still be violent problems. Playing a RPG with guns and weapons doesn't make somebody depressed, full of angst, or want to go out and pull a copy cat crime.
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Aug 15th, 2009 at 21:44:58 - Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) |
Given the name of this game my expectations were that this was going to be not only a violent game, but one that tries to send a message with a psychological spin. The game starts like any RPG where you are acquainted with the characters surroundings and given some information about them and what will happen. The fact that these are not just animated characters changes how I approach playing this game. Having read so much and seen so many reports on these massacres there is a level of discomfort knowing what the outcome and the result are going to be. When the game starts off by saying "this is the big day" I didn't feel a sense of excitement about playing it. I felt like I was evaluating the game like I would evaluate a news story to see what would happen and what was the reason for what would eventually take place. When you play this game there is the assumption that you have a complete history of the drama, the outcome, and the changes that haven taken place in high schools over the past 10 years. There are a lot of sexist, predictable, and very basic gaming stereotypes that are thrown into this game. For example, having a group of girls talking in the bathroom probably gossiping about something going on. In the boys bathroom there was a group of jocks beating up and bullying a nerdy kid who you let run to safety after you kill the jocks.
In order to start the game properly you must setup bombs in the cafeteria. On the way there you must avoid being seen by cameras in the hall or running into hall monitors in the school. If you are caught then you are sent outside the school and must start over again. After this is complete you go back to the car and across the street to a park where you gear up with all of your guns from the duffel bags you brought. This setup is very slow moving and the whole point of the game seems to be the action, shooting, and the fighting. This part of the game just seems like a perfunctory segment of a RPG to get the characters involved in the story. After going into battles with all of the people I came into contact with for 30 minutes, I became very bored with the repetitive game play.
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Jul 26th, 2009 at 22:34:17 - Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2) |
For my third session I decided to play like I would play any video game as if it were for enjoyment as opposed to it being an assignment for homework. On a very basic level the game is thoroughly enjoyable because there is a defined storyline, well thought out characters and an unparalleled amount of freedom. The fun comes with the creativity that can be put in by anyone playing this game making the characters look or do what you want them to do. When I was playing for fun, I’m not focusing on the stereotypes or the skin color of the gang members or the type of languages or actions involved. While this type of violence and gang activity is a genuine and serious problem, the way the game is put to together it can almost appear as a sketch on Saturday night live.
The fact that you can keep starting over after you die or fail a mission makes this game similar to a Mario concept. The difference between this is that there aren’t stars or creatures in this game. Grand Theft Auto is filled with human goombas and machine guns instead of mushroom power ups. The immediate scenery in the game is designed to look like South Central Los Angeles in the early 1990s. There are various different missions that you can play which is comparable to any role playing game. The fact that gang members are being killed during these missions is only troublesome because it is rewarding the player for reckless disregard of human life.
There is a difference when you talk about death in terms of massive people being killed in a war or when you humanize each person’s story. Since the war in Iraq many television stations have been trying to portray the fallen heroes as unique individuals by giving small pieces of their life story to the listening audience. This makes each persons death more meaningful and emotional. When random numbers of deaths are announced, it’s easy for a person to get numb when they keep hearing year after year about the people being killed. This same type of response can occur after playing a game like this if you just keep seeing masses of people being killed with no repercussions. The fact that the characters are humanized still doesn’t change the nature of the actions in the game.
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IGORANDR has been with GameLog for 15 years, 4 months, and 2 days |
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