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May 15th, 2013 at 10:47:22 - Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) |
So part 3 of this gameplay: you would think this part of the game would be the most fun, and it was…for about 30 seconds. For most of the game there is absolutely no combat, which is understandable because this game’s purpose is to tell a story, not be the greatest game ever. This delay of combat however made me believe that once it began it would be the most fun thing this game could offer, and because, honestly, the most entertaining part of the Columbine shooting is…the shooting. So me and Dylan go outside at 11:something (when the bombs go off) and await the students to fill Rebel Hill. Time for the killing, Dylan says, and I excitedly approach my first victim: a nerd girl. I look at all my weapon choices, all my methods of attack, I am definitely excited. Since I am a conservative for ammo I decide to melee her to death. I hit her once, she dies…cool! Next guy is a jock-like dude. I melee him (believing everyone is one hit kill) and he lives, following with his attack. I figured my life was over when he would attack, because I assumed we all do about the same damage (since we’re all human). Turns out he only does like 4 damage to my overall 82 health points. He virtually never even touched me. I melee him again, and he drops. Awesome, I learned something new this fight. After killing about 100 people (which took about 30 minutes to do) I realized something: this is insanely boring, mainly because the battles are too easy. Even when there were groups of 3 jock dudes, I still won easily just by using my gun and its damn near limitless ammo clips. Like I said in a previous entry, the programmers were fully aware of how bad they were at making games, so they did the best with what they could. That must mean that there is a reason why the combat is so easy.
Again, this is a game giving a certain person’s view on a real-life event, so some truth must be applied to the gameplay. According to how the Columbine shooting went down, nobody at the school could even rival the two dudes, but for the sake of the game there must be some conflict. How could the creators elicit the lack of resistance by the school students/faculty/etc. in real life by implementing combat? Make it easy of course. It didn’t really feel like “combat” because they offered just as much resilience as a dead body. Like the rest of the game, the creators could have focused entirely on realistic depiction instead of adding any combat. In this case however the player would not be able to experience the easiness the real Eric and Dylan experienced during their spree. Instead, it would have just been boring.
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May 14th, 2013 at 10:23:31 - Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) |
This experience of the game was probably the worst I have ever had. For the entire 30-minute gameplay I was stuck in the hallway of the school. Everyone else was in class, and there were about 10 hall monitors (for some reason, security must have been expensive). I was on my way to planting the bombs in the cafeteria. It was a straight shot to the cafeteria from the front door, and yet, it took waaay too long for me to get further than 10 feet from the entrance. I figured the lady that kept going up and down the hall saw me (you know, with her eyes and stuff), so the next million tries I hid in the doorway to other classes (that I could not enter). She walked past, didn't see me, awesome. I continued down the hall behind her, and I get caught again, by an unknown force. A trillion times later I realized: that weird thing on the wall, that pointed across the hall, was actually a camera. The camera had been catching me the whole time. Turns out the hall monitors' eyes didn't work unless they touched you......OK. After figuring this out the section became intensely easy, until I got to the cafeteria, but that's for another time. I was curious why whenever two men who were going to kill everyone got caught by someone they were not kicked out the school, but they left. I understand their plan was to detonate the distraction bomb (in real life) at a certain time, but being caught skipping class doesn't involve the police.
I decided to YouTube videos of the school during the assualt, and noticed that they weren't entirely shy of the camera. So why would the developers make getting caught so detrimental to the plan? I have two ideas in mind.
One is that the developers tried to push the humanity of these characters further than the actual reports held. Obviously, the real reports diagnosed Eric and Dylan as psychotic, and making characters that completely and directly ignored the authority of the school would not help in proving them sane, especially since that was the whole purpose of the game. This minor detail shows that the two had a fleshed out plan, and that plan only involved certain people.
The other could possibly be a metaphorical depiction of how easy it was for them to sneak through the school. We are not them so obviously we did not do the planning they did before arriving at the school. The game's representation of this planning was the seemingly limitless failures we came in contact with when trying to go down the hall. Once we figured out all the niches to getting through it was a breeze, possibly a representation of how the real Eric and Dylan felt when entering the school. This again shows that these two were not psychotic but fully aware of what they were doing, as they would not have been able to enter the cafeteria so easily if they had not planned it out thoroughly beforehand, just as the player had to do with the constant failures.
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May 13th, 2013 at 14:49:14 - Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) |
Starting Super Columbine Massacre RPG I immediately knew there would not be much to expect out of the coding and graphics of the games: everything came off to be as simple as a game possibly can be. The creators, however, mention that they always wanted to make a game but was never too knowledgeable as to how to go about doing, so there is in no way a sub-textual thematic purpose for this simplicity, just incompetence. They make up for this simplicity by driving the game's story through telling of immense detail about the main characters' feelings about the events, before and during their happening, and the environment's reaction. The first 30 minutes I just spent walking around the house of Eric (I believe we play as Eric) and interacting with all the objects that told a story, or at least part of one. The creators did all they could to tell the Columbine story from the shooters' point of view without changing any factual details. This was done largely by taking what news reports and doctors predicted were the causes of the murder spree, and creating a fictional explanation of the shooters.
They didn't do this in the cheesy "Marilyn Manson sings evil music and I love him so I must do evil things" but instead they treated the dudes like regular high school teens. They mention that they agree with a lot of the messages that Manson and some other abbreviated band's music portrayed, but later on in their dialogue they regain all selfishness for their actions: the two protagonists kick the musicians out of their conversation and they begin to speak of people deserving what is to come, and survivalist instinct driving them to do so; their actions are portrayed as vengeance-less tasks, duties that nature has imbued upon them.
Whether they were mentally criminals we may never know, but the game creators decided that the story could play out just the same if the two protagonists were regular, suburban teenagers, who felt the need to escape what they portrayed as a shackled way of living, and just do whatever instinct tells them to do. Yes, a lot of what they do later on in the story is planned, but the overall cause was never inspired by black metal or "Doom", they merely finalized ideas the boys had already been leaning towards.
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Apr 24th, 2013 at 17:16:20 - Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas (XBX) |
For the first two gaming days I decided to play entirely for the sake of uncovering more of the narrative. As a prestigious gamer the story of all games matters the most to me, and the environment should be reflective of this story. The controversy of GTA: San Andreas usually involves complaints about the portrayal of racial stereotypes, and the neighborhoods they reside in. If the story were about some white guy trying to get promoted (arbitrary hypothetical situation) then the environment would be entirely justifiable, but because Carl, the protagonist has a history with the stereotyped individuals, and just about all the towns depicted, the environments are relevant to the story at hand.
This time around, I decided to leave behind all the narrative related activities and do what most others do: explore the possibilities of San Andreas. Step one: get a ride, because running everywhere would take forever. I initially stole and drove a car, but I don’t like the mechanics for them, so I stole a motorcycle. Step two: find something fun to do while driving. Driving reckless is only fun for so long, so I wanted a way to spice up the driving. I tried racing but those weren’t very satisfying to win (too easy). So I ran over a cop. Cool, that got me a one-star warrant level, and police cars were chasing me. This made things fun, so I started driving even more recklessly while escaping the cars, in order to acquire more and more stars to get tougher police forces on my trail. I have read many forums where players have said it is impossible to get to 6 stars without using cheat codes, as the forces sent are ridiculously strong. This proved to be true, but it was my own fault; being chased by a lot of people plus driving recklessly on a motorcycle results in multiple crashes and flying off the seat (and I would get arrested on the ground). This happened at around 3 stars.
The interesting ethical idea to point out here is that the entire game sets up almost limitless situations for the player to do illegal activities, but at the same time it punishes you by sending nearly unbeatable police officers at you, taking your money and guns after “dying” or going to jail, etc. People argue that San Andreas promotes criminal activity to those who are easily influenced, but fail to point out that there is still a legal system that frowns upon these actions. No one in their right mind (I hope) says that every citizen of America is susceptible to becoming a criminal because of the large amount of illegal activities that can be done because we are not given free range to do so, as there is a legal system too that punishes those acts. San Andreas seems like an outlet for those who want to do the unthinkable in an American society, but in a sense its telling the player that it is possible to do these in-game and in real life, and there will be repercussions.
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DTAYLO38 has been with GameLog for 11 years, 7 months, and 4 days |
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