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I began at the save point in the parking lot. At this point in the game there are students in the parking lot and Eric has a shotgun in hand. The severity of the situation is extremely downplayed by the game design and the way the 2D pixel graphics create a childlike tone to the game. I wasn’t sure what was going to occur at this part of the game and I began to walk around. I soon discovered that if you bump into another character you engage in combat with them. You can choose to fight manually or in auto mode and you can select the way to combat. When you kill a student you return to the parking lot and the character is dead on the ground covered in blood. You continue to kill students and accumulate points. I grew impatient and uninterested in the game in a short amount of time and began to think of other games that are way more violent and full of gore than Super Columbine Massacre! I then thought about how earlier in the game there was a reference to Doom and a quote that read “let the desensitization to violence begin.” I couldn’t believe that I thought that this game was not as violent as other games that I’ve played. I then felt bad because the commentary the designer was making was correct. I have gotten used to the violent imagery in all forms of media that I didn’t feel affected by a game that was based on real life events. I feel that it takes a lot to make me uncomfortable when it comes to violence because I am so used to seeing it in film, TV, and games. If the game had a different title and did not reference Columbine, would I have been as uncomfortable as I was when playing the game? Is the fact that I knew that the game was based on the real life Columbine school shooting cause me to have a negative opinion of the game from the onset?
Rating (out of 5): |
