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ryancain's Columbine RPG (PC)
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| [February 23, 2010 08:55:14 AM]
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Today I played the game once more from the beginning, Im starting to feel like this game wasnt meant to be started from the middle, but rather all in one sitting to get the full message of what the creators are trying to do. There are a few things that have popped up this time that I never noticed before because I was so distracted by the controversial nature of the content. Things like the handling of the characters, it is pretty smooth to move around when you have plenty of space, but it becomes annoying when you want to turn around and it moves a whole space over just to look another direction. I've never really been a fan of these style NES games (I've never played Final Fantasy, or anything like it, in my life), but I'm already glad I did. I didn't find the shooting gameplay enjoyable in the least. I feel like when you have to go through menus and menus just to hit someone it becomes a waste of time. This may be due to my spoiled experience of the new first person shooters but I don't see how it makes my opinion any less valid. I know what I enjoy in a game and this slow dueling style sucks the fun out of it (granted, shooting high school could never really be fun, but you get the idea). I also totally missed the point of the hell level at the end until I went through the room again this morning. They are just acting out their Doom fantasies, as odd as it seems, but coupled with the dialogue it gives the whole game a very different direction into the psyche of Eric and Dylan. I don't believe this game trivializes what happened at Columbine, but rather it encourages an open dialogue and forces people to talk about it. Sadly though, I feel that people like me who are more open-minded to think about it like this are also the type of people more likely to shy away from these style of video games, so the creators message is a bit limited by its technology.
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| [February 22, 2010 07:45:39 PM]
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Today I had to play Columbine on a different computer, so I had to start from scratch, but it did force me to reread all the dialogue between Eric and Dylan and it definitely changed my thinking a little bit about the purpose of the game. To be honest this time around I found it a little more interesting when I paid close attention to the dialogue. Like a lot of people I have seen the movie Bowling For Columbine, so I thought I already had all the facts I needed about the shootings, but when I played this game again it struck me as a more documentary kind of feel.
This definitely clashed with the second half of the game after you kill yourself. When I first saw the island I really had no clue where the creators were going with this, but as the segment continued it certainly answered my question. The montage after that was a bit depressing, but in light of what transpired earlier in the game it was a fitting almost-ending to the game.
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| [February 21, 2010 10:03:50 PM]
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I didn't really know what to expect before starting this game. Seeing as it was a free downloadable game I wasn't expecting too much in the case of graphics or gameplay, so when the screen came up with something similar to final fantasy it wasnt a big shock. I do find it interesting (and necessary) that they start the game with the preparations the boys are making instead of going right into the school and shooting, it makes it a bit more engaging (whether that is a good thing for this subject matter is another issue). There definitely is a lot of talking in the beginning between Eric and Dylan, and the AI in the game is not very intelligent, it only took one try to "sneak" past the faculty in the hallway to plant the bombs in the cafeteria. As bad as it sounds, I was hoping the actual shooting would be more fun or more complex, but instead it was an even bigger let down. It was all very clinical and precise, the way you selected through menus just to decide how school children died, it felt weird after a while because I started seeing them as objects and not people (not like the animation helped) which began to play on my head a little bit. It definitely got me thinking about the real-life shooting and whether this was similar to how those kids saw their classmates as they moved through the school.
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ryancain's Columbine RPG (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Sunday 21 February, 2010
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