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slane8's Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC)
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| [February 23, 2012 12:27:33 PM]
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Today I continued my massacre, albeit boring. I did some external research on the game and learned that the player gets to go through hell once they decide to go into the library and end the boys lives. Grinding was becoming increasingly boring and repetitive, and I knew that Hell would be pretty difficult unless I leveled up, but I could not take the monotony any longer. I went into the library, and committed suicide.
There was a short montage, featuring pictures of the victims, aftermath, and the boys, implying that Dylan and Eric were also victims in this incident as well, albeit in a different way.
I made it to Hell, walked around fighting demons, got bored, and turned off the game. The experience that held value was over, as far as I was concerned. I feel as if the game could have been constructed better, not necessarily to reward the player for grinding, but to give them incentive. Perhaps more grinding leads to a deeper speculative look into Dylan and Eric, more cutscenes that attempt to humanize them. You can give the player incentives for actions without attaching rewards to gameplay, and I feel that the game could have gone much further in this respect.
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| [February 22, 2012 05:59:43 PM]
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Today I picked up where I left off, and began killing people. I am very familiar with the Columbine story, and knew that the boys killed themselves in the library, so I could guess that would be where the game would end. I spent about five minutes killing people before I got absolutely bored of it.
click click click
click click click
And I'm theoretically, from a gameplay perspective, supposed to kill everyone? Yeah, right. The player has no incentive to kill anyone at all. Perhaps this was intentional. In real life, the killings were senseless, and so to mirror that in a game makes a heavy statement about who was responsible for the event, and contrasts this statement with constant criticisms of people who attempted to blame the boys' actions on suggestive music and violent media.
The enemies have names like "Preppy Girl" , "Jock Type", "Pretty Girl", "Preppy Boy," etc, which attempts to put the player in the minds of Dylan and Eric, and the player is supposed to believe this is probably how they saw the world.
I am bored with killing people and do not feel like finding the library yet. I assume there will be a credit roll when I do.
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| [February 22, 2012 12:22:04 AM]
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I turned on the game, and was honestly surprised at the apparent fairness with which the creator of the game attempted to capture the personalities of the two boys. Most people would assume that they were just psychotic killers, brainwashed children, with no capacity for reflection or introspection. However, the game portrays the two boys as introspective, viewing themselves as tragic sociopaths. They hate the world, and blame it for the way they are. They feel they are above the world, above being human, and have rationalized their actions through this mental framework. We enter into their minds, and the game quietly makes a statement that the forms of media that influenced them growing up are not to blame for their actions. Repeatedly, the characters joke around, to the effect of "they'll probably blame it on our music..." etc, which is close to what happened in real life. This statement coming from the characters, implies self awareness, and disconnectedness from media in the sense that they are aware of it's power, and are not capable of being influenced by it to the point that it would drive them this far.
As far as gameplay goes, I set up the bombs in the cafeteria. The weird shapes of the security cameras made it hard to tell what they were for a while, so this level really took me longer than it should have, but everything is set up, I have completed the cutscene overlooking the city, and I will resume play tomorrow.
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