Monday 17 August, 2009

After awhile of playing, the game got really boring and monotonous. I was tired of wandering around killing pixelated children, the meaning of which had mostly worn off as I had to start healing the guys with hotdogs and antidepressants. I couldn't figure out what to do, so I had to check out the game creator's forums just to find out I had to check some window in the library. The two guys get into a gun fight with the cops and then commit suicide after complaining that all they wanted to do was get off the "sick fucking world." Then actual pictures of the event are shown, including the bloody bodies of Eric and Dylan.

Despite it being rather boring, I think this game walked the line - sucessfully - between being close to its source material and being an artistic expression of what the two gunmen's mindset was on the day of the attack. I wasn't really horrified at all by the gameplay as it was rather gamey and definitely exaggerated and partially based on conjecture. In the end, I think the game pulled off showing the depths of the two guys' depravity and deragement.

Of course, everything I just said doesn't really apply to what occurs after the shootout. After the slideshow of photos, a line from Dante's Inferno shows up and then a hellish landscape appears with Vodka looking around for his fellow killer, his class changed from "Trench Coat Mafia" to "Demon God." The enemies here look like they came from Doom, a game that the boys talked about quite a lot previously. This part of the game is a lot harder than the previous, real-world portion, and seems tacked on just because the author felt like it. There's a part where you find a bunch of characters (including some video game characters) complaining about how God didn't like them or they did some evil things or didn't worship Jesus etc so now they're in hell. Eventually they watch the events after their death unfold while hanging out with Satan... It was somewhat interesting to see the priest say that the killers were possessed by Satan, but in the end I think the game's author went too far into fantasy with the final part. Honestly, due to all the power the boys get and the philosophizing they do with Friedrich Nietzsche in this final stage, I started to question whether the author saw some truth to the futility of life that the two killers spoke of earlier in the game.

At some level, you could say that the the game's designer is arguing that the boys are in fact evil (they go to hell and, furthermore, seem to enjoy it). In some sense, although we know a bit more about their motivations and their actions they are ultimately the ones responsible.