Wednesday 28 October, 2009

For my second half hour of Super Columbine Massacre RPG I had to replay what I did in the first half hour, and then continue on. It didn't take me that long to get through the beginning. I went to the park to pick up the weapons and then waited outside the school for the bombs to go off. Neither of them did, so the massacre started in the parking lot. The game told me the only place I could save my game was in the parking lot, and I foolishly did not.

So, this whole sequence might be the most disturbing thing I've ever played in a video game. Not because it was graphic or anything, but just because of what it represents, but I continue forward. The shootings begin in the parking lot and end when you decide to kill yourself in the library. I switched between attacking automatically and manually, and eventually three "jocks" killed me in the lunch room. So I had to start over again. After dying a few more times, the half hour ran up, and I quit.

Why do you think we don't feel the same when playing, say, recreated historical battles in WWII games?

Probably because WW2 is glorified. It's the "good" war, so it's only natural for us to feel good recreating it. For our generation, ww2 is more of a story. We didn't live through it and most of the vets are dying off, so we're more detached from ww2 than we are from Columbine, which we did live through.

On that same note, I'm sure WW2 vets feel uncomfortable with all the WW2 games and movies that have been made, the same way the Columbine survivors feel uncomfortable with this game

It makes me wonder if people will mind playing Columbine as much in, say, 5 years or so.