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Tuesday 23 February, 2010
For my final time playing the game, I went to the library. After killing a few more students, I approached a computer and triggered another cutscene. At this point, I really didn’t care to watch the backstory and attempt to sympathize with the characters. I tried to skip it, but couldn’t, so I forced myself to sit through it. After it ended, I approached the window, where it said that the cops were coming. At this time, I started to get excited because I expected for a really tough boss fight to happen.
Needless to say, I was disappointed when there was no boss fight and it cut straight to when Eric and Dylan committing suicide. I thought that the game would be over after that. However, what came next really bothered me. After the two students committed suicide, I was presented with a very long montage of depressing images from the actual incident. Sitting through these images made me feel horrible about not only what happened on that day, but also for me playing through a recreation of these events in the game. For the first time in the game, I had felt sorry for what I had done.
This brought up an issue for me. The final montage completely took me out of the game and related it too closely to the actual real-life incident. Before, everything else had been in 2D, along with exaggerated reenactments of the events. These did not seem to connect too strongly to the actual event, so I felt okay with it. However, once I started seeing real images in this game, a true connection between the game and real life was made to me, and I felt terrible about it.
After the credits, I was surprised to find myself in the next part of the game, playing through Hell as Dylan. I walked around for a while before I got into my first encounter. I was also surprised when the battles actually seemed like real battles now. Plus, since I had less equipment, the game was much more difficult. The enemies of Hell were aggressive, and I actually started having more fun again with the game. Thanks to the Hell level, I was able to temporarily forget about the horrors I had just committed in the school. Since this part felt more like a game (running through Hell killing demons), I was able to disconnect from the actual event.
In Hell, I ran into several tough enemies, including a Demon Imp, who managed to kill me for the first time in the game. I thought it was a bit unfair, as before, nothing could touch me, and now suddenly, it was doing 80 damage to me. After reloading my game and running around in an endless maze, I encountered another tough enemy, the Baron of Hell. I went all out against it, but not only did it do a lot of damage when it attacked, but also healed and remove most of the damage I did. I was unable to beat it and died, and it was at this point I stopped playing.
Overall, I was not as affected by the game as much as I figured I would be when I first heard the title. Maybe I’m just not sensitive to these things because of all my experience playing violent and offensive games, but I looked at the game as more of a game than a recreation of the tragic events of that day. I thought that the first part of the game was boring and cumbersome, and then when you actually start battling, it was too easy and repetitive. It is also very hard to know where to go, and when you finally complete the school part, the reward didn’t seem like a reward at all. Hell seemed interesting with its increased difficulty, but again, it was too confusing to know where to go and too much of a difficulty jump. I doubt I will ever touch this again, not because I was bothered by it, but because I didn’t think it was that good of a game.
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