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Tuesday 29 May, 2012
I was hoping to beat this game first time through killing everyone, since I’m kinda OCD about that sort of thing, plus I wanted to grind for xp in case a tough battle was near the end. After that, I wanted to play through again, but without killing anyone, but as it stands, it is taking way too long on the first run through. The game has only gotten more tedious. The characters are getting less and less interesting. Initially, I was hoping for “misunderstood anti-heroes,” wherein their side of the story explains their behavior. However, the game developer doesn’t understand the slightest thing about subtlety, even if these are taken straight from the real people’s mouths. A major problem with this game is its attempt to present a fair, objective look at how people are driven to such a drastic action such as a school shooting. These kids are socially tortured, but coming from a young life of ridicule myself, from understanding loving parents (as they mentioned they had), I consider these kids immature, whiny, and frankly psychotic teens. Would if I could, before the killings, I would say “suck it up, because you’ve got it WAY better than so many people in the world right now. First world problems you stupid dinguses.” I mean, the psychotic part is a given (despite their claims otherwise in the game). The problem with presenting them as anti-heroes lies in the game developers inability to show ANY redeeming qualities WHATSOEVER. In essence, the game fosters more hate than understanding in my opinion. That being the case, I feel my time wasted, wherein I could have learned much more and been a better person for it if I didn’t waste the time grinding through these “enemies” and spent more time actually learning about the events and actual people from a more reputable source and format. This breeds more contempt (from me at least) since it’s only making the game community’s image look worse. The game brings up the teens’ obsessions with movies, music, and games, the stereotypical ones that are to blame in situations like this (Doom, Marilyn Manson, Apocalypse Now, etc…), but uses these as the character’s motivations. It puts across that these spurned their actions on.
Oh, and the IRONY. I CAN’T STAND THE IRONY AND THE HIPOCRISY. The characters keep making mention of how people talk too much, so they deserve to die, or how they work mindless jobs and deserve to die, or far worse, they’re bullies and deserve to die. I’d like to focus on that last one. Now, I’m not quite sure of the actual demographic of victims in the shootings, but it seems that my characters gun down both jocks and innocent children alike, as they keep mentioning how they are in the process of shooting everyone in sight (something I’m unfortunately abiding by for some arbitrary devotion to the pitiful story). Upon capturing jocks in the process of bullying another child (apparently blissfully unaware of the gunshots ringing out), my characters blow them away. The child they’re bullying? Allowed to leave, with gratitude and all for killing the bullies. My characters apparently don’t realize that shooting people is by far a much worse version of bullying, and furthers my RAGE for this game. It shouldn’t exist. Not because it’s irreverent, but because it’s badly made and does no good to anybody, even the experimental game crowd. It serves its sole purpose as a topic for ethical game design, though I feel the main problem isn’t the content, but the attention paid to it and how it wastes the individual’s time which could be spent on more productive sources on the topic or more entertaining games. Well, more tomorrow. Hopefully I can finish this game in the next playthrough, because I almost fell asleep during the last hour or so playthrough.
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