Tuesday 29 May, 2012

In my third and final play-through and response, I will focus more on the “violent” aspects of the game as I feel that by my third play-through I’ve engaged enough of it to properly write my opinion about it. When I originally was able to encounter other students and kill them in game, I was expecting it to be taken more realistically, but I was a bit surprised it was much into the J-RPG vein. Not only so, I thought the number of students I was able to kill, in a way took away meaning from the actual tradegy as it didn’t really “personalize” the students you killed, they were only given simple labels such as “Jock” and “Popular Girl”. Personally, I believe if the creator of the game was attempting to get people to really think about the game he would have portrayed the events a bit more realistically and controversially by making the slayings more realistic, as opposed to slaying countless numbers of “faceless” students. Throughout the game, I was looking for something that add more meaning in context of the shooting, but I felt disappointingly as If I found none. My disappointment was taken further when I was playing the shooter in “hell” after he committed suicide. I noticed the enemies and weapons were modeled after “DooM”, possibly being another satirical reference to the desensitization to violence videogames are purported to have, but in all I didn’t really take away much of it, it was only a speculation to me. I didn’t finish the game, but I really thought the hell scenario was the game’s biggest low point, as I felt the game was originally onto something when it was providing a narrative from the shooter’s perspective in the beginning. But disappointingly, in my opinion, any seriousness the creator may have tried to portray in this game was completely thrown out the window towards the end of the game when you’re hunting down the likes of Bart Simpson and Darth Vader, essentially trivializing the deaths of all the students you shot earlier before. If there was a meaning to “Super Columbine Massacre RPG”, I’m afraid I’ve failed to find it. If the game’s only purpose was to drum up controversy, I think it was successful, but on all other accounts, in my opinion, the game lacked artist merit.

"Not only so, I thought the number of students I was able to kill, in a way took away meaning from the actual tradegy as it didn’t really “personalize” the students you killed, they were only given simple labels such as “Jock” and “Popular Girl”."

That might be partly out of respect for the victims (imagine that all the characters were labelled with names pulled from the school's yearbook?) and also as a way to show the shooters (twisted) perspective. They didn't see their schoolmates as people, but rather as stereotypes not with engaging with.