FUCK THAT CALF!

In which we slay the things others hold dear

Overly Violent Video Games

Let me be clear, I am a fan of video games, especially violent ones. I enjoy slashing a demon with a sword or putting a bullet through a terrorist, but games that are violent for the sake of being violent? I fail to see the point other than to create shock value.

Two games that come to mind are Syndicate and the God of War games. Syndicate is a game where corporations rule the planet (yawn) and you work for one of the corporations. Let me guess, they send your character, Miles, out to fight other corps, but halfway through the game, Miles finds out that his own corp is bad as well and he has to fight them too! (Wikipedia check… yeah, that’s the plot of the game.) In this game, you don’t just shoot the bad guys, that would be too much like other games. So here, Miles can see through walls and control the chips in other peoples’ brains in order to have them shoot their friends or commit suicide. The game was so easy that I actively chose to not use these powers, because I considered it “cheating.” Instead of just shooting the guy, I’m going to make him kill himself. And I can do it from behind a wall where he can’t shoot back. I’m so good at killing pixels.

God of War. Smash smash smash, blood blood blood, rawr rawr rawr. I’m angry at the gods!

Fellow writer, Gabe Cordova, adds Mad World to the mix. “You kill people for points. Accompanied by a horrible rap soundtrack.”

You want a game that will make you feel sick with the amount of disturbing content? Play Heavy Rain. It might be my favorite storyline in a video game; Sony even classifies it as an “interactive drama.” Even wasting civilians in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was essential to the plot. Whether you needed to be in control of the character was questionable, so they added a way to skip that level. (Critical thinking points to the developers.)

Overly violent video games can be awesome, but a game needs to have a solid storyline or else it’s the same garbage with replaceable plots, action, and gameplay. It’s the same as watching a movie without a plot. (See: Battleship). If a game has multiplayer, then please disregard everything.

Just so you have an idea where I’m coming from, here is a list of games that I play on a semi-regular basis: Final Fantasy 7, the Mass Effect trilogy, Ultimate Marvel v. Capcom 3, Battlefield 3, League of Legends, Team Fortress 2. If you’re going to have pointless combat without a story, at least let me try and kill my friends over the interwebs.- TA