tirsdag 30. oktober 2012

Evil in Videogames


Where did it go?


Some times when I play a videogame I want the complete destruction of the world, at my hands alone, to be an option. I want to adopt every orphan, gather them to a massive feast, let rats steal the food and burn the children alive.

Jesus fucking Christ man...
Sick minds aside, I think there are a ton of people who miss needless evil and cruelty in games. 
Before I had any grasp of the English language, or could even read at all, I played videogames, and one of my absolute favourites was, and is to this day, Dungeon Keeper.
Back in the day I would go to a friend's house, and we would destroy the overworld together, or at the very least, we would slap imps around until we were sent outside.

He knows what's coming. Lazy bastard.
What held our attention for so long wasn't just the fact that this was a game, or moving colours on a screen, but the only couple of games where we could really BE the bad guy.
Dungeon Keeper 1&2 was completely unapologetic in every way. As we grew up and learned the language, we discovered the story, and were pleased to see that there was no "This 'good' guy drove us out of our homeland because we were ugly compared to them", "The heroes stole my girlfriend and this entire thing is in actuality a misguided quest for love!", or even the ever disappointing "These so called 'heroes' each represent a mortal sin, and grew evil with time".

GO TO HELL YOU PRISSY-PANTS MOTHERFUCKER!
Extinguish every last piece of your vanquished foe, burn his lands, kill, torture and imprison his forces, recruit their bodies and very souls as mindless cannon fodder for your unstappable army of pure evil destruction!
Even silly things like allegiance couldn't stop your army's insatiable lust for blood and death. Bored forces in Dungeon Keeper would fight between themselves if they weren't given a specific task or something to pummel mercilessly. One unit would spend most of their time in the torture chamber, screaming in delight as they whipped strips of flesh from the body of a captured enemy, or even taking turns torturing each other. They didn't care as long as their entire world was pain and suffering.

Of course she looks like this, what did you expect?

Meanwhile, Fable replaces the evil option with the "evil" option. Note that "evil" in the Fable universe translates to "Insufferable douche" in ours. 
Sure burping in someone's face and laughing like an elementary school bully is an unfriendly thing to do, but it's not evil. It INSPIRES fantastically cruel and merciless beating of the face, but that's a favour to all in the vicinity, not evil. 
Sure you can slaughter the innocent townspeople until you're stricken down by brave guards two days from retirement, but when it looks, sounds and feels like beating a sack of potatoes with a medium sized dildo, it seems so fucking impotent compared to the Dungeon Keeper games, where the announcer sounds like the impossible love-child of Vincent Price and Boris Karloff.
You're a douchebag, mister prince.
After seeing a man being beaten to a pulp, dragged to a torture room and whipped until he caved, and then dragged off to a prison where he would starve to death and either be risen as a mindless skeleton or buried in a haunted graveyard until a vampire sees the astounding amount of death in my dungeon and joins to get a taste, I just can't watch happy townspeople call my minions adorable rapscallions and call myself evil as a result...

The delighted frolicking in fields of grass and pumpkin patches
was the darkest point in this game by far.

Real evil, cruelty and plain unmotivated senseless violence is lacking in modern videogames, and I for one am sick of it!
We have the graphics now, and we have the 18+ ratings. Gaming grew to a point where a game can be considered a piece of art, and the majority of gamers today are over 18. The average age of a modern gamer is 33 for fuck's sake!
So what is stopping us from using those advanced graphics and hefty machine power from ripping people to shreds? Why does every game look like Mortal Kombat for the Snes(No blood without a code)?



In conclusion: 
COME BACK BULLFROG! I LOVE YOU AS HARD AS A MAN CAN LOVE A TALENTED GROUP OF PEOPLE.

torsdag 27. september 2012

The Man in the Mirror


Well there's three people in the mirror
and I'm wondering
which one of them I should choose.

I have never seen myself in the mirror. 
I often look at my reflection, and frankly I quite enjoy it, but it never seems completely honest.
I always seem to strike some pose, and far too often my motives seem to be shielding the reflection, or myself, from my true emotions. 

I even try, and fail, to catch myself by surprise some times. 
I might be innocently grooming, pondering, brushing my teeth, or just spacing out completely, before swiftly staring into my eyes like one does to entertain children who keeps sneaking peeks at you.
I then feel my face shifting, in the milliseconds where everything is still a blur, and see the focused stare of a stranger. 
I thought for a long time the problem might be that my mind was far too aware of my schemes to be caught by surprise, so of course there was only one reasonable option left.

I have to try with an altered mind.
I don't drink with the sole purpose of trying to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, but for the taste, or to have more fun in a social gathering.
I hardly ever drink for self discovery.
I do, however, go to the bathroom quite often, as beer is my poison of choice, and whenever I look up into the mirror I'm greeted by someone who seems as surprised as I am to find someone staring back.

I don't really know why it feels this way, or if anyone else feel the same way, but one thing is absolutely certain.

I will keep looking.