Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1000https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3706Well I have finally finished the game and boy am I glad its over. When playing the events that led up to actual school shootings I felt a feeling of dread because were actual people that you are controlling in the game. I found myself thinking about how accurate the conversations and the motivations were for the boys that morning. I found the actual killing portion of the game to be repetetive and kinda boring. I would recommend this game because you get to see things from the perspective of the two boys and you get a glimpse into there possible mind state at the time of killings. Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:59:54 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3706&iddiary=6993https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3706Well I finally figured which tables to place the bombs in and was able to continue with the game. There were more references made to the meaningless of human life and this is used as sort of a justification of what they are planning to do. The boys seem to despise a lot of the good things that the world has requested of them. Things such as get exercise and help the needy have seemed to fuel the anger and hate that is inside them. Maybe they wish the world was more like a game of Doom and their actions are like living a level from there favorite video game. I started my killing spree in the parking lot and noticed the several classes of kids that are in the game. There is everything from Jock, to Goody gooody girl and even the religious kid. Its funny cause when I engaged one of the religous females I immediately tried to back out of the fight but the game would not let me and I had to kill her. I noticed two things about the game. The first thing is that it is way easier to kill females than it is to kill males. The females don't even attack you back and they don't have anywhere near as much HP as the males do. I don't really see the point of the sexism but its in there. Would it have made the game any different to make everyone have the same HP? The second thing I noticed is that if you want to advance in the game you MUST use your guns. I engaged one of the jocks and tried to beat him by using just my fists and I got my arse handed to me. Both of us. Even using the knives I still took major damage from the guys. I guess the reason for this is that the game wants to capture the feel of the actual events as accurate as possible so it makes using the guns the most attractive option. Well its time to enter the school.Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:48:35 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3706&iddiary=6945https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3706Well the first thing I noticed about the game was the Marilyn Manson song "The Nobodies" playing as soon you get to the options screen. The lyrics say something about being dirty and wanting to be pretty and how we are dead and we know just who we are. I got depressed just listening to it and that was before playing the game. The song sets the tone and I imagined Eric and Dylan listening to this song before the massacre. Eric and Dylan seem to have no hope for their future. They are eternally depressed and very irritated by everything that is going on around them. Sounds like a typical teen to me. You learn that one of them was suppose to go to the Marines but because of a medical condition he was unable to go. His dad was a Marine and he may have felt that he disappointed his father by not getting accepted. The other one got accepted to a university and was suppose to study computer science but it is not clear as to why he didn't go. One interesting statement that was made in the game was when one of boys mentions dying in "human" form and that actions in our world seem so trivial. Its hard to guess what is meant by this. Have they been so desensitized to the point where human life, even there own, has no meaning. Or maybe they beleive that after we live our human lives that we become some other being and live another life. What I think it means is that there self esteem is so low that they simply do not like there lives and they dream of being anything but there current human self. Well I'm off to try and figure out what table to put the pipe bombs under.Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:35:40 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3706&iddiary=6938https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3630The game seems to get more violent as you progress in the game. In one of my recent missions I was the wheelman for my gang as we went and did several drive bys around the city. It is also deep into the gang theme. You can even take gang territory and you have to defend it from other gangs that try and take it back. I tried to have someone who has never played Grand Theft Auto play this game just to see what their main focus would be. It didn't work unfortunatly because she couldn't drive the car out of the neighborhood we were in and she got frustrated and gave me back the controller. While watching me play she did say that she thought the game was absolutely terrible and couldn't beleive that something like it was released here in America. She didn't like it because of the negative light that it shows minorities in and thought it should be banned. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is an ethically bankrupt game. In order to complete missions you must do things that you would never do in real life. I think this is a large part of the games appeal. You get to leave your world and enter the "hood" and be someone else. Since you can't go beat someone with a bat in real life (unless you want to go to jail), Grand Theft Auto lets you do it in game. We must remember that thats all it is, a game. It should not be taken seriously on any level. I have played games like this for most of my life and I have never had any extra desires to the stuff that I see in the game and don't believe that games make people do bad things in real life. I have enjoyed my play time with the game and will likely play it till I reach the ending.Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:02:27 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3630&iddiary=6785https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3613So I played for another thirty minutes and I decided to do a couple of the missions. I have played Grand Theft Auto games in the past and all of them are violent, but in San Andreas the violence has a gang banger theme to it. For instance one of my missions was to ride around the neighborhood and beat up crack dealers. We also invaded a crack house and beat up all the drug dealers inside of it. We then went and bought guns from some guys backyard that will of course be used to kill other gang bangers. Its funny cause now that I have played the game for a while I notice that if I ride by rival gang members I always run them over with my car or get and shoot them even though it isn't mission orientated. Also another thing that I have noticed is how the woman in the gang infested neighborhoods are portrayed. Most of them barely have any clothes on and they walk around switching with there hands on there hips. Even the woman in the game that aren't prostitutes still kinda look like could be. The men also use profanity and are disrespectful when they talk to the woman. If you sit the controller down for about two minutes the games camera will change to a first person perspective and if one the woman walk by the game will actually zoom in and lock on to them and you kinda just stand there and watch them as they walk by. Portraying woman in such a negative way seems kinda pointless in game where beating and shooting people is the order of the day but they threw it in there anyway.Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:54:36 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3613&iddiary=6768https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3613Started playing the game today and I immediately noticed the racial stereotypes that are protrayed in the game. CJ is a young black male and his pants are sagging even though he has on a belt and you can see his boxer shorts. He also is wearing a wife beater t-shirt. When he leaves the airport he is harrased by a black cop and his partner and they joke about framing him for a cops murder. All of CJs friends are gang bangers fighting for turf. They all dress in a "street thug" style with there hats turned to one side and use slang and smoke weed. In one of the funnier moments I've played so far, CJ's friend Ryder (who looks amazingly like deceased rapper Eazy-E) tries to hold up a pizza place only to run after having a shot gun pointed at his face. Playing the game reminds of the movie Menace II Society. Its almost like a game based on that movie. I am sure the producers of the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas got a lot of inspiration from the movie.Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:24:01 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3613&iddiary=6760