Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1321https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4444While playing SCMRPG, I reached the point in which you watch a flashback of one of the boys getting mae fun of the beat up by a bunch of jocks. I really think that putting these flashbacks gives this game a lot of realism and allows the player to understand the feelings of the characters. Not saying that I'm trying to justify the shooting, but rather saying that it is that emotional bond that you feel in many video games that make the game good. I finally got to the hell level today. It was at this point of the game that I realized that all the realism had vanished, which made te game a little more fun to play. Instead of killing more innocent students at Columbine, you killed many iconic enemies from the game Doom. I even got to meet Pikachu, Mario, Malcolm X, John Lennon, and Mega Man. The amount of realism in this game was already pretty iffy. In terms of historical events, the creator of this game did a very good job at including various quotes, times of certain events, flashbacks, news flashes (mainly the one with Bill Clinton), and so on. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure, from what I recall, the twosome only killed 13 people or so. In the game, you can kill every janitor, teacher, and student you come across. Also, the game play of the game isn't all too realistic. I'm pretty sure everyone was hiding or trying to get out during the shooting, not just running around in circles. Once you get the hell, the realism of the game goes with you. Though, I'm not sure how I feel about this part of the game ethically. One way of seeing it is because it's not taking place during the shooting anymore, it isn't effecting those who were involved in the shooting, as well as generally lightens the mood of the game by allowing the character to live out this odd but funny situation. But at the same time, I think this level is like a mockery of the two, in which being mocked was the whole reason they decided to shot up the school. Finally, I got to the very end of the game and defeated South Park Satan. The game ends back at Columbine where many parents, victims, and others were talking about gun control, violence in video games, and Marilyn Manson's music. My final thoughts on this game is that because the game is so linear it struck me as boring and repetitive. I continually found myself just mashing the "Auto Play" button to speed up the game a little. Though the first half of the game was historically accurate, the game itself could have been a much better representation of Columbine if the graphics were updated and the battle system was more of a hack and slash rather than a turn based system. Also, I want to mention that I do not think that this game controversial/offensive due to the content of what the game is about, but more on the lines of implying stereotypes on violent video games and rock music, as well as the idea of labeling everyone on the game by the cliques they belong to.Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:30:17 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4444&iddiary=8354https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4444Today I played the game for another 30 minutes. All I did the entire time was kill people. That was it. I did not progress through the game at all. There are way too many room with way too many people to kill. This game is getting really boring really fast. Though I did notice a few things. Almost all of the enemies are kids from different cliques. Jock type, Nerdy Girl, Goody Goody Girl, and Church Girl a few examples that I can think off the top of my head. I found the labels of the enemies more offensive than the violence and dead people all over the floor. Though I understand why the programmer(s) of the game decided to do this, it really is the only aspect of the game that I find to be the most offensive because it has the most realistic value. Another thing too add to that is that I found the fact that if you equip the Marilyn Mason CD and/or the Doom game to the characters their stats go up. This basically implies that kids who listen to Marilyn Manson and play Doom will have more of a chance to shoot up their school. That's bullshit. I play Doom and listen to Marilyn Manson and I have no want or need to kill people. Because this effects me directly, I found it very offensive. I strongly disagree that violent video games and certain types of music are a direct cause of violent behavior. One thing I do like about this game so far are the characters flash backs. Even though you are not them, you get the same nostalgic feeling they probably would have felt while reminiscing on the "good ol' days". It also allows you to see that they weren't psychopathic monsters, theay were just angry with life because of the way they were treated.Thu, 28 Oct 2010 01:07:12 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4444&iddiary=8348https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4444This actually isn't my first experience with this game. I played it once in high school a few years ago when I was either a Junior or Sophomore. Anyways, after playing the game for about an hour I got up the room with the light board and you have a flashback about when the school's theater preformed Frankenstein. To be quite honest, I did not find this game very offensive or objectionable. I can definitely understand that if you were some how connected to the Columbine shooting that the game could negatively affect you, but I don't think that it would affect others as bad. As a gamer, I see the game as an RPG about 2 boys who are tired of life and are looking for a way out. The text sets a tone through out the game that allows the player to feel as the 2 boys do. The game itself is actually really changeling in terms of figuring out where to go and what to do. In terms of violence, the poor graphics and sound effects don't make the killing seem very realistic at all. So, from what I've gathered, I don't think that SCMRPG isn't too controversial in terms of violence. The poor graphics don't allow for very realistic blood and gore. It's no Mortal Kombat. It's almost more like fantasy violence. Attacks look like magic attacks as seen in many other RPGs. In terms of content, it isn't as bad as most modern day games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Grand Theft Auto VI, or Mafia 2. Though you are killing innocent human beings, the battle system is very boring and doesn't really allow the player to engage in the act of killing humans. And because it is a RPG, in order to get stronger you must do what gamers refer to as grinding, which is the act of constantly fighting enemies to gain experience, which is the always the dullest part of playing a RPG. With GTA on the other hand, most players find fighting and killing random people fun as opposed to boring because they can do it for no reason and they don't have to grind enemies. With that said, I really haven't gotten really far into the game so we will see what the rest of the game has in store.Tue, 26 Oct 2010 00:49:20 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4444&iddiary=8279https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4361AN: I just wrote a entry for this game, but when I pressed "Add Diary Enter" it just went back to the home page and didn't post it. This has happend twice now. Has this happend to anyone else? Anyways, I'm gonna attempt to remember what I typed earlier. Sex, drugs, and violence seem to be a reoccurring/major theme in GTA: SA. You can't avoid it because in order to move the story along you usually have to kill someone or steal something. And if you don't have to commit to violence and/or sex, if you volunteer to sex or violence you end up gaining something. For example, you you're running low on money, all you have to do is beat up somebody and that their money then run from the police. Another example is if you were running low on health. The easiest thing to do is find a hooker to pick up. Fork over some dough, park in a hidden area, a little bow chicka wow wow and boom, your health is back up. Now for a combination of both. If you ever find your self running low on money and heath this is what you do. Find a hooker, then fork over the cash to get some. Once your health goes back up, kill the hooker. This was you get more health and your money back plus more. How ridiculous is that? Though I'm sure this type of thing happens in real life. We hear about similar things on the news all the time. Now for a mix of all 3. There is one missions where CJ and another gangster has to barge into some "baller's" house and take him out. Right as you walk in, smoke fills the air, from which I assume is weed smoke. That's one out of three. Then a you walk in a little more, you notice a male and female having sex in the background. That's two out of three. And finally, the whole point of going there was to kill some "ballers". That's all three. I've also noticed that CJ's friends are always smoking or drinking or both. This game heavily implies the stereotypes of African-Americans smoke a lot of weed and like to get drunk. Especially if they are "thugs"/"gangsters". Though I do think this game is a terrible game, it does a very good job of portraying a side of society that don't have the pleasures of good parents, an education, and a safe environment. San Andreas is a place that is ruled by the gangs and the authorities have very little influence. All in all, I don't believe that the themes and situations portrayed in GTA: SA make for a good game. It maybe mindless fun for the first few hours, but it's a crap game as a whole. But then again, it was awarded the 3rd best selling video game by Guinness World Records as off 2009-2010, so it must have some kind of value. Who knows. Maybe the 21.5 million people who purchased a copy wanted to analyse the morals of the game as we are.Tue, 05 Oct 2010 04:50:35 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4361&iddiary=8187https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4361Today I decided to try doing some vigilante missions. I've never played this game before so I'm assuming that in these missions you perform good deeds that help society. I wouldn't be surprised if certain v. missions cause you to loose rep. This is a little of topic, but I wanna mention that two CJ's attributes include Fat and Sex Appeal. I thought that was kind of funny. In most games you have things like strength and defense (as seen in most RPG-ish type games), or hunger and happiness (like in Sims). In order to do a v. mission, you must be in a cop car or bike. So before you can do something good, you have do do something bad. Then again, vigilante isn't necessarily "good". It's illegal, but it can potentially get more good done than just the cops. I mean, look at Batman and Spider-Man for example. So I just stole a cop bike and was told that there was a suspect somewhere. I guess I have to go find this suspect now. I have a time limit to capture him/her. So I just finished my first vigilante mission. All you have to do is find the suspect and shoot them down, that's just about it. I was expecting a little more to the missions. Like save a bunch of hostages from a bank robbery of something. The more vigilante missions you do that harder they get. For the first two missions, I just had to locate one guy, but for the third one there were three guys that I had to kill. I don't feel like this is an accurate representation of vigilante. Actually, I take that back. I just don't think it's the right way to go about it. To provide an example, think about Walter Joseph Kovacs (aka Rorschach) from the comic and/or film "The Watchmen". He is a vigilante super hero who believes in killing the criminals he captures. He believes that this is the true way to remove evil from the world. The first time he ever killed a criminal was when he was investigating the kidnapping and potential murder of a young girl. When he found out that the kidnapper had cut the girl up and fed them to his dogs, he killed the dogs and put a butcher's knife in his head. From then on he realized that it was his mission to rid the world of evil. Bruce Wayne on the other hand (aka Batman) believes that killing a criminal is equivalent to being a criminal. Murdering a criminal is still murder. He also has a no gun rule, which prevents him from having access to a weapon of death if he were to ever want to kill someone (as if he couldn't kill someone with his bare hands). At one point, Nightwing (aka Dick Grayson, the original Robin) beat the Joker to death, but to prevent Nightwing from having the blood of the Joker on his hands, Batman revived the Joker. Going back to GTA. The v. missions are more like Rorschach's ideal of vigilante in which you kill the suspects that the cops are looking for. I agree with Batman. I think that the morally right thing to do is to hand them to the law and have them decide his punishment. Well, that's it for now. Time to use the flying cars cheat and fly around San Andreas.Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:38:09 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4361&iddiary=8137https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4361From playing the first 30 minutes of the game, I can tell that this game primarily focuses on the stereotypes of urban areas, aka "the hood". The main character, Carl "CJ" Johnson, is returning to the hood form the East Coast after learning that his mother was murdered. As the game starts, Officer Samuel L. Jackson recognizes him and takes his money (that he says is drug money), drove him around and threw him out onto the street. This implies that CJ has a criminal background. From what I understand, after leaving the hood, CJ lost all of his respect from his friends and is trying to gain it back by doing stereotypical "gangster" acts. Just about all of the featured characters are stereotypical black guys from urban areas. They curse a lot, use ebonics and incorrect english, smoke, fight, steal cars, drink, have no respect for the authority, and say the N word and "foo" a lot. And they all have nicknames (or gangster names?), like Ryder and Sweet for example. The first time you go to the local pizza parlor, your friend Ryder takes his gun and attempts to rob the place. CJ tells him to stop and Ryder says that he's still a bitch and isn't hood. the mission afterwards is to go tag their names on a bunch of buildings. This is an example of a stereotypical gangster act. Each mission gains you respect, or "street cred". My guess is that the point of the game is to bring CJ's rep up so no one will disrespect him around the hood to make it easier to get info on who his mother's killer is. The violence in this game is limitless. You can fight anyone and steal just about everything (well, mainly just cars). If you kill someone, the cops will chase you and you can try to escape or go to jail. I don't really care for this aspect of the game. It's just mindless and stupid. Now that I have a fair understanding of the game and the story, the next logs will focus more on the missions and what CJ has to do to build his rep as well as the respect between his gang and other rival gangs.Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:18:53 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4361&iddiary=8133