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jpwilliams's Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC)
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| [November 5, 2008 02:28:13 PM]
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Third time is a charm, as they say, and I finally had made it to some combat. I spent a short time watching a video of somebody playing the game, and realized I had to make the player go into the park to be bale to equip himself. Strange mechanic, but I went and did that. The two characters talked, there was a flashback of their struggles, and then they equipped a large assortment of firearms into the inventory. The bombs didn't go off, and they ran towards the school, let the first student they saw go, and then inside. I suppose the emotional appeal towards letting that student go was that he may have been friends with them, or possibly an "outcast" like them. Regardless, I just wanted to see what combat is like. So I run into a nameless "jock", who I am able to kill pretty easily with a gun I had equipped. Combat ended, rinse and repeat a few times. So the combat is uninvolved, dry, and is trying too much to look as if it was on the SNES. Still playing those games today, this recreation of old Japanese RPG games does nothing but mock the medium, not the content of what I'm doing. I'm shooting at a poorly pixelated image of a student, yes, but there is no connection or tunnel out of the vision that this game is a parody, a poor one at that.
There is not any kind of ethical rule or game design feature, the game forces you to do these actions, similar to the Grand Theft Auto games, as there are no ethical or moral issues in these games, players just make them up to be similar to the real world. Fallout 3, for a current example, has an ethical and moral system within the game, and is directly effected by the player's actions. Super Columbine Massacre RPG has no such thing, the game's purpose is to kill these students, regardless of how much you can avoid them, and to set the gas tanks in the cafeteria. You don't have a dialogue option not to, and you can't progress otherwise, unless a player just wants to run around mindlessly in one area. Thusly, there is no proposed emotion connection with the characters, mind seeing their perspective of the whole situation, and their flashbacks. Overall, the game feels broken, is unenjoyable, and is definitely just supposed to be something discussed. That said, I think it's interesting to discuss the portrayed perspective of the two main characters, but the game does little else to interest a player.
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| [November 5, 2008 01:44:56 PM]
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My second time around in the game, I made a larger effort to try to progress. I loaded my game, and decided to scavenge the parking lot for something, seeing as the school was nothing but a trap of frustration. I found in my dreadfully incorrectly oriented placed car a conversation box if I click on it. Apparently we were going to haul two gas tanks to the cafeteria. I couldn't even imagine the situation, if our characters are slowed down by this, I thought, then there is just no possible way of navigating through the hall. I beheld the fact, though, that I was simply able to add them into my inventory. And so I ran through the hallway, only being spotted and restarting twice now, and eventually made into the cafeteria. Another conversation was had where we were supposed to put them near vending machines, under tables. I put them both in the *exact* position needed, after spending some time struggling to understand where they should go. Here is another problem with this game. If the developer is going to try to make an experience that people would like to play to talk about, there is no reason to implement game game design choices that would impeded the player's progress, or just hinder them to the point where the do not even care. That said, suggesting to place two gas tanks under the vague location given, the developer could have had the entire table be the location, not the exact tile.
Regardless of poor game design, the gas tanks were nestled away in their comfortable positions. So by this point, I had placed two explosive gas tanks in a children's high school. I'm not even sure what the developer was wanting us to feel at this point, I doubt anyone working in the media could even make it to this point, let alone understand the mechanics of the game. Personally, I would care more about the family life of a Goomba I had stepped on than the two protagonists of this game. So now I'm supposed to load up on guns in the parking lot. I run outside, and grab the pixelated duffel-bags, and run back into the school. I cannot equip my character's anywhere, and try everywhere in the school, and the cafeteria. The duffel-bags are grayed out in my inventory. This has literally taken me 35 minutes, and I stopped to take a break. For a game that's trying to get a lot of attention from the media, it has horrible execution of direction and mechanics.
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| [November 5, 2008 01:29:34 PM]
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Having played the game the first time, I didn't really know what to expect as far as the mood or execution of gameplay went. However, this game had obviously been in the news a lot, and I've heard about its creator and public reaction. That said, this game being made as a parody of the media's resentment towards violent video games would not be able to affect any sort of emotional or ethical way. In a game designer perspective, a player would have to have personal reasons to care about their characters and their actions in a game with virtual ethics, such as a characters karma in the Fallout series. Super Columbine Massacre RPG does no such thing, and even with the brief background flashbacks, doesn't institute any sort of emotional connection with the characters. It's a parody, and though containing some violent and culturally sensitive material one wouldn't normally see to this extent, it only gives the game more press value to be used in television and ethics/psychology classes in school. That said, on to my first play:
The game purposefully tried to impose an older 2D look, though clumsily done, containing poorly oriented isometric and flat objects together. The game looks like it could have been done on a indie-game home brew software, like RPG maker. Also unimpressive was the overall UI, as which the player is not given any inclination of what is clickable or usable. The menu system is bogged down with clumsy controls, and should have been easier to navigate items. Having run downstairs and loaded up two pixelated duffel-bags with guns, the other character and I went to the school. It is here that I really had no idea what to do.
I ran around the parking lot, which is a horrible blend tiled backgrounds and pixelated pictures of cars, and is so revolting to see that it almost just turn me off from the game entirely. Having worked, and still am, with 2D games, heavily in isometric medium, I can identify how poorly this game has executed the art form, and doing it purposefully or not doesn't deter the player away from how sloppy this game looks. Getting out of the parking lot without direction, I was able to run up through the school's main doors, which are blocked by an overhead object, and can be entered through only a few tiles space. I ran into some hall monitors, and was sent back outside peeking through the window.
So, rinse are repeat this situation a few times before I made it to the cafeteria. Here, the same thing happened. There are randomly situated security cameras, patrolling people, and a barely navigable environment. I stopped here, saved, and exited the game.
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