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Aug 17th, 2009 at 10:43:44 - Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) |
The third, and final, time that I played Super Columbine Massacre, I decided to do the complete opposite of what I did the second time. Instead of breezing through the game by not killing anyone, I decided to try to kill everyone I possibly could. As I had previously stated, the act of killing becomes a bit surreal and strange as the player after the first few times you ‘go to battle,’ and it was much the same this time. However, the main difference was that instead of just killing a few, I killed many, many more. I had to return to the car to reload a few times, and I actually died, eventually. The biggest difference here was that after awhile, I became detached to what the game was about. I discovered that while in the process of killing everyone in the school, the game became tedious and I was less aware, nor did I care, about what the game was about or its message. By doing this, I discovered that the game walks a very thin line. All of these kids weren’t put in the game so you could kill them all. If you did, the game would get boring. Plus, the thrill of the game gets lost. I discovered that the game was basically created for what I did in my second time playing, which was to pick and choose between people to kill and people to live, much like the real murderers did. This brings up the question, why didn’t I just kill everyone, and why didn’t Eric and Dylan just kill everyone? They had the opportunity to, in all actuality, but they chose not to. Does the game represent some kind of glimpse into how the massacre became boring for them? If so, it’s a very interesting piece to look at. Was the game intended to become boring? I do not believe that the game was created for only entertainment values, but instead for thematic values. Hypothetically, if one were to play the game who actually had grandeur thoughts and emotions, he or she may project onto the characters in the game people he or she may feel ill against. However, if the massacre becomes boring, does the player get the sense for the same in real life? Could showing how Dylan and Eric got literally bored of the massacre actually deter future heinous acts of violence such as this? It may sound trivial, but in a society and culture where the media blames videogames, music, and movies as the culprit of all evil, a game such as Super Columbine Massacre, which is a boring game, could be important to discuss and play for everyone.
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Aug 16th, 2009 at 21:49:12 - Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) |
My second time playing Super Columbine Massacre, I tried to do a different thing. Instead of creating a massacre, I wanted to see what happens when you do the “anti-massacre” per se. Instead of killing people, I decided to try to go through the entire shooting at the school without coming in contact with anyone, much like I did my first time playing after I became a bit weirded out by killing the kids. What I discovered was that, while playing the game, the only person you have to definitively kill is the janitor to get into the video room. Even then, I’m not 100% positive that you MUST kill the janitor in order to succeed in the game, which is ironically enough, to kill yourself. Other than that, killing anyone in the game is a complete option, and an option only. Much like we discussed in regards to the game Manhunt, killing is not required within the game and it is completely up to the player whether or not he or she will kill the kids in the game. As a player, one is presented with many, many, many different people to engage and kill, as the player is free to enter any room, which some of them are filled with probably around 20 or so kids, and then the library has many more, along with the gymnasium. The opportunities to kill and massacre people are fruitful and nearly endless. It is only up to the player to decide whether or not to kill any more people. As I had said, I had made it all the way to hell by killing only one janitor, so in regards to the game, I succeeded, because I made it to hell. It is actually much easier to succeed in the game without killing anyone because I thus never risked the chance of being attacked and dying. So, ironically in a game entitled Super Columbine Massacre, the best way to beat the game involves not massacring anyone. In a way, this reflects the real life massacre, too. During the actual shooting, it was reported that the real life Dylan and Eric were overheard saying how they had lost the thrill in killing people and just walked around the school for nearly half an hour peeking into classroom windows and scaring people before taking their own lives. It presents a strange parallel in this game where one doesn’t need the thrill of killing anyone if they don’t want it. If they get bored, they stop. If they don’t want to, they don’t have to. If they want to kill everyone, they can. The designer of the game left all options open, and its only up to the player to decide the path to take to get to the final destination, which can be reached all three ways. So will the player max out and create a total massacre? Will he or she just kill a few? Or will he or she not kill anyone? It’s all up to the player, and putting such huge variables on the player’s shoulders makes the themes and questions regarding what it is to conduct a massacre even more prevalent and worth discussing.
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Aug 16th, 2009 at 12:08:50 - Super Columbine Massacre RPG (PC) |
The first time that I played Super Columbine Massacre, I wanted to go about playing the game as if it were just any other game, completely removed from its premise based on the actual school shootings. At first, I found this quite simple. The animation is quite horrendous, and the written dialogue is very cheesy, so it was easy to dismiss most of what was going on and just keep playing the game. After the initial ten or twenty minutes, I thought that the game was quite simply no big deal. While playing it as just a normal game, I became frustrated with the security cameras, seeming as I did not know that’s what they were at first. I was time and time again caught by the cameras simply because I did not see them. This is important because through my frustration, I really did see the game as just a game and nothing more. However, after I planted the bombs and ‘geared up’ outside in the park, things took a bit of a change.
Once the shooting began in the parking lot, things took a bit of a turn. The first person I came upon was the kid, who we all know from the real shooting that the two boys, Dylan and Eric, told to get away from the school because Dylan, quote, “likes him now.” After this, I, as the player, encountered the first ‘victim’. The first one, in my case, was a cheerleader girl and I killed her very easily and quickly, without much thought. However, after bumming around in the parking lot for awhile, fighting people, I entered the building slightly traumatized. While I was trying to play the game objectively, other parts of my brain started to take over. The fact that I was playing a real life scenario, as well as playing the perpetrators, was quite haunting. While I did not enjoy the game because it was not fun anyway (regardless of the “situation,” I found the game tedious and boring), the fact that I was playing as the shooter in Columbine just enhanced this and got my mind running. As I went farther in the game, I started avoiding killing people due to the fact that I found it wrong, as the killing of people in the game serves absolutely no purpose. I then couldn’t discover the purpose of the game, other than the epiphany that I reached while playing in that killing serves basically no purpose. The game is a very nice constituent in an overly diluted media portrayal of violence among teenagers. After beating the game, as well as going through Hell after committing suicide in the game, I reached an awfully large conclusion that the whole object of Columbine was pointless. Therefore, I considered the game a success for putting the user in the position of someone to find out that the murders had absolutely no grounds of purpose in anything, game or life, and that in itself is a great commentary.
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Jul 27th, 2009 at 10:21:59 - Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2) |
The final time I played GTA San Andreas, I spent that time doing the missions. By the end of my playing time, I had racked up quite a substantial amount of money. Looking back on the game and the missions, the question arises, “Is it right to make money in such a fashion as C.J. does in San Andreas?” In San Andreas, the goal of the game is to make money and get out of the ghetto and off the streets, in order to become a huge figure in the area of San Andreas. However, the means of this include murder, robbery, and other hellacious acts most would deem unethical. Although there are some “good” deeds, including eliminated drug dealers, the character still commits murder in order to do this. San Andreas glorifies wealth in the game. The richer you become, the higher up and more prominent you become in the game. It does not matter how you make the money, as long as it rolls in and there is lots of it. Although it fits directly in with the game play, San Andreas promotes an unethical way of making money through very anti-social and criminal ways. However, that must be taken into account as the title of the game reflects it in “Grand Theft Auto”.
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AreaMan has been with GameLog for 14 years, 9 months, and 1 day |
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