Saturday 21 February, 2009

My second half hour started with Eric and Dylan waiting for the bombs to go off. When the bombs fail to do so, the shooting spree starts. Kids appear in the parking lot, and whenever you bump into one, a “battle” begins. Each kid you attack is a high school stereotype, including pretty girls, jocks, nerds, and religious kids. This is probably meant to show how the two shooters didn’t single any group out, they just decided to kill everyone. The interesting part is that you encounter one kid in the parking lot who Eric tells to go home because he likes him. I think there could have been a chance here to expand on this, but its over with one line of dialogue.

I moved from the parking lot to the school, where you can attack more of the same kids in the hallway and the classrooms. The fighting is turn based, but you have weapons and the kids don’t, so its pretty one sided. You can choose to manually select your weapons, or just go through automatically. The fighting gets pretty repetitive, so I just kept using the auto button to move through the fights faster.

At this point in the game there really isn’t anything to do besides move around the school killing people. There is no dialogue with any of the other characters, which is another missed opportunity to explore some of the reasons for the shooters actions. After playing this far in the game, I’m starting to feel like all this game was meant to do was shock people. The game really doesn’t delve to deep into the shooters motives, it just portrays them as two decided to kill people because “life is war.” Maybe that’s the point, but I don’t think that is saying too much. I still have one more session left, so hopefully I can find out if there is more to this game than just shock factor.

"This is probably meant to show how the two shooters didn’t single any group out, they just decided to kill everyone. "

You could also argue that they shooters also saw everyone in the school in terms of the different cliques, thus dehumanizing and depersonalizing their victims. You could argue that its "easier" to shoot a "jock" rather than, "John Smith, the track athlete who has a little sister, loving parents, and is a fan of Indiana Jones".