sionnach

So for several weeks now, possibly months, I've been making fun of the_taintedlove and Sam O. for their addictions to this game on Nintendo DS (I think it's called "Animal Crossing," but I'm not sure) where activities involve things reading mail sent to you by other small animals, gathering food, and taking care of your house so you don't drive property values down and make your neighbors move out. To me, that's the most retarded fucking video game ever. Why the hell do I need a game so I can have a small furry animal do things in a fake world that I don't enjoy doing in the real world? So when gothsicle showed me this piece he wrote about how video games are stupid, but not nearly stupid enough. I felt compelled to share it. I am not, by most accounts, a video game fan. I did, instead of pursuing anything worthwhile after graduating high school, work four years at a video game store when my friend offered me a job there. And while I do own a Playstation 2 and a handful of games, I have never been as enthused about video games as I was when I was ages seven to thirteen. Sitting hour after hour in that video game store, I would have conversations with game enthusiasts, and I would watch trailer after trailer and demo after demo of new games. I read Game Informer while sucking down greasy Arbys food on my break. And it eventually it really occurred to me why I feel severe levels of annoyance towards the modern video game: the pretentiousness of them. Game developers have suddenly got delusions of Scorsese-esque grandeur. I have read entirely too many articles on why games arent yet considered an art form, on why some new game is so cinematic, and watched a bunch of really sappy, annoying trailers set to sappy, annoying music. Video games can have a level of artistic merit and creativity, sure. But I really dont think Turok the Dinosaur Hunter is going to be ousting Clint Eastwood at the Academy Awards in the near future. Michael Bay, sure, but not Eastwood. The event that reawakened my rage towards pretentious video games was this horrendously stupid commercial they kept showing in movie theaters before the previews. It displayed this really bulky, grizzled digital commando traveling a war-torn city to the already melodramatic and crappy song Mad World. I dont even remember what game it was because I was probably rolling my eyes too far back in my head after seeing the lamest part: that old isnt war crazy? clich of a visual, the commando (who looks like one of my old GI Joes on steroids) clutching a burned up doll head. Yes, boo-hoo. It is sad when digital people cant get along and have wars with gigantic cool guns that set fire to digital cities and kill digital children. Is it really wrong that maybe I dont want to feel bad about killing people with grenade launchers when Im playing a video game? Half the time I play video games to give my inner sociopath some exercise (hello, Grand Theft Auto). But the best part is that the war in this trailer is not actually with other digital people. We learn this at the end when our troubled commando meets a gigantic alien insect that he has to fight. Now, I could write a book on why killing super-insect aliens while Mad World is playing is lame, but it did make me think. The sort of war is so sad because it burns dolls and children image is really stupid when the war is with gigantic mutant space roaches. Not to get all Republican, but how does one avoid bloodshed and civilian casualties when dealing with bugs the size of duplexes? If our government cant play nice with some ornery Korean with a pot belly, how in hell are we supposed to get along with thirty ton, man-eating bugs? To Hades with the digital children. Bugs are icky, man. I remember the days when video games were so low-fi and unconcerned with inspiring emotion that the plots and dialogue were comically bad. Part of the charm of the old Nintendo classic, Shinobi, was that the exchanges between the characters sounded like they were written by someone with severe brain damage. Did anyone really care if Mario found some battered toy from a dead mushroom child when Bowser invaded the Mushroom Kingdom for the eight-hundredth time? Did anyone really care about how little sense Paperboy 2 actually made? For those who never experienced the hilarity of Paperboy 2, the object of the game is to avoid a bunch of really freakish and violent people and obstacles on your paper route, while tossing papers into mailboxes. The papers were also weapons, as you could hit people with them, and theyd collapse to the pavement and lie disturbingly still. I did wonder why the paperboy getting fired was front page news when you lost the game, when the town was filled with ghosts, violent-tempered elderly, and sewer-dwelling cannibals, but that was part of what made it all so awesomely stupid. If they remade the game now, I suppose theyd address the fact that the paperboy seemed to have bricks inside the newspapers hed toss to houses, and delve into the tragedy of all the people that he apparently killed with his sassy, newspaper-hurling mischief. But I digress. The point is, video games are supposed to be fun and kind of stupid. Not pseudo-artsy and obnoxiously stupid. The most emotion I want to feel when playing a game is the sort of warm fuzzy feeling I get saving all the cute bunnies and squirrels in Sonic the Hedgehog, or the sadistic pleasure one gets from decapitating somebody in Mortal Kombat. I like dialogue that sounds like it was written by the incredible Hulk, not dialogue that attempts to sound interesting, but still kinda sounds like it was written by a sixteen year old. The best video game commercial Ive seen in was the trailer for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which was basically a bunch of explosions, gunfire and mega-violence set to Welcome to the Jungle by Guns n Roses. Do we really need anything else out of a video game?