Last night, out of a mix of whim and Vista being an arse, I found myself playing Postal 2. I dropped in, played a little bit and then sat back shocked when I saw that I'd spent the last ten minutes running around killing innocent people for no real reason. It got me wondering then if anyone else has moments like this in gaming, where you're playing something and having fun and then you sit back and realise that without noticing you've been playing as an evil ******* and doing some horrible, horrible things. Then when you switch the game off you realise how evil you've been. Vampire: Bloodlines comes to my mind as a good game for proving this.
GTA anyone? Seriously, we've all done it! No idea why we do it, but we do. Apparently it makes you happy? Killing things? I'm thinking back to an article from here, adrenaline based fun...
GTA, obviously. Simply because vehicular manslaughter never gets old. Recently in GTA IV I've had ridiculous amounts of fun using the blades of a chopper to kill folk. Now if there was dismemberment in the game I'd probably take a step back and think "Gosh, what the hell am I doing?". But since any NPC that gets caught is flung off the screen all I can do is laugh
I've never been concerned with this, and I think it's because I find it so easy to tell the difference between real life and video games. I'll occasionally drive down the sidewalk instead of the street in GTA. I'll play a first-person shooter and celebrate headshots. In an RTS, I'll send ten simultaneous nuclear missiles into the enemy city as soon as possible. In Ratchet and Clank, it's great fun to launch remote-controlled missiles and try to score the most unlikely kills. Granted, not all these examples are of killing innocent people; many times they would have shot me if they'd had the chance. In real life, of course, none of those things are at all appealing. I think the major difference is that in the game, no matter how good the graphics and physics, you're still not killing people. You're affecting polygons within the constraints of the game engine. You may think to yourself "Sweet, headshot!" but deep down you know it's no more harmful than playing My Little Pony. Juppun's helicopter trick is an excellent example. He's not really thinking "Sweet, I totally chopped off their heads," even if he says something like that. The actual thought is much closer to "Hmm, I didn't realize the game would let you do that. Neat trick."
Now that was an awesome game.. Just for the sheer fun of the mental violence of driving living beings over and wrecking your car..
i like how this started as feeling bad for being evil and turn in to how awesome it is to blow things up in carmeggeddon. but i see where your coming from, liek a guilt trip on gta when u drive down the side walk for the lolz. or in postal 2, to much to list there.bioshock did that to me to with the little sisters.
Wait, you mean you guys don't do it in real life? Damn.. I thought the point of these games was to train you and entice you to do it on the streets and to real people.. [/sarcasm]
I rember the scene from The Fall of Max Payne when the cleaner shot Annie who was tied to the chair and you just had to stand and watch. That was prety brutal the first time I saw it, I reckon it still has an impact now. Another one which I remember being especially gruesome was the evisceration of your partner (can't remember his name) in F.E.A.R. Extraction Point right in front of your eyes, presumably by Alma. Although Doom 3 wasn't really a great game, I do remember that the personal logs left by the exploration team (especially those in the demon dimension) were extremely well done. I thought they had a real sense of despair and horror and conveyed a superb sense of just how terrible the situation would be - great voice acting all round. I thought the way the zombified team members were acting in the containment cells was pretty gruesome as well, the one that sticks in my mind was the one that smacked its head against the window and left a nasty trail of slime, drool and gore dribbling down the glass. I'm sure there are loads of others but at the moment I can't think of any.
Last night I found myself repeatedly hitting an old woman over the head with a baseball bat. I laughed.
I really hope you are talking about a video game or you had a pretty good reason to hit her, like "Rockstar told me to do it". Did anyone else blow up the excess lemmings just to see their little dance before going booooom. That's when it all started for me. I am evil and I like it.
Or have them all between two blockers to see how much damage you could do to the environment when you nuked them.
i liked torturing my little brother in super mario 3 by repeatedly attacking him and taking all his cards in the mini-game. does that count?
Whatever helps you sleep at night. Which is always helpful. Sleeping people are easier to bludgeon to death.
