Has gore become a requirement for a good game?
Gore of happiness…
Gaming has always been a large source of fun and enjoyment in my life, socializing with friends and passing the time could all been done with a video game. But a question which keeps me up at night is “how horrific things like pounding in a Spanish zombie’s face in, or doing a drive by with your “homies” killing at least 12 people, can bring such happiness into our lives?” Recreating actions and events that we civilized people would never do, but long to, has been fulfilled by video games since the 8 bit era, from River City Ransom to Resident Evil. Video gaming has been quenching our blood thirst for decades.
It’s not that extreme violence doesn’t make a game more compelling for me it just becoming less of a selling point . “Oh my sweet Jesus!” my friend exclaimed as he blow a raiders torso into a “bloody mess” of chunks of flesh scatted across the room in fallout 3. This may not be a very good example since the gore in fallout 3 is somewhat necessary and bloody funny, but my friend - a non-gamer, was amazed at the fantastic blood and guts and saw it as a major stand point, while I view it as a nice luxury. It’s just… becoming a little stale and developers need to stop using it to cover up some of their bigger flaws. Creativity is dying while we buy games that either constantly repeats their predecessors, but the biggest issues is games that lack of what makes a great game and replaces them with violence, and the sad thing is it catches our attention more than the drunk girl at a party does. We can’t deny it, Age of Empires is only good because we get to crush an entire village.
“life is much more successfully looked at from at a single window” quoted The Great Gatsby, what I’m getting at is that gaming is a huge mansion and were only looking at one bedroom, we need to expand the boarders of our imaginations, and get to new highest points with this young art form of gaming. The game shop shelves are cram packed full of the same old, average fps shooters, with the exception of Nintendo’s line of family friendly games for the Wii. So let’s just all get a big smile and pretend where enjoying the Gore of happiness in games because I doubt it’s going to change soon.
~toxic_waster
