Charlie Brooker

[susie_flo]

G sent me this amusing little Brooker-rant about video gaming, along with the comment "I read him ranting and I can hear your voice"....    (flattering, but I fear I will never fully scale his heights of joyous, foul-mouthed vitriol).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/12/games

This bit made me chuckle...   "The irony is that every time I read some dumb anti-gaming proclamation by Vaz and co,  I get so angry I have to fire up GTA IV and shoot 29 pedestrians in the face just to vent the frustration they've caused. Thank God these games exist, or I would be taking it out on real people."

If I am to be honest though, I do personally struggle with ambivalent thoughts about gaming violence...    having spent many a happy weekend perfecting the use of my M16 or 12 bore shotgun on game-baddies... or extolling the infinite joys of the sniper rifle, I would nonetheless struggle to explain myself to my gran.   In fact, beyond the deeply nerdy joy of choosing the right weapon for the job and perfecting the hand-eye coordination to get in a good head shot, I don't think I get any kick at all out of gaming violence..  In real life I am as pacifist as could be.

Could it be that human beings are actually three dimensional beings capable of understanding the difference between pixels and the physical world?

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

I do personally struggle with ambivalent thoughts about gaming violence...

Me too -- I mean, shotgun, sniper rifle, knife from behind or the personal touch of the crowbar to the face? It's these difficult decisions that you have to make.

I'm thrilled because they just announced a sequel to one of my favourite games ever "Beyond Good and Evil".

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! You're right - difficult decisions indeed! And frankly it's hard to upstage good old Gordon Freeman taking on the alien masses with nothing but a crowbar :-)

I've never played Beyond Good and Evil... I just googled it and thought that the gameplay sounded pretty good, but I've long nurtured an unjustifiable prejudice against games that have that "bibbly-bobbly" look and feel that Nintendo games always seem to have.... you know, little fat brightly-coloured people running around and jumping on gold coins all day. (Am I missing out?)

I can't wait for the new Lara game... she will always be my first love. (Also there is an interesting-sounding game coming out this autumn called Alan Wake, which I have my eye on.)

[steer.livejournal.com]

Beyond Good and Evil is awesome. Try the demo on your PC

http://www.ubi.com/US/Downloads/Info.aspx?dlId=92

I know what you mean about the graphics though. It's not that type of game -- it does have the graphics from that type of game.

I was never a fan of Lara though... I don't know why. I think there's too much "jump precisely over that cliff and not one pixel to the left".

Oh, if you liked Half Life 2, you might laugh at
http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2005-05-01

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

That half life comic is hilarious!

I know what you mean about Lara - the early PC games were exactly like that! It's a totally different engine on the consoles though, and I suspect even the PC versions may be a different experience in the later games.