No, not dribbling all over your keyboard. I mean gruesome visuals. Body parts flying all over. Blood spattering. Loving close-ups of unpleasant deaths. That sort of messy gaming.
Over at The Escapist, Adam LaMosca has an article up describing how he enjoys that sort of play. While he couldn’t stand to watch the same stuff in a typical slasher flick, rampaging among dismemberments in a game gives him pleasure.
He isn’t alone. There seems to be a big demand these days for “messy gaming”. Players are disappointed if there isn’t enough blood and detached limbs, some of which can be used as weapons, an apparent favorite with the crowd.
Even Fallout 3 caters to this desire. From what I’ve read, it appears that the best way of dealing with an enemy is to get a close-up of his head and blow it off. Or smack it a good one with a melee weapon. (Yes, I know, earlier games had the “Bloody Mess” trait or perk, whichever it was; that, at least, was optional)
I can do without all that. A little blood for verisimilitude is fine. Going much beyond that is, in my view, unnecessary. How can people enjoy this sort of thing? How can they take pleasure in the graphic depiction of bodies – human or otherwise – in various states of evisceration?
Adam explains it by saying this gives him a feeling of power: “I’m not driven by any sort of anger or bloodlust. I’m not indulging in serial killer fantasies, either. Dead Space’s monsters are the digital embodiment of everything terrifying about mortality. They’re murder and death and pain and disfigurement. They’re marching toward me. They’re my worst fears.
And I’m methodically, gleefully, tearing them to shreds.”
That’s his take. Facing up to one’s fears is one thing. Taking them apart in acts of butchery, that’s another. Surely there’s a better way to do it? There must be something else going on here. And if he’s not driven by bloodlust, how can he, or any other player, really stand such actions?
A friend at work described Dead Space to me where you have to target specific body parts and try to dismember the enemy else they will keep coming. I don’t need that level of realism. I have just as much fun or more playing something like Ratchet & Clank where your robotic opponent bursts into a a pile of nuts and bolts. I am not a fan of gory movies either. I love a good suspense or horror story, but the ones like Saw or Hostel I can do without.
The article’s a remarkably long-winded and complicated justification to “I like to blow s*** up”, IMO.
Me? I like my gore and violence, but I don’t need it (I’m currently addicted to Super Paper Mario right now, and that’s a game for kids).
And, you know, I don’t need gibs. I remember playing an RPG that, oddly enough, acknowledged the fact that I would always shoot a guy’s crotch whenever I could.
So I kept doing it. Not because I have a neurotic loathing of genitalia (I think), but because I found it hilarious.
And… oh, damn, you know I just remembered that I kept doing the “kick in the nuts” move in Bully as well. I mean, yes, it takes a chunk of that person’s ‘life’, and they’d say the absolute funniest things (absolute funniest: “Ugh… THANK YOU SIR, MAY I HAVE SOME MORE!”)…
…oh god, I’m a sick person. Someone institutionalize me.
I remember how a friend of ours used the term, “Chunky Death,” for the Baldur’s Gate games… when the enemy (or PC) was insta-killed below -10 hitpoints and would explode into bloody fragments.
Years later, we’re still using that term.
the blood splatter video games do have a ‘bad’ side effect.
saw a discover or nova show a few weeks back that showed that in WWII like 70% of the first time soldier had problems firing(you know killing the enemy at first) but with video games prevelant into day the number had lower in Vietnam era and by desert storm time was more like a 30% figure.
the new army trainers of the future.
Hm, the gory effects in Fallout 3 are one case where i don’t mind that the german version is censored, though i won’t be getting either version for now, not until i have played part 1 and 2 ^^ (playing F1 currently, bought it from Good Old Games)
I know it’s mostly the other way round but i hope there will be a way to change / “censor” it if i get the english version after some patches are released… if not i’ll probably still play it, but it would be better that way for me ^^
I think Fallout 3 is a little over the top but I think you misunderstand. It isn’t every death that is gory (unless you take the bloody mess perk), it is those that happen with a critical hit. Some is over the top (decapitating a guy with a switchblade is balony just because of a critical hit). However, I find the best way to fight is this:
1. If the enemy is using a ranged weapon, shoot their weapon arm so they dr0p their weapon. Even better if you cripple it so they can’t use it.
2. If enemy is using a melee weapon, shoot their leg. Cripple their leg and they can’t catch up to you.
3. If enemy is bunched up or using a weapon way better than yours – grenades or rocket launcher, or find a choke point and mine it and run.
I served in the first gulf war and I find Fallout 3 to be immersive. Sometimes its a little too immersive and it brings back to mind the real bodies and I have to stop for a bit. But to me when I come upon a body in game or a battle or an enemy (or me) steps on a mine and their leg(s) goes one way while they go the other it keeps me immersed.
Several times I’ve come on body remains and then set out looking for the raiders who did it to make them pay for the massacre.
I always play non-combat oriented characters who don’t shoot first and I’ve even tried surrendering a few times in Fallout 3 (yes you can do that). I also let enemies run away. I avoid the combat when I can.
Real war, real death, is ugly and games shouldn’t gloss it over. Especially the players death. When my Fallout 3 player got set on fire and died falling down stairs while batting the flames and screaming it shook me up some. The only thing Fallout 3 misses on is the wounded. Seeing a person holding their guts in and begging for help or death or walking dazed holding their own arm or pulling themselves along would drive home the horror more. It would make you avoid combat. If it doesn’t, well, therapy may be needed.
Vagabond:
Spot-on.
I never had the pleasure or honor of serving, but I know many who have and honor all for their/your service.
I remember thinking back in the early 90’s when games started getting graphically gory what affect this would have on people.
Since then games have gone much more in-your-face bloody. (not realistic as you say) {does anyone remember that disturbing ad that showed a body being exploded and things labeled “half a burrito” flying out?”}
I’ve got nothing positive to say about the effects of combat in games or movies except as a method to teach people the horrors of same.
I was in Normandy a month before Saving Private Ryan hit the theaters. I walked through the cemetery overlooking the beaches in a daze. Seeing the names, ranks, and honors for these fallen soldiers was overwhelming. It took me 10 minutes to reach the end. When I reached the intimate chapel at the end I realized that there was another cemetery of the same size on the other side of the hedgerow. I could not go on.
I’m a armature photographer. The only photos I took that day were of the tombstones listing “A Soldier Lies here” both in the US and German cemeteries.
When I got back to the states and watched the movie I was in tears the whole time. I couldn’t forget that field of heroes who gave up their lives overseas.
The raw combat footage should be mandatory viewing for everyone. Certainly before we decide to send our young men and women into combat where such damage isn’t fiction, but unfortunately all too real.
Has F3 stepped over the bounds though? What do you think?
I also don’t like any game with gore. MMOs that I play have the usual “they fall down and don’t get up” type of death. I don’t need to use an axe to split something’s head open to watch the brains spill out or the head to splat when using a hammer/mace. Keep it clean.
In the book “1984”, there is a scene where the subject goes to a movie. The movie shows survivors struggling in the water…men, women, children…and they get shot up into pieces graphically. The audience was laughing the entire time.
Well, unfortunately, we are really almost there folks..imho.
I play for clean fun, not for a sense of “I can get away with murder” or “blow them up like a toad”.
Ag, I have some doubts about that “early correlation”. Video games weren’t that popular back in the 60s. And even the ones in the arcades weren’t exactly all that graphic to start. If they said the current war, that might be different. But we also have to figure in how graphic movies have become over the years, too.
Vag, the problem I see is that most who play these messy games have no war experience. So just playing the games may well acclimate them to the mess as it gets gorier all the time.
I don’t know if a _game_ really should ring home like that… at least not if you don’t want it. It is first and foremost a game, a pastime experience.
I want to have fun while playing it, even if it means it doesn’t reflect the brutal reality of war correctly in all detail… the scenario of a post nuclear world is bad enough in itself, but i can still play Fallout 1 for example because i realize it is a game, for one because of the perspective and the old 2D graphics. Take an immersive 3D environment, up-to-date graphics AND put in these gory details and I’m not so sure i can really enjoy it anymore.
I guess it’s one of the drawbacks of the advances in technology to being able to display more and more realistic graphics. At least for me, that’s when i begin avoiding certain scenarios in these kind of games. Strategy games aren’t a problem in comparison cause they usually don’t go for that much realism even in “real-world” scanrios.
If the shocking realism of such games caused players to rethink their attitudes on real war, why wouldn’t that same revulsion cause them to stop playing the game itself? It doesn’t, therefore I doubt that theory.
I’m with Scorpia. “Chunking”, whether in a game, a film, or in real life, doesn’t please me at all. To put it mildly.