Industry Aggression, Nameless Street Tekken Violence and Grieving Through Destruction.

 

It's been the best week for electronic aggression since the invention fire button, and when your industry's "sliced bread" is a big red button you press to kill things that's saying something.

 

 

There sure as hell isn't any "Extinguish" button

 

Something like Tim Schafer saying Activision CEO Bobby Kottick was a "total prick", and that's classic DoubleFine: fun, everyone in the gaming press absolutely loved it and it really wasn't a smart business move.  He spent the rest of the week apologizing, which is appalling -  we don't want conformist corporo-buzz drones providing PR - we want real, cursing people who care about games!  

 

Especially someone like Schafer - I can easily picture him as a bubbling cauldron of hilarious rage, jollily working all day in a building with huge axe-marks on the walls.  He'd design, and laugh, and everything would look idyllically creative - you've almost stopped wondering about the horrific scars of architectural violence scarring every architectural surface - then somewhere yet another journalist starts going on about Psychonauts and he snaps, pulling a giant guitar axe from his back and attacking the nearest surface while screaming "Then why didn't you buy it you assholes!?"

 

 

Rage!

 

Not that he'd do that.  But I do think anyone waxing lyrical about Razz's adventure should buy another copy as royalty.  This is a man who releases funnier games as a joke than Matt Hazard managed in entire allegedly hilarious series, then the audience buys Madden for the tenth time in a row, and then we have the balls to wonder why there aren't more inventive games.  

 

 

 

We would hire a design team, but this photocopier is just making so much money!

 

But the best fight of the week is taking place on more levels than Master Blaster fighting his inner fears on a double-decker bus: Namco and Capcom are elevated their characters past combat and into meta-violence, finally taking Tekken vs Streetfighter (they might call it Namco vs Capcom but come on) out of my dreams and into reality, and they're making it twice.

 

This isn't Capcom vs SNK, where Capcom hilariously answered the question "How can we make the SNK characters stop feeling like weak sisters to Street Fighter?"  Answer: wait until SNK goes bankrupt then give the characters to the people who made Street Fighter!  No, Namco's still alive and they're getting to make their own version and even if I die in the meantime my ghost will haunt the living just to buy both.  

 

I'm already taking bets on how many reviews lead off with either "Capcom Dragon Punches Namco" if the 2D fighter is better, or "Headline writer wishes the Tekken series had even one, just one famous move" if the 3D kicks ass.  "Namco side-steps then does three annoying low kicks to stagger Capcom" doesn't have quite the same impact, even if it is a better real fight strategy than spending two seconds trying to summon visible sonic energy out of your biceps.

 

 

He thinks the rest of the Air Force are pussies for needing a jet to break the sound barrier

 

That's the best violence on the cards, but it's still not the Biggest or the Stupidest and therefore the most Videogame Violentest.  We've got an actual factual Death Auction going on, and it's going on for charity, and it has the potential to change the entire industry.  Epic Games are auctioning off Carmine's death in Gears of War 3, and that's spectacular - games are now so kickass that even idiotic fake T-shirts you have to pay real money for can kill people.  

 

 

Technically you can vote to keep him alive, but 

Just think: we can kill a Gears of War character!  And if it's successful enough they'll definitely do it again (we're on Gears of War 3 now, you know), and we can just keep killing characters until there are non left!  Then we can kill the writer!  I've got it all worked out: use the money from the auctions we can organize a hit, making it look like an accident when we crash a car containing Josh Ortega (Gears Of Wars "writer") into a bus carrying the Mass Effect 2 combat mechanics team.  Then we get the grieving coworkers talking at the mass funeral, then we'll get the real best game ever!

 

Murder isn't normally my plan (unless I'm holding a control pad), but Gears of War 2 brought this on itself by claiming to have story (hell, from the pre-launch hype you'd swear they'd found a Newer Testament) when the whole thing was "Dominic has to kill his wife."  A plot point so heavily foreshadowed you spent the first half of the game in pitch darkness with only Domonic's incessant whining for company.  And just to make sure this isn't any kind of unsettling shock, Badass Native American Analog Shoots-With-Guns kills himself after about thirty seconds of capture.  Sure, Dominic, your unarmed civilian wife will be just peachy after a decade!

 

 

She's nothing but a mindless hollow shell.  She'd have fit right in with the other Gears!

 

On the other end, Mass Effect 2 has the best narrative in years but the firefights are about as exciting as brushing your teeth - something you need to do but shouldn't make a game about it.  Despite this ME2 has affected me more severely than any game in the last decade, but I can't give Bioware credit for it.  I experienced True Death - I walked through a door on a Collector ship and was suddenly plunged into eternal blackness from which there was no escape.  My mega-monolith PC had finally found something which could freeze it, and no number of restarts or option-adjusts could conquer it.

 

I was Really Dead - I had plans, and things I wanted to finish and find out and I Just Died with no warning or chance to save myself - and like most realistic things compared to their videogame versions, It Sucked.  In most games dying is slightly less inconvenient than finding yourself on the wrong side of the map (and more easily solved), but for me Jane Shepard is actually dead.

 

Not even dead Saving The Galaxy or Making A Point, just gone away nevermore DEAD.

 

 

Bugger

 

I grieved by spending the next two hours drunk-driving around Panau murdering everyone in the country.  Just Cause 2 provided the physics and the victims.  I provided the drunk.

 

I grieved by spending the next two hours drunk-driving around Panau and blowing everyone else in the country to pieces.  Just Cause 2 provided the physics and the victims.  I provided the drunk.BMC A Week Of Videogame Violence and Drunken Driving 

 

Industry Aggression, Nameless Street Tekken Violence and Grieving Through Destruction.

 

It's been the best week for electronic aggression since the invention fire button, and when your industry's "sliced bread" is a big red button you press to kill things that's saying something.

 

Something like Tim Schafer saying Activision CEO Bobby Kottick was a "total prick", and that's classic DoubleFine: fun, everyone in the gaming press loved it, and it really wasn't a smart business move.  He spent the rest of the week apologizing for it, which is appalling -  we don't want conformist corporo-buzz drones providing PR - we want real, cursing people who care about games!  

 

Especially someone like Schafer - I can easily picture him as a bubbling cauldron of hilarious rage, jollily working all day in a building with huge axe-marks on the walls.  He'd design, and laugh, and everything would look idyllically creative - you've almost stopped wondering about the horrific scars of architectural violence scarring every architectural surface - then somewhere yet another journalist starts going on about Psychonauts and he snaps, pulling a giant guitar axe from his back and attacking the nearest surface while screaming "Then why didn't you buy it you assholes!?"

 

Not that he'd do that.  But I do think anyone waxing lyrical about Razz's adventure should buy another copy as some sort of royalty.  This is a man who released funnier games as jokes [link to conquest of humor] than other series manage in entire allegedly hilarious series[MATT HAZARD], and then audience buys Madden for the tenth time in a row, and then we have the balls to wonder why there aren't more inventive games.  

 

But the best fight of the week is taking place on more levels than Master Blaster fighting his own inner fears on a double-decker bus: Namco and Capcom are elevated their characters past fighting and into meta-violence, finally taking Tekken vs Streetfighter (they might call it Namco vs Capcom but come on) out of my dreams and into reality, and they're making it twice.

 

This isn't Capcom vs SNK, where Capcom hilariously answered the question "How can we make the SNK characters stop feeling like weak sisters to Street Fighter?"  Answer: wait until SNK goes bankrupt then give the characters to the people who made Street Fighter!  No, Namco's still alive and they're getting to make their own version and even if I die in the meantime my ghost will haunt the living just to buy both.  

 

I'm already taking bets on how many reviews lead off with either "Capcom Dragon Punches Namco" if the 2D fighter is better, or "Headline writer wishes the Tekken series had even one, just one famous move" if the 3D kicks ass.  "Namco side-steps then does three annoying low kicks to stagger Capcom" doesn't have quite the same impact, even if it is a better real fight strategy than spending two seconds trying to summon visible sonic energy out of your biceps.

 

That's the best violence on the cards, but it's still not the Biggest or the Stupidest and therefore the most Videogame Violentest.  We've got an actual factual Death Auction going on, and it's going on for charity, and it has the potential to change the entire industry.  Epic Games are auctioning off Carmine's death in Gears of War 3, and that's spectacular - games now kickass that even an idiotic electronic T-shirt can kill people.  Technically you can vote to keep him alive, but 

a) Keeping people alive in Gears of War 3 is like taking a purity ring into Tila Tequila

b) It would be the worst wasted opportunity since the Street Fighter movie

 

Just think: we can kill a Gears of War character!  And if it's successful enough they'll definitely do it again (we're on Gears of War 3 now you know), and we can just keep killing characters until there are non left!  Then we can kill the writer!  I've got it all worked out, with all the money from the auctions we can organize Josh Ortega's (Gears Of Wars "writer") car crashing into a bus carrying the Mass Effect 2 combat mechanics team.  Then we get the grieving coworkers talking at the mass funeral, then we'll get the real best game ever!

 

Murder isn't normally my plan (unless I'm holding a control pad), but Gears of War 2 brought this on itself by claiming to have story (hell, from the pre-launch hype you'd swear they'd found a Newer Testament) when the whole thing was "Dominic has to kill his wife", a plot point so heavily foreshadowed you spent the first half of the game in pitch darkness with only Domonic's incessant whining for company.  And just to make sure this isn't any kind of unsettling shock Badass Native American Analog Shoots With Guns kills himself after about thirty seconds of capture.  Sure, Dominic, I'm sure your unarmed civilian wife will be just peachy after decade.

 

On the other end, Mass Effect 2 has the best narrative in years but the firefights are about as exciting as brushing your teeth - something you need to do but shouldn't make a game about it.  Despite this ME2 has affected me more severely than any game in the last decade, but I can't give Bioware credit for it.  I experienced True Death - I walked through a door on a Collector ship and was suddenly plunged into eternal blackness from which there was no escape.  My mega-monolith PC had finally found something which could freeze it, and no number of restarts or option-adjusts could conquer it.

 

I was Really Dead - I had plans, and things I wanted to finish and find out and I Just Died with no warning or chance to save myself - and like most realistic things compared to their videogame versions, It Sucked.  In most games dying is slightly less inconvenient than finding yourself on the wrong side of the map (and more easily solved), but for me Jane Shepard is actually dead.

 

Not even dead Saving The Galaxy or Making A Point, just gone away nevermore DEAD.

 

I grieved by spending the next two hours drunk-driving around Panau and blowing everyone else in the country to pieces.  Just Cause 2 provided the physics and the victims.  I provided the drunk.