Chris Redfield is taking Steroids!

By TGB February 24, 2009 22 Comments

With the media explosion that followed the leak that Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees had taken a performance enhancing substance between 2001-2003 MLB and its players have been forced to face an incredible amount of media and public scrutiny over the subject of steroids and other performance enhancer use over the last two decades. "Steroid culture" in baseball has systematically tarnished the image of America's pastime and made the nation question the validity of the baseball records that fans hold so dear. Yet, Football and other sports seem to get a free pass with the issue. Living in San Diego I can say from experience that our two best Linebackers, Shawn Merriman and Stephan Cooper, were both caught and suspended using substances they shouldn't have been using. Neither has had to face a great amount of scrutiny after they had finished their suspensions. I think that a lot of Video Game characters now are getting the same pass as our NFL players, their jacking up on the steroids to make themselves killing machines right in front of our children! Though I'm certainly approaching this subject with a great deal of facetiousness, it is interesting to look at how our video game champions have changed, umm, build wise over the years.

The natural finger to point to is Gears of War. The sheer body dimensions of Marcus Phoenix and his crew put NFL juicers to shame. But, within the context of the game, I don't think it;s that big of a deal. I mean, if the world is going to shit and there are multiple grotesques races of monstrosities trying to destroy the human race, I think I would personally turn a blind eye. Whatever it takes to make our super soldiers more easily lance locusts would be fine with me.

The worse offender, in my mind, is having a character start out life as a normal looking human being, and then having them show up jacked up in the sequel. In this case I think that Resident Evil 5 is the one game that would have been brought forward to the house judiciary committee to be brought to task on poisoning our youth, if game characters were taken as seriously as Baseball players in combating steroid use that is. Chris Redfield is clearly on the juice! His transformation from well built special ops agent to a Hulkish muscle bound turret is dramatic to say the least. Trust your eyes, and you'll see that Chris Redfield isn't just scarfing down herbs to keep himself fit. Should gamers care that the characters in our game would have to be on massive steroids programs to achieve their bulk? Probably not, but it's food for thought when your precisely decapitating  infected villagers in Resident Evil 5 with your pistol.  

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