Everyone is getting murdered brutally in the trailer. No reason to focus your attention to specific victims of certain genders or colours. I'm not sure about the game itself though. Is this like an old-school arcade game where you try to get a high score? Is there a story to play where you try to achieve goals and learn about the murderer, or what? It kinda needs that to justify the massacre.

They are free to make and release this game. But none of it sounds good to me and these creators sound fucking insufferable.

Which I would imagine is exactly what they are looking for.

Timing of this game seems... deliberate. Personally doesn't bother me though.

There's something very 2006 about the way that dude is animated.

Looks boring.

When they say "the outskirts of New York state," I wonder if they mean "not IN NYC, but you can probably see it off in the distance" or if you're supposed to be "the scourge of the Finger Lakes" or something?

@euandewar said:

More like 2007 if you ask me.

@euandewar said:

And the reaction to the game itself.

It's like livejournal the game.

I'm sure they are hoping that's the only marketing they will ever need to do for the game, and the outrage they are looking for will do the rest, timing just way too perfect. Maybe I'm just really cynical but I suspect I am not.

Seems well made for what it is. Not sure it's for me but each to their own.

2006 was pretty chill all things considered. Good year that. Happy times.

Considering they already got Patrick tweeting about how he is disgusted with it, inspiring a long back and forth about it, yeah I don't think you're being cynical.

"we wanted to create something against trends. Something different, something that could give the player a pure, gaming pleasure. Herecomes our game, which takes no prisoners and makes no excuses. We say ‘yes, it is a game about killing people’ and the only reason of the antagonist doing that sick stuff is his deep-rooted hatred. Player has to ask himself what can push any human being to mass-murder."

Uh.......I'm all for games pushing boundries and trying to do cool things with dark tones and stuff. But it sounds like they're contradicting theirselves here. They WANT the player to experience "pure gaming pleasure" with this game about brutal, hateful mass murder......What?

Sounds like that's in poor taste to me.

EDIT: HAHAHAHA I just watched the trailer. That looks like the most juvenile, stupid thing to come out in years. Getting offended over these guys is probably giving them too much credit. That looks like absolute garbage. YEEAAAHHH IT'S HARDCORE FUN BECAUSE YOU SHOOT INNOCENT LADIES IN THE MOUTH.

All I can say is no thank you.

Pretty much all of this. Can't really add much more besides that, but just thought I had to reiterate these points. And as previously mentioned, perhaps it could be going for some form of social commentary, but it best unravel in some truly intelligent manner by the game's end. The trailer isn't indicative of that whatsoever. Ugh...

Google the game 'Race Warriors'.

It seems a lot of people want games to be art, but have serious problems with subversive art, which of course they say is not art.

That's exactly what they want. I really hope GB doesn't cover this game in an official capacity.

Well, it's a game where you can murder

a) minorities

b) women

c) police men

But no close ups of innocent white men getting a mouth full of Beretta.

I'm rather conflicted as a minority who just saw himself eat a mouthful of lead in that video.

16 year old me would have thought this was pretty bad ass.

35 year old me sees someone with issues, playing this to psych themself up before doing it for real at a school or a mall.

Well that was certainly an unsettling way to start my day. Never going to come within 50 feet of that game.

Huh. Didn't even recognize that. Now I'm even more disgusted.

I'm not against the idea but this looks a lot less like an examination into the mind of mass killer and more like "you like killing shit, bro? because this game is some FUCKED UP SICK SHIT, man!" Fuck that.

"What the fuck is all this art? Fuck moving forward with the medium and introducing inclusive, interesting games. LET'S MAKE A GAME WHERE YOU ARE THE BAD GUY."

Every part of this game sounds fucking terrible.

Well put. I think the way they are positioning the game is more disturbing than the game itself.

Gross.

Alex did make some good points on Twitter though. The violence shown in a game like this seems more egregious because it doesn't present itself with a compelling story, no matter how thin it may be. I mean, you slaughter countless civilians during the average play through of a GTA game, but you do so on the path of some kind of goal The murder itself isn't generally the whole purpose. But really, this isn't much of anything we haven't seen. It just stops pretending to have some kind of deeper meaning besides murder porn.

Dude looks and talks like Jackie from The Darkness games. Ironically enough, Jackie is a mob member with supernatural demons inside of him, but be seems like a nicer guy than ol' Hatred protagonist.

I'm interested in how the gaming press will cover this game.

The Elliot Rodger simulator.

I think what disturbs me about this game is there are clever storytelling ways to put you in control of the "bad guy" that also makes the game fun and interesting. This is the complete opposite of that, and feels like a cheap way to get a shock reaction from people.

Welp this looks super gross. Also trying way to hard too be 'dark'. But more importantly, super gross!

I don't think even younger me who gleefully laughed like an idiot watching heads explode in the original Soldier of Fortune would want anything to do with this and current me sure as hell doesn't.

Hotline Miami you kill cops. GTAV you can kill civilians. Most games you commit mass murder yet everyone's so angry over this. It does not matter about the way things are presented the core subject is the same. I think its a bit hypocritical to say this is too far while enjoying the act of murder in other games. That said this it will probably be a bad game seeing as how the selling point seems to be just murder.

Its hard to look at this game as anything other than controversy bait. If you want to create something awful and reprehensible, at least do it out of some sort of vision, and not because its a good marketing tactic.

Are there kids in the game or is that DLC material?

Well I guess this game might show us how big the market is for a purely sadistic murder simulator. It is kind of funny that a studio finally got around to actually making a murder simulator after so many years of sensationalist news headlines claiming that video games are just that. I'm not planning to pick this game up, but at least we will have a new low to reference when it comes to nihilism and sadism in a game.

Violence is violence, but I think when you go from mindless civilians with no personality and such in GTA and go to innocents that are literally begging for their lives as they are getting gunned down in extremely vicious ways, that does seem to go to another level.

@excast said:

Is there really that much of a difference between what you see in that video and just beating up a hooker on the side of the street in GTA? It's less graphic, maybe, but what "story" or "goal" is there when you can just pick up a machine gun and run around like mad through the streets of Liberty City or San Andreas and murder innocent bystanders for no reason than the gleeful enjoyment of the chaos?

Alex seems like he's drawing a very thin line in the sand and it comes off as more than a little defensive. "No, the violent games I like aren't like that at all!" But aren't they? Does the snuff film aspect of Manhunt really justify the sadistic ways you murder people in those games? When you cackle in glee at the violence and gore of Mortal Kombat aren't you totally using the violence as a cathartic relief? The line and distinction here seems purely academic.

Don't get me wrong here; I agree this game is tasteless and gross. The overall tone and intent matters, and this game is clearly built with a specific purpose in mind. But Alex's specific reasoning there seems more than a little dangerous. Many, many games do not justify or properly contextualize every little act of violence you engage in, and that reasoning for finding something distasteful or objectionable could suddenly incriminate huge swaths of the industry. That's not a path to go down.

The side effect (or in some cases, the actual purpose) of subversive art like this can often be to hold up a mirror to the rest of society that forces us to confront the unflattering notion that really, we're not so different.

Are some people in this thread incapable of discerning the difference in tone between this game and say, GTA? GTA never gleefully exalts the mass murder of civilians. It was always your choice. The game was not about mass murdering civilians. It was never sinister.

This is violence purely for violence sake, nothing more. This is to violent video games what japanese rape simulators are to dating games.

There is an obvious tonal difference here and if you are saying this is exactly the same as GTA you are either denying the obvious and being deliberately tone deaf, or you cant actually tell the difference which I think is disturbing.

I think it's kinda "funny" that this seems to be more competent of a game then many steam releases as of late.

Well played. I laughed. And then I took this seriously. If the game is going to such great lengths to be reprehensible, why not go all the way? Fucking weird time for games, man.

So is this like Black Metal: The Game? No thanks, I stopped thinking like a 15 year old a long time ago.

Someone playing this game and enjoying it is a little unsettling to be honest.

People should be able to make videogames about anything they want to. I mean literally *anything*. But that's just my opinion.

Honestly, I've willingly, autonomously done enough depraved shit in games that I have nothing against the concept of this. I'd be a hypocrite if I did. That's one of the things I like about games; the ability to be an absolute monster or Prince fucking Valiant depending on my mood, without hurting anybody.

However, the "Goth kid on Livejournal" tone and the devs acting like Postal 1 (and Doom, apparently... wow, that logo) didn't do it first many years ago... now *that* puts me right off.

Edit: And yeah, I'll probably play this dumb thing at some point.

I do think that the motivation of the main character does make a difference, albeit small. Murder and horrible acts in GTA are generally side behavior. That isn't the core point of the game. You could honestly play through many GTA games without many intentional killings of innocent civilians at all. The whole purpose isn't running up to random and viciously murdering them as they beg for their lives. Well, unless you are Vinny Caravella.

I mean, they certainly have a right to make whatever game they want. There are plenty of shallow, distasteful movies too. They just aren't things I am going to go out of my way to support.

It looks a lot better graphically than I would have expected given the small team, go Unreal 4 I guess. (some nice destructibility too)

I think if this game were released in the 90s or early 00s nobody would care too much but given all the fairly recent school shootings and such this really isnt the best time to test peoples tolerance for edgy videogame violence.

But i'm guessing the devolopers of this game are looking at all the Tweets and laughing their arses off.

And that is what I think is disturbing the most. Not so much even the game itself because fuck violence wise I'm playing Evil within right now and that's just fucking brutally violent and I'm okay with it. Its that someone literally must have saw a news story of a guy shooting up a mall and thought "Oh hey, that would be rad to do right?" I'm mostly disturbed by the mindset of the people making the game.

This is basically the 21st century equivalent of Thrill Kill.

I don't think Alex was suggesting that this game is somehow worse, but that it shedding a lot of the story or silly veneer that many violent games have is a reason behind some of the different reaction to it. It specifically points to how this may -not- be that different from a lot of very violent games, and that bothers folks.

The point isn't that there is some line in the sand. It's how, when you strip a lot of violent games down, the seeming heart of this game isn't that different. So, when you mention the issues around thin justification in games like Manhunt or Mortal Kombat, you're explaining that potential underlying core of ultraviolence that may relate more to a game like this than many are comfortable with.