Violence in games *Gory*

Maybe this is coming from me being a Fiction major, but I think that the most important aspect of gaming is juxtaposition.  I'm sure lots of people will be on the same page with me that it's an important part, but most will disagree with it being the most important part.  Those people are likely to proceed to bring up issues such as controls, plot, graphics, mechanics, etc.  And those make up the echelon of what makes a game good, agreed.  But I think it is the discerning factor, a divining rod between two otherwise completely similar levels of production value.

As an extrapolation of that, I love games that go way over the top with violence.  Because at a certain point, you can pretty much see how much more love and creativity went into the way the sun glistens off of the blood and skull fragments of an enemy's imploded face than other stuff, like story and dialogue, and even scenery.  For me, this violent twist off of the context of the game is one of the funniest things ever.  I don't get squeamish, gore doesn't upset me, and this makes me laugh without fail:

Because its like a kind of side-lined joke, you know?  There's all this wonderfully colored scenery around you, and the music is just gripping you to the core of your very soul and then BOOM.  You see this.

(couldn't find a clip of it, but this is the only way to kill that type of enemy in Bethesda's WET.)

Ouch.   Was that necessary?  did the audience need to see that?

OR this

Or this

...or this... see where I'm going with this?

(Gears of War)

What a classic.    But all of these examples are more tied to the ridiculous, their violence is almost out of place with the sense that it's so easy to kill someone one-handed and then throw their lifeless leaking corpse 12 feet to the ground like a horseshoe.

(Bioshock: Infinite)

Because there's an aspect to that, a little voice in your head that blocks you from being drawn into the experience because of the silly lack of limitations on the playable character.  I always feel like I'm playing less of a game when I achieve one of these Ultra-violent kills.  More like I'm listening to some joke the developers had, because every instance of violence in every game ever made adds color to the style.  But you don't want to throw neon paints all over the place unless you're aware that what you're doing is hilarious.  But that doesn't mean that ultra-violence can't work in a game's favor without a silliness inherent, its all about the context.  You need to be drawn into the experience.


Let us review more clips:

(The Last of Us)

The cool thing about violence in survival games is that it can easily mesh with the air of desperation that these games thrive off of.  The point of a survival game is to always be alert, and kind of neurotic, always on the knife's edge of sanity.  Following that principle, it makes sense that any instance of violence in that game will be a desperate action, like the bestial release of that sledgehammer into that dude's face.  For the most part Survial-genre games get carte blanch on ultra-violence, having no real limits to the extent of the trauma so long as they can make it fit the context.  Even Tomb Raider went and made the death of your character as brutal as possible to make you wince.  Because you want to feel for the character and have them not die on you like this:



Caution: Look Away, like for the rest of this, it's going to get worse.

I think there's an acceptable level of OMGWTFDUDE in every game, and it varies depending on the story.  Obviously Horror & Survival get the biggest pass, Take the Dead Space for instance.  Isaac Clarke has to go through some pretty horrific trauma, and I would argue, has the worst death scenes.  Because a lot of them happen in interactive cinematic events like the one above, where a tiny miscalculation of your hands leads to a tasty treat for your eyes.

(It took me eight tries to get past this part, eye gore is my weak spot, I didn't sleep that night)

The point I'm trying to get across in between all these pleasant little clips however, is that violence has a place in story.  Books have been depicting obscenities with style for centuries and it only makes sense that with the expansion of media, that aspect is beginning to be achieved in gaming.  I can only hope that we keep on board those wacky violent ones too though.  I don't want to be the only one who looks at all of the above and thinks: