Remember - No Russian

A defining moment in video game history. Modern Warfare’s unflinching depiction of civilian slaughter, brutal, uncensored and so very real, ranks alongside Stephen Spielberg’s Munich and Gus Van Sant’s Elephant as a stark reminder of the terror and mayhem that a few guns in the wrong hands can wreak.

There’s no cartoon violence here to mitigate the horror. Death is violent and bloody. The wounded drag their broken bodies away from the gunfire, smearing the clinically white airport floor with their glistening innards. A pretty blonde props her bullet torn body against a wall, helpless, entirely at the mercy of the approaching terrorists. The woefully inadequate security guards manage to squeeze off a few shots before crumpling under a hail of machine gun fire. And the slaughter continues, relentlessly, at snails pace, forcing you to witness every atrocity in a dreamlike stupor. To progress you simply must collude in the carnage. There is no way to avoid it. Yes, you can choose to spare the few civilians who survive the initial volley of bullets. But the shielded riot squad must be killed if you want to continue. It’s a moral Catch-22.

Think back a year. Grand Theft Auto IV. Early in the game you’re given a decision to make – a choice to assassinate either Playboy X or Dwayne. Who did you kill? Did you make the right choice? It’s exactly this uncertainty, prompted by your decision, that created the illusion of a profound turning point in the game. Deciding who to kill was distinctly harder than the actual act of killing.

An interesting fact: Jesse Stern, scriptwriter for MW2, said, ‘every single person in testing opened fire on the crowd’. The overwhelming majority of us, when given the choice between active participant and mute bystander, chose to pull the trigger. No biggie, just pull the trigger. The police, after all, are armed - kill or be killed. Besides, it was part of their job description – protect the public. But the civilian with his hands held high in that naked gesture of utter helplessness was a guilty pleasure. Destroying the innocent. Total empowerment.

It’s at this point that I started to feel a little sullied by the whole experience, a bit dirty.

I had a choice and I chose to kill.

That a first person shooter can provoke such profound emotion, can deal with such weighty world issues without resorting to adolescent absolutes, is a turning point. Modern Warfare 2 is the first video game that seriously attempts to understand a post 9/11 world. It’s a game that stands shoulder to shoulder with United 93 and The Second Plane as a chillingly effective exploration of terror in the 21st century.

Jesse Stern sums it up nicely when he says, ‘I never really knew you could elicit such a deep feeling from a video game’.

Well you can Jessie me old son. And you did.

Jesse Stern's full interview at Gamepro

The Mary Whitehouse Experience

This gave me a right good giggle.

I recently received a request to ‘become a paid blogger at Blog Distributor’. So I submitted my blog. Here’s the response I got from company director Bryan Gatz:

Hi Alan

We have tested your blog (http://digitalgigolo.blogspot.com/) and found that it contains problems in matching our criteria that are so severe that we do not think that they can be fixed. Therefore, we will not accept any further submissions on this particular blog.

The problems with this blog are noted below:

In order to have your Blog Certified with Blog Distributor, it must not contain pornography or pornographic words. The following is a list of the pornographic words we found in your Blog: beasties (3), dick (2), dicks (2), porn (3).

In order to have your Blog Certified with Blog Distributor, it must not contain profanity. The following is a list of the profane words we found in your Blog: shit (14), pissed (1), fucking (7), fuck (4), bullshit (1).

If you have other blogs that do not share the problems that this blog has, we would welcome your submission of those other blogs.

Bryan Gatz

Since when has ‘beasties’ been a pornographic word? And why did Blog Distributor fail to note the numerous occasions I mention the word ‘cunt’?

If you fancy subjecting your blog to The Mary Whitehouse Experience then click here. I'll be most impressed if anyone can beat my ‘beasties’ total (3).

Red Faction Guerrilla One Minute Review

Standing knee-deep in rubble as the world collapses around your ears – this, dear reader, is the definition of balls-out masculinity. Forget Master Chief. All Alec Mason needs to save the day is a sledgehammer and a pair of bollocks the size of wrecking balls.

Any criticisms about the hackneyed plot fade in to insignificance once you’ve levelled your first chimney stack. Five well-placed blows from your sledgehammer – surely the most satisfying and tactile tool in the history of gaming – and down it comes. Destruction is the name of the game. And it’s destruction on a vast, unending scale, with an increasingly devastating arsenal of weapons at your disposal.

Verdict
At long last! The question that’s been puzzling scientists and pop stars alike can finally be answered: YES, there IS life on Mars. And thankfully, Mars is a fucking hoot. To save your planet, you have to blow it up! How gloriously barmy.

Future Publishing - My Recent Application - Staff Writer, Edge‏

Future Publishing sent me an e-mail this morning in response to my job application.

Dear Alan,

Thank you for your application for the position of Staff Writer, Edge.

Just a short note to update you with regards to your recent application. We apologise for the delay in getting back to you. We received a high volume of applications for the role and are currently reviewing your CV. We hope to get back to you shortly with an outcome of your application.

Thank you for your patience

Kind Regards

Recruitment Team
Future Publishing

The Madness Of Modern Warfare

It’s hard to make out through the mucus and froth the exact cause of his intense fury, but one thing is clear: Modern Warfare 2 is to blame .

I don’t mean to come across all Daily Mail but, sweet jesus, there’s something unsettling about the unadulterated furore surrounding Modern Warfare 2. It feels like a turning point for videogames. I just can’t quite put my finger on why that might be.

Maybe it’s the genuinely staggering facts and figures attached to the game’s release date. Modern Warfare 2 managed to shift 4.7 million units in the US and UK within 24 hours of launching. It generated $310 million which prompted Activision to declare MW2 as the “biggest entertainment launch in history”.

Or perhaps it’s the announcement, per a tweet by Major Nelson that, thanks to Modern Warfare 2, Xbox Live has set a new record with more than 2 million gamers being connected at once. A population twice the size of Cyprus unified by their love for a shoot em up. Staggering.

And it’s not just the industry pundits who are taking an interest. MW2 has attracted attention from a considerable number of high profile public figures. Andy McNab, SAS hero and author of Bravo Two Zero, said the game 'is so realistic it's scary'. Quite the endorsement. Even Russell Brand took some time out of Katy Perry’s panties to comment: ‘Modern Warfare 2 sounds like it might be trivialising the horror of war on remembrance day. What's next? Paedophile boxing 3? For Christmas?’

And Brand wasn’t the only one to pick up on the game’s ‘insensitive’ launch date. Sainsbury’s was forced to apologise to customers after MW2 was advertised over its in-store Tannoy on Armistice Day.

Not wanting to miss an opportunity to capitalize on public outrage, MPs' attacked the game for its ‘realistic depiction of civilian slaughter’. Fox news ran a whole feature on it. This in turn caused Heavy Rain producer Guillaume de Fondaumiere to wade into the debate. His take on the controversy was simple: ‘I don’t see any reason why video games should be treated differently than movies, for instance. I think that we should leave game creators free of expressing their vision as they see fit. I think the guys at Infinity Ward had something very precise in mind when they did this scene’.

A week after its release and Modern Warfare 2 is still sitting pretty in Twitter’s trending topics. A quick glance at Metacritic’s top ten reveals MW2 riding high at number 4 with the original Modern Warfare not far behind at number 7.

And all this from a first person shooter. How gloriously barmy.

There was only one way I could conclude this article: a micro interview with the 'MODERN WARFARE 2 SUCKS!!!!!' guy, GuitarJono1170:

Digital Gigolo: Why so angry dude?

GuitarJono1170: well i don't enjoy playing single player and i keep lossing and missing shots on people i prefer call of duty 5 with the zombies and nice place to go

Indeed.

MORE MK2 MADNESS

Are You Sure You Want To Be A Games Journalist? Part 3

'What we have, as gamers so dedicated we want to make a career of talking about it, is passion and hope. It’s that ever present hope that should drive every word. You should always want a game to be good. If you ever feel pleased that you said a game was going to be shit and then it was then you should give up – give up now. If you are so into a particular console that you want, even secretly, for its competitor to fail then just stop going down this career path. You are not going to be a good games journalist. Oh you could be a journalist alright but not a good one. I would play a game if it was on my toaster just to see what it was like – in case it turns out to be totally brilliant. You should always be hoping, even secretly, that the next game/console/DLC/peripheral/avatar pic is going to be awesome. You may suspect, in your expertise about a particular genre or product, that the next big thing is going to be a bit disappointing or even a crashing disaster but there is always hope.'

Kisrten Kearney -- Hope springs eternal

Borderlands Review

This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine.

Guns. Millions of guns. Thunder spewing sniper rifles. Scoped shotties. Explosive SMGs. Borderlands is a first person shooter devoted entirely to the quest for the perfect boom stick. Every plundered weapons cache represents the infinite potential for superior fire power. Each slaughtered outlaw gives birth to yet more torso shredding artillery. This is hardcore gun porn to sate even the lustiest firearm nut.

With such a staggering choice of randomly generated weaponry, 17,750,000 at the last count, comes the monumental chore of stat comparison; armpit burning frustation as you evaluate yet another Assault Rifle. Lost in a mess of maps, missions, stats and upgrades, the gunplay, so utterly crucial to the game, often takes a back seat. Slowly, but surely, you’ll acclimatise. By level 20, you’ll know at a glance which guns to keep and which to discard or sell. And then you can concentrate on killing.

And, cor blimey, is there a lot of killing. Borderlands is a vast, lawless junkyard of bondage-clad bandits and vicious beasties. The plot, trite in the extreme (but who cares!), is to find a sacred vault, believed to contain unfathomable wealth. Along the way you’ll be inundated with side quests, sometimes 8 at a time, by the grotesque inhabitants of Pandora. 160 side quests in all and every single one of them a kill, fetch or find expedition. All of them! Without exception. But it’s cool, no sweat. You’ve got your guns to keep you company.

Guns. Millions of guns. With such cool names. Pestilent Defiler. Brutal Viper. Bloody Equalizer. Cruel Repeater. Each gun a unique metal snowflake with more character and emotional appeal than Pandora’s entire human population. The Sentinal, for example, a beautifully striped red and black Assault Rifle, like Dennis the Menace, complete with awesome scope sight, stunning accuracy and battery acid bullets. You’ll be loathe to part with some of your guns. But, eventually, you will relinquish them in favour of the next metal minx that flashes her ample stats in your direction.