I Enjoy Murdering People

I've killed a lot of people in my lifetime. I've killed a lot of people, and may God strike me down if I didn't have fun every single second of it. I've also killed a variety of people. You see, I don't discriminate. I'm an equal opportunity genocidal maniac. In fact, what's really cool is that I've killed everyone with just about any means of killing them. I've used assault rifles, machetes, piano wire, pistols, chainsaws, my bare hands, cars, trucks, motorcycles, and I even did it with this big fucking gun that shot out a massive ball of green plasma. I've also gone under tons of aliases, like Minion, Mario, Snake, Lucas Kane, and several others.

Oh, wait. You thought I was talking about actual people, didn't you? Nope, I'm talking about video games.

You see, the reason I'm writing this blog is because it seems like the idea of fun is now beneath other critics. Oddly enough, these are the types of assholes that will put up a post that mentions something about a woman and ejaculate, but when a game like Splatterhouse or Conker's Bad Fur Day is brought up in conversation, all of a sudden that type of thing is beneath them. Now, maybe everyone got offended by Splatterhouse's review guide and are just sensitive people (see: pussies) but why are we forgetting our roots?

That root is fun. Every single gamer out there has murdered everything in their path at least once. In fact, we've all done it in at least one way that made us feel a little bit dirty afterward. As high brow as I come off when talking about a game like Dragon Age or Red Dead Redemption, you know for a fact that at one point or another, I've boned Leiliana in the former, and tied someone who tried to kill me after a poker game to railroad tracks in the latter.

Does this make me a bad person? Of course not. I'm just someone who likes to be entertained, and when something generally entertaining crosses my path, I try to make the most of it. Heck, even when something sucks, there's ways to enjoy yourself with it. For example: on my birthday, I had a lovely lady over for supper (as in real food, and get your mind out of the gutter) and we watched a couple horrible movies in Johnny Mnemonic and Doom. You know what? We had fun, and those movies sucked. That's why we had fun though. The movies are so bad you just have to laugh.

This is my overall problem with some game critics. Many of them have forgotten what fun is. Dragon Age 2 wants to save time and put me into the combat as soon as possible, and people already hate it? In what backwards society does that make any sense? Is there someone out there that wants to have to navigate a labyrinth before being able to enter an arena to see a boxing match?! NO! What the hell is wrong with you?

Listen, I love that gaming as a medium is maturing big time. I love games like GTA IV, Silent Hill 2, and their ilk, but I don't want high art constantly. The thing that the movie crowd has on us game critics is they've learned to appreciate all kinds of entertainment. I love really good movies like Citizen Kane and Gladiator, but I can't watch them all the time, and if that's all that was released, I would go batty. Variety is something that should be embraced by gamers. Fun is what got us here, and fun should never be forgotten.

Also, fun does often mean murder in the case of video games.

-Micah C