To kill or not to kill? That is the question.
While video games offer plenty of constructive activities, like building cities or managing a baseball team, most games involve some sort of death and destruction. Some do it in a cute way, such as Mario jumping onto turtles and knocking off their shells. But whether you pound waddling mushrooms or take out Nazis, the smell of virtual death lingers over the entire industry.
Two recent games from Eidos provide the perfect chance to consider the whole regimen of killing and wonder about all that on-screen hurting
“Hitman: Blood Money” continues a successful franchise featuring a soulless assassin who methodically sneaks around, strategizes and ultimately eliminates targets. If a few innocent bystanders or a villainous henchman get waxed in the process, that’s just all in a day’s work. Placed inside wry and ironic settings, “Hitman” works more like a Quentin Tarantino movie than a run-of-the-mill spy game.
“Urban Chaos: Riot Response” presents a nightmarish, if improbable, scenario where ax- and firebomb-wielding gang members and terrorists lay siege to your city. In response, the mayor dispatches the T-Zero Squad – a tough-cop unit mandated to show zero tolerance when blowing away the bad guys.
Both games carry mature ratings that signal their intention to appeal to an older audience, and both rely heavily on the idea that violence has a natural place in our social order as a viable means to an end. Most interesting, both games attempt to provide a moral context. Each title makes efforts to confront the player with the seriousness of death as the final answer, even as they goad you down that bloody trail.
In “Hitman,” for example, just because you get paid to off people doesn’t mean you’ll take just any job. The string of missions that make up this complex and intriguing game includes ridding the world of drug dealers, child pornographers, blackmailers and, oddly enough, other assassins.
Even more, the game rewards the shrewd player for not killing. The fewer guards, minions and assorted civilians that die in the crossfire, the better. A dose of poison in a target’s drink brings more praise than a confetti of machine-gun fire.
Likewise, the higher-ups in “Urban Chaos” like to remind you that it’s OK to use the stun gun “for PR purposes” and insist on it when it comes to bringing in valuable crime leaders for interrogation.
Which raises the question: Since all this killing is supposed to be in good fun, why package it up in a moral wrapping? Why not just let good and evil slide to the side and put players in an unrestrained world of letting people have it for points?
Because that would be boring.
For the same reason that cinema and literature have always turned to the subject of death as a wellspring of narrative life, so do video games dip into the real tensions of the right and wrong of deciding the fate of a life.
—————————————-
Blood and Chaos
Here are details on two recent videogames:
Hitman: Blood Money|For Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Mac, PC|$39.99-$59.99|M for Mature
Urban Chaos: Riot Response|For Xbox, PS2|$39.99|M for Mature
—————————————-
THIS WEEK| Most-Requested Game Rentals
1. Hitman: Blood Money, Xbox 360, Eidos; 2. Prey, Xbox 360, Take Two; 3. Chromehounds, Xbox 360, Sega; 4. Over G Fighters, Xbox 360, Ubisoft; 5. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, PS 2, Take Two; 6. Moto GP ’06, Xbox 360, THQ; 7. Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II, Xbox 360, Electronic Arts; 8. Gears of War, Xbox 360, Microsoft; 9. Call of Duty 3, Xbox 360, Activision; 10. NCAA Football 07, Xbox 360, Electronic Arts|Source: GameFly.com
