This weekend, Anders Behring Breivik murdered 76 people in Oslo, Norway. He has written a “manifesto”, explaining his actions, and among the 1’500 pages of whatever bullshit a psychopathic zealot might discuss are several refrences to video games. He claims to have used Modern Warfare 2 as a “training simulation” for his operation, and WoW as an excuse to his friends and family for spending so much time in isolation. This is no doubt going to dig up the age-old misguided media-fuelled argument that videogames are responsible for making people go around killing people. I expect Jack Thompson will rear his ugly face soon enough, but I want to get in here right away: the man who carried out this attack is INSANE.
Even his own lawyer thinks so. Ever since Columbine, the media has tried to blame games for inspiring tragic events, blowing it completely out of proportion, and never being able to provide any tangible evidence to back it up. The fact that Breivik has openly admitted to enjoying games, so much as to say he used it as a way of training himself is troubling indeed, and will no doubt give the media the fuel to bring it up again, but let’s keep this in context shall we: this is a single, highly unstable man with a ridiculous agenda. He has a serious mental condition, the likes of which is found amongst only the rarest of people. When you consider that the millions of people who enjoy playing games such as Call of Duty on a regular basis do it purely as a way of harmless entertainment, you can understand why we get pretty pissed off when misguided ignoramuses start looking for a story where there is none.
You don’t need me to tell you there is a monumental difference between clicking a mouse button to simulate killing digital soldiers, and physically pulling the trigger of a real gun aimed at a fellow human being in real life. To expect that the former can be used to prepare yourself for the latter is only something a lunatic would say. And Breivik has proved exactly that.
I recently played through Cult of the Lamb, a satirical take on the concept of running a demonic cult. It turns horrific things like sacrificial rituals, cannibalism and straight up gaslighting abuse into hilarious amusements by filtering everything through its cartoonish lens. You are a sheep, after all, and all your followers are sycophantic anthropomorphic […]
Hello, world! This post marks the moment in time and space when BangClickReload got a little redesign and was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Every post before this point is rather old and might not look right, and unless I decide to go through them all to fix them, they’re going to […]
I’ve been pretty absent from PC gaming for some time, since moving to Canada in early 2017, because I haven’t had a proper computer to play games on. That has recently changed, since I got myself set up with a new gaming rig that can handle pretty much anything that’s out at the moment. I […]
7 years I’ve waited for this! Alan Wake was first announced way back in 2005, back when Remedy had only just finished Max Payne 2, but after 5 years in development and the horribly justified cancellation of the PC version, it came out as an Xbox 360 exclusive back in 2010. Now, 2 years later, we can finally experience it at its best.
Again, I find myself with too many games and too little time. Right now I’m in the middle of slaying thousands of zombies using a ridiculous arsenal of home-made weaponry, feeling nostalgic and old for the first time ever because of a classic 2D platformer, and am climbing and fighting my way across an overgrown jungley wasteland inhabited by killer robots. Below are some thoughts of Dead Rising 2, Sonic 4 Episode 1, and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, so far…
Mashup of Mass Effect 3 and The Walking Dead results in this silly but fun image. What Shepard thinks he can achieve by charging a Reaper armed only with his omni-tool, one can only imagine. Click for big version.
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