Wrestling With The Issue At Hand

I watch professional wrestling. There: I said it. I also play video games, and sometimes wonder why I do either of these things. Come with me while I try to justify myself.

At this point I'm left interacting with video games in the same way I do professional wrestling. Every Tuesday I watch Raw, WWE's premier showcase for its roster's talent. It's about two and a quarter hours without commercial breaks and airs every week. Every single week of the year. The promotion also broadcasts Smackdown!, which I could watch on a Friday. That too airs 52 weeks a year. I don't because five hours of wrestling each week is a lot of wrestling. Also, Raw is the show generally used to tell the stories, with Smackdown! existing as more of a runty sibling to be constantly overshadowed. Indeed, anything meaningful that happens on it is carefully edited down into cruelly efficient recap packages to be broadcast four days later on Raw. It's as if even the people at WWE know they're just going through the motions. Beyond the weekly stuff you've got an ad-free pay-per-view spectacular at the end of every month. Chalk it up: three more hours. These are meant to be super special but are normally only slightly more impactful than a regular TV show. AND, ever since the launch of the WWE Network streaming service, you're also sporadically gifted a second one of these in the middle of the month. All told, on a bad one you're looking at 26 - twenty six - hours of wrestling a month. I get by with 16 at the most. And it's a slog.

Return to (Castle) Wolfenstein: The New Order

General Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse is a gnarly looking old man, with the kind of exaggeratedly evil voice, mannerisms and disfigured face one tends to associate with modern depictions of Nazis. He’s crouched down staring at me through the screen, flanked by two giant Über-Soldaten, each with one of my comrades, Wyatt and Fergus, wedged under their weighty knees. He’s goading me - or more accurately William Joseph "B.J." Blazkowicz, the bloke I’m in charge of - in that wholly merciless way Bad People From The National Socialist Party tend to do. And because he’s a thoroughly amoral kinda guy, you see, he’s up for dissecting one of them and he - here’s the kicker - wants me to choose who is to be the lucky recipient of his scientific attention. Do I pick Wyatt, the spunky rookie who only minutes before had saved me from certain death and whom I now "owe one"? Or will Fergus, the gruff and straightforward Scotsman who clearly has a history with B.J - though to what extent I’m unsure; I didn’t play two thousand and nine’s Wolfenstein - be the last man allowed to possibly, maybe, perhaps stand back up?

Resident Evil 2 and the Little Corridor of Horrors

There’s a little corridor in Resident Evil 2 which has stuck in my mind for what must be going on for fifteen years. The last time I saw it was probably a decade ago but I can still (and will) list off its most minute features. It is somewhere under the police station and makes up part of - I’m assuming but can’t remember any details - the needlessly sinuous route from Raccoon City’s claustrophobic streets to its even more claustrophobic subterranean realm. It’s a bit out of the way really, located as it is at the foot of a ladder down the end of a recessed, open-air space which snakes around the back of the municipal building's basement. Upon first approaching it you’re set upon by dogs; enemies so fierce that I can still remember their throaty, digitally processed barks and the relentlessness of their enthusiastically murderous, seemingly nonsensical galloping. Perhaps running this gauntlet is one of the reasons I so vividly remember what comes after it. 

I’m not playing Hearthstone: Doctor Who and Vinnie Mac got me covered (for a 1-2-3)

When I were a young ‘un the Star Wars films were re-released in the cinema. I went with the Beaver Scouts and found myself watching A New Hope, despite actually wanting to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit-aping basketball extravaganza Space Jam. You see: our lovely-yet-rapidly-aging leaders thought a film about a traffic jam in space would be a bit boring for a bunch of eight year olds, which is fair enough, however off-target their interpretations of the conspicuously vehicle-free poster were. At the same time the lovely people at Walkers crisps decided that all the children, regardless of their moviegoing preferences, would benefit from sharing in the great warmth generated by the beloved cinematic series. They started hiding little plastic Pog-like disks in bags of their delicious snacking aids, all of which were emblazoned with a precious image from the hallowed Star Wars history books. I never managed to get a full set of fifty, but that wasn’t really the point; I satiated my internal hunger to seek stability and security for a bit and managed to help a $10billion-plus corporation achieve its lofty profit goals for the year. That’s a win-win all day long in my mind.

Game Dev Story is a bit mean to its staff, int it?

Wolfenstein 3D, Custer’s Revenge, Ethnic Cleansing , Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, that game where you shoot JFK: all are examples of aspects of the real world being looked at through the lens of video games. They’re all - to differing extents and in their own ways - difficult to laude as works of high (even low, in most cases) art or defend as rounded, fair or (maybe) even worthwhile endeavours. They are all button-pressers: games that wear their controversy-courting intentions proudly on their sleeves (sometimes just above an insignia-emblazoned armband). While the first two examples are merely sillily offensive, it’s that all five are grounded in very explicit real world contexts - as part or complete recreations of specific events and happenings - that imbues them their power to wilfully shock and/or disgust. Game Dev Story isn’t like any of these because it hasn’t a divisive bone in its body. It does, however, centre itself on a very real world industry, and by doing so is actually quite mean in the process, if, of course, you’re inclined to look at it that way (which I am, just so you know).