Editorials

Gratuitous Gaming

July 7, 2009, Author: Brian Gourlay

Like all forms of entertainment, the gaming industry is a breeding ground for controversy. Whenever a game with any level of violence, language or sex comes to light, people with too much time on their hands aren’t going to be too far behind it, blaming it for the degradation of society. Even though I can see where the general gist of their viewpoint is coming from, I’ve never taken a game for anything more than it actually is, entertainment, fun, and banter. Even though I’ve never in my lifetime of playing games thought, “Now that’s just plain inappropriate, I am genuinely offended”, there have been plenty gratuitous uses of sex, drugs, rock n’ roll or violence that have left me in fits of laughter or good old dumbfounded silence. So in no particular order, here are some of the most memorable, funny, unnecessary or just plain surreal gratuitous moments in my experience of gaming!

Fahrenheit
This is almost more “interactive movie” than game. The story follows a man named Lucas Kane and his journey to clear his name after awakening from a hypnotic trance to find himself standing over the body of a dead man that he’s never met, is in general a fairly upper class affair. It has the ingredients of an enjoyable murder mystery at the cinema; good dialogue, equal measures of intrigue and excitement and some pretty decent plot twists. Unfortunately there’s also a couple of points in the game that downgrade the game to one of the standard of Channel 5’s old “erotic thrillers”.

The first occasion occurs after your ex-girlfriend comes round to your apartment “pick up some boxes” (a textbook booty call invitation if I’ve ever heard one). It all starts innocently enough, until you impress her with your sick guitar skills so much that she decides she simply must get you in the sack. Maybe it’s just me, but seeing the protagonists backside bopping up and down for about a minute while I was forced to move the analogue stick up and down just soured my opinion of him for the rest of the game, and I was left with a feeling of pure guilt after they had finished the deed.

The second sex scene reaches levels of cringe-worthiness on par with watching American Pie with your grandparents, simply because it comes at such an unexpected time. You find yourself in an abandoned underground train station talking to some homeless people, who incidentally are explaining a lot of what’s gone on in the game. Unfortunately you’re given very little time to get your head around the gravity of your situation as Lucas decides he wants to have a tumble with Carla, the detective who’s been chasing you for the entire game. There is no “game mechanic” this time round (the best description I can give your finger wagging actions during the previous sex scene) only now you are treated to the sight of full on polygon boobage, with pixelated nipples to top it all off.

I’m no prude, just looking at some of the less obviously placed videos on my laptop will testify to that, but being subjected to these completely unexpected shows of “slap and tickle” really did leave me shocked to the core.

Almost every beat em’ up series ever
Let’s face it, there’s only so much innovation that you can inject into a beat em’ up series. There is a very strict formula with all beat em’ ups that leave very little wiggle room in how much the gameplay can change from game to game. For example, before Street Fighter 4 was released the last instalment I had played was Street Fighter 2 on the SNES. Apart from an absolutely stunning new coat of paint there wasn’t the format was essentially the same, although that’s by no means a bad thing. Developers need to keep the punters interested somehow, and it appears that the most drastic changes in my experience are the character models themselves.

The male characters in the game go through a fairly innocent transformation, bigger muscles, bigger hair, bigger personality and of course; new moves. The ladies on the other hand will often find themselves going through an entirely different change. In essence it involves bigger chesticles, more jiggle in those inflated funbags, less clothes and of course, new moves. Some of the costumes in some of the most recent fighters such as Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat or Tekken are enough to make my uncle blush, and he’s the most notorious pervert in my town. Consider Ivy from the Soul Cailbur series, while her outfit in the original was risque enough, by the 4th game, well, judge for yourself…

Bayonetta
Admittedly this game is still a long way away from release, but the details that have been revealed so far suggests that it’s going to be rife with some raunchy antics from the titular character.

Apart from the fact that Bayonetta herself looks like a dominatrix of the kinkiest order (she has high heels with massive guns attached for goodness sake), but it appears that there are some interesting developments concerning her most powerful asset that will have teenage boys salivating like a wild animal.

You see, Bayonetta’s hair doesn’t only serve as a way to make her look even more domineering. It is the source of her most powerful attacks and also happens to be what her charming outfit is made out of. So when she starts stringing together more powerful attacks and drawing more power from her hair (sounds a bit like a Powerpuff Girls story now that I think about), something has to give, and you guessed it; the outfit gets the heave ho! (Not so much like a Powerpuff Girls story after all then).

So in essence, as the combos you unleash become more powerful, the more naked Bayonetta gets. Unnecessary? Yes. Will I still be buying it? Probably! Only because I appreciate a bit of high octane hack n’ slash action. It’s neither here nor there that Bayonetta looks like a leather clad version of the naughty teachers in most pornos these days… or so I’ve heard.

Fallout 3
While most violence in gaming is like water off a duck’s back to me, Fallout 3’s approach kind of got on my nerves a bit. There are some games where gore and violence fit in perfectly with the tone and general feel of a game. For example, the Resident Evil games would suffer if Capcom suddenly decided that they should tone down some of the deaths to the PG category, while Gears of War’s feeling of brutality and uber-machismo would suffer without Locust limbs flying about the place at the hands of your chainsaw. The Fallout series however, has never had to rely on anything like that to build up such a devoted fan base (of which I’m a fully paid up member). Fair enough, Fallout and Fallout 2 had their fair share of gore, but it fit in with the rest of the game. The Fallout series apart from its black humour, had a very bleak tone and outlook of life after nuclear war and the levels of violence on display were, for want of a better word, appropriate. If you shot someone with a micro-SMG, the chances are they would fall to ground in a bloody heap, occassionally losing a chunk of flesh or two in the process.

Fallout 3 on the other hand is a completely different affair, with the levels of violence reaching almost slapstick heights. While I appreciated the usefulness of the V.A.T.S system, the fact that almost every shot resulted in whatever body part got hit exploding like a water balloon started to grate after a while. The slow motion deaths were obviously intended towards the teen crowd who could scream “OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE THAT!?” whenever someones head evaporated after being hit with a baseball bat. But the chances are, if you had seen more than 5 minutes of Fallout 3 gameplay, that you will have seen it, many times.

It’s not as if there was even any immense feeling of satisfaction from seeing someone die so dramatically, since it happened so frequently. In the first two games shooting someone’s upper-body off with a shotgun felt, and looked, pretty damn good since it took a long time to get skilful enough to deal that much damage. In Fallout 3 however, I had popped someone’s head like a grapefruit with my very first shot of my very first gun (a pistol on its last legs), before I had even got out of the Vault.

I’m all for uber-violence done well and apart from this I absolutely loved Fallout 3, but it gets my back-up to see the franchise go down that kind of road. It’s like replacing the “ultra violence” of Clockwork Orange with people slipping on banana skins and getting hit by swinging paint cans; it is blasphemy!

Metal Gear Solid Series
In a similar vein as Fahrenheit, the MGS series has consistently followed a very serious tone set against a complex, twisty storyline and a decent set of interesting characters. However it I’ve also experienced a few moments that left me thinking “What the hell was that!?”. While Fahrenheit’s moments of gratuitous indecency were kind of awkward and embarrassing in MGS they’re just plain surreal, and I can’t help but think that they’ve somehow been lost in translation between Japan and the European port.

I can only recall a couple of such moments when playing MGS1, but maybe the developers were still finding their feet in the entirely unnecessary nudity stakes at that point. Both of these scenes follow a fairly similar routine, at one point you find yourself crawling through a ventilation system and over Meryl’s (the obligatory totty of the game) prison cell, while in the other section of the game you’re instructed to meet her in one of the base’s toilets while she gets changed into an enemy disguise. The context of these situations is slightly fuzzy in my memory, but I do clearly remember this: If you reach either location quickly enough, you are treated to the sight of Meryl in her under-crackers. Thanks for that Konami, just what I wanted! As far as Easter Eggs go, this has to go down as one of the strangest I’ve seen in a game, is it even an Easter Egg? It is just a chick in her pants after all.

I do think that Hideo Kojima looked at these sections after MGS was released and thought, “You know what? Let’s go weirder”… and by god he did. In MGS2 I was treated to one of the most mind-boggling stealth sequences in my gaming career. After the unexpected protagonist of the game, Raiden, is captured and stripped of all his equipment (including his clothes) and then taken to an interrogation room. You have to sit through a piece of dialogue between a naked Raiden (who is now strapped up to what can only be described as a kinky futuristic torture rack) and the security guard who’s presence mercifully shields Raiden’s unmentionables from the view of the precariously placed camera. Once you escape you’re told to retrieve your gear, which I expected to be in a locker in the same room, but no, it’s across the biggest room of a pretty damn big warehouse, full of patrolling guards! Cue sneaking from box to box completely in the nude and only having Raiden’s cupped hand to protect his modesty, thank goodness he’s able to fight of the guards with one hand is all I can say. (In homage to Brass Eye, you could say he beat off the enemies with one hand, but that would be you, I’m above such vulgarity…*giggle*)

MGS3 is a bit more tasteful and in a surprise turn purposefully funny with its blatant uses of sexuality. During most cut-scenes in MGS3 you were given the option to press the R1 button at certain points to see things from Snake’s (or Big Boss in the grand scheme of things) point of view. Thanks to this you’re able to uncover the real truth behind Big Boss; he’s nothing but a dirty old man. The first time you come across EVE, a cat-suit wearing double agent, you quickly find yourself under siege from Russian soldiers. As Big Boss and EVE stalk up to the window to see what’s going on, you can press R1 to reveal what he’s really looking at, EVE’s ample cleavage. You old dog Snake! Mere seconds before your stronghold is breached by the enemy, you can catch Big Boss red-handed while checking out EVE’s rear as she jumps down an escape hatch.

I’m yet to get my hands on MGS4 so I’m none the wiser as to whether there are any ‘Carry On Espionage’ style moments in the latest instalment, but after seeing all of the pre release footage it wouldn’t surprise me if Raiden and Vamp didn’t set aside their differences to engage in an android on vampire love-scene.

Fable Series
In the build up to both Fable games, Peter Molyneux was heavily involved in whipping up a hype frenzy. It seemed like you couldn’t listen, read or watch any piece of media with him in it without coming across some kind of reference to being free to do anything you want, having complete control over your destiny or shaping the world through your actions. Being Peter Molyneux, these concepts were exaggerated to an extent. Some of your actions don’t have any far reaching consequences and the limits of the game are strictly lower than what your imagination can conjure up, contrary to a lot of the pre-release jizz-fest courtesy of Mr Molyneux. While the actions you can perform in the Fable games do have limits, it seems like Lionhead have certainly made an effort to expand the array of debauched, uncouth and just plain messed up stuff you can do.

Based on my experiences of the series, the build up to these games went for the completely wrong angle. Instead of focusing on how much freedom you have to “take your own path”, they should have explained how easy they’ve made it for you to “become a sordid, adulterous, murdering drunk”. Sales would have sky rocketed believe me. When Fable 2 came out, when talking to mates about some of the choices I had made, not once was I enthusiastically describing how helped keep Oakvale’s Golden Oak alive and well. Conversations were more along the lines of “Got married to some hooker in Bloodstone today, she’s my second wife. Oh yeah I’m a polygamist by the way. Some guy tried to blackmail me so I shot him in the face. The wife found out about it though, shot her in the face as well, moany cow”. Were my mates telling me about how they sacrificed their own wellbeing to help the prisoners at The Tattered Spire? Not likely. “Some kid asked me for my autograph the other day, so I thrusted my groin in his face and then told him to piss off” was more along the lines of how our own fables were spun.

To be fair, I’m not sure if I can call these kind of things gratuitous, since I think those kind of moments genuinely enhanced my enjoyment of Fable. That being said, I can’t help but wonder what was going through the guys at Lionhead’s minds when they decided to let you perform such noble deeds as getting an entire town’s populace drunk or bitch slapping someone to death. Also I can’t think of any other game that gives you an Achievement for enticing enough people into a spot of ye olde gangbanging.

I’m sure there are many more that I’ve missed, but I’d love to hear about everyone else’s experiences of over the top helpings of nakedness and gore!

Tagged Bayonetta, Fable, Fahrenheit, Fallout 3, MGS, Sex Drugs & Video Games, Soul Calibur, Violence