The Thing I Hate About Video Games

Umm, can we talk about video games?

So before you get mad and call me a feminazi, man-hating, buzz-killing, Anita Sarkeesian wannabe, hear me out.

I LOVE video games.

I’ve loved video games ever since the first day my parents brought home my first Nintendo. Back then, the system came with Super Mario Bros. and I would play all day and night until my eyes went bloodshot. You had to. You couldn’t save your progress.

I spent the next ten or twelve years plowing through the Mario Bros. series. I beat them all, several times over, and even found all the secrets and prizes along the way. It was a great time.

I had a Super Nintendo where I played games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Later I bought my first Playstation with money I saved from working at KFC. The first game I ever played on that system was Dino Crisis, which I loved because it reminded me so much of my favorite movie, Jurassic Park.

For my 19th birthday, my mom bought me a Playstation 2. I continued my obsession with Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Tekken, Grand Theft Auto, and The Sims.

The older I got, the more gaming time fell by the wayside. The stress of bills and college was weighing on me, and I pretty much gave up on buying a new system. Plus, gaming had changed so much that it almost seemed like a huge waste of money.

In 2012, I decided to go halves on a Playstation 3 with my boyfriend. I’ve come across some of the most fascinating games on the PS3, and also some of the most disappointing.

Why am I disappointed? Because video games are beginning to default on their promises.

Take, The Last of Us, for example.

Most articles online boast about the game. It’s so beautiful to look at. The acting. The story. The drama. Everything is just great. I agreed with these sentiments, until I got about halfway through.

The game begins with this intense and emotionally gripping end-of-the-world sequence. You play as Joel, a caring father trying to get his brother and daughter to safety only to have her tragically killed.

Twenty years pass and we follow Joel, and his smuggling partner Tess as they’re entrusted with the dangerous job of taking Ellie, a young girl whose blood contains the cure and humanity's last hope, to meet up with the Fireflies.

The next scenes involve the three eluding the authorities and remaining out of sight all while dodging mutated humans like runners, stalkers, clickers and bloaters.

My favorite part of the game is when the three characters are stuck in an abandoned and dark subway station full of clickers and you have to distract them by throwing bottles and sneaking up on them with shivs.

But after Tess dies, the game goes downhill.

Suddenly, Joel and Ellie are killing ordinary men. Just plowing through them like bowling pins. You’re forced to kill hundreds of men before you ever even see another mutated monster. It gets dull fast.

The same thing happens in Tomb Raider.

I miss the old Lara Croft. I miss the Playstation 1 Lara Croft who was in her late 20s to early 30s. I miss the training sequence at her mansion where she’d greet you with, “Welcome to my home. I’ll take you on a guided tour.” I miss the Lara Croft who RAIDED ACTUAL TOMBS, solved complicated puzzles and riddles and slaughtered a T-REX.

I don’t like this newfangled Lara Croft. This teenage girl who doesn’t have a lick of resemblance to the games that preceded her. She’s a completely different character. She kills with no conscience. She might solve a puzzle or two, but the game is more interested in big action sequences than actual puzzle solving.

I was told that if I like Tomb Raider, I’d like Uncharted because Drake is the male version of Lara Croft.

Okay.

He starts off on a boat. He gets to an island and has to solve an interesting puzzle. Okay, good so far.

Then the game just turns into DRAKE KILLING A BUNCH OF MEN!

Seriously?

If I wanted to KILL PEOPLE, I’d play Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto or that weird sniper game on PS1. I didn’t come here to kill people. I came here to solve complicated puzzles and collect treasure. I wanted to be in a place where my only enemy is the thirty-thousand foot drop below me. Sure, I might have to defend myself a few times, but mowing down 50 or 60 human NPCs is not my idea of a good time.

For the record, I’m not against violence and killing in games. Never have been. I just feel that it has become a lazy way of filling a game with content instead of actually trying to create something that forces the player to think.

Similarly, if you’re going to make a horror-based game, make sure your game contains actual horror. Don’t promise me monsters and then give me human-on-human killing halfway through. Anyway, rant over. I’m going to play Sims 3.