On to Regular Everyday Life...

I get bored everyday at work, mutha fucka! (If you don't understand this joke, please click here. Take heed that there will be ample cursing.)

I'm back to the grind, and really not wanting to be here. Over my extended weekend, I killed tons of zombies and watched a good chunk of films, and I want to just keep doing the same things. *sigh* Stupid responsibilities.

Resident Evil 5: My friend and I finished this game last night, and it was quite a good time. As I mentioned on Monday, it's not quite the same as its predecessors, but it is still an amusing game. However, the reason I bring this up again is because of it's controversy about being racist.

All things considered--being an American white male slaughtering hordes of African, and mostly black, zombies--I thought the game handled its content as well as it could. I mean the SETTING is AFRICA. But if the developers hadn't had hordes of black zombies, wouldn't everyone have complained that it was unrealistic? That being said, that doesn't mean that RE 5 needed to be set in Africa, it could've taken place in any number of other countries (though if you really think about it, the previous installments are Japanese-made games about Americans screwing up the entire world through viral warfare and destroying most of the life around them, yet no one--to my knowledg--has ever commented on this rather interesting fact).

One thing that might've helped is if it hadn't drawn on stereotypes as much as it did. While I've never been to Africa myself, I couldn't help but feel like this was the Africa of an American-made action flick and not one of a true to life representation (What? No real life in a video game?)

In all honesty, I don't really know what I'm trying to get at, but I guess I just didn't really see the inherent racism within the game. There were no vocalizations of the "N" word, or were there any outright derogatory comments based on ethnicity--unless you count the initial conversation between Chris and Sheva, saying that she is there to help "smooth things over" as Chris is white and she is black. Granted, one can take the implication that yes, it is an American, white male shooting black people in the face, but they are zombies. I would hope that if I ever became a zombie, some tactical force of another ethnicity wouldn't hesitate and debate about whether or not to shoot me in the face for fear of being labeled "racist"--especially if I was after their brain meats.

When you get down to it, it is a game. And if someone becomes racist after playing a game such as this, then, I have a feeling this is the type of person the world doesn't want to be playing violent things in the first place--especially if they are that easily influenced. Rather than leagues of gamers becoming a racist from playing games (though this would still be a very detrimental outcome), I'm still wondering what the effect of making violence so-freaking-cool will do to the future generations--and myself... but that is a musing for another time. Perhaps.

Until then, more Gibberish tomorrow.