Undeadpool said:
Shameless said:
No Resident Evil 6 ? color me surprised.
That game was disappointingly mediocre, these games all seemed to be actively on fire.
Especially that 2012 game, that shit makes you forget all about RE5 in terms of amping up the racism. It seriously looks like the kind of thing the KKK or the Aryan Brotherhood would fund as a flash game.
To be honest I agreed with his general sentiments, about all the games, but really I think people need to stop prattling on about racism when there is no present, especially seeing as when people cry racism they don't even seem to know what it is, probably because racism as a mainstream phenomena is dead in the first world. It does exist on the fringes of society however.
Before you fire back, I'd point out that there really ARE games made by racist groups. "Ethnic Cleaning" being one from a white supremacy point of view.
Showing a bunch of primitive and backwards people AS primitive and backwards people is not in any way, shape, or form racist. Calling a guy who literally walks around and throws spears because that is the cutting edge of his availible technology a "spear chucker" isn't racist either. To be racist you have to be making a statement saying that these people are inherantly inferior and could never be any more than that, or by taking a person of a specific ethnicity who is more than that (say a black guy with a first world education and a good job) and saying that they are that when they clearly are not. Calling a banker a spear chucker is racist, calling a tribesman one is not.
At any rate, I never played 2012 due to the horrible reviews, but this is the first time I remember ever hearing it called racist. I seem to remember videos of guys like "Totalbiscuit" playing it, so I have some familiarity with it, and the basic idea is that the ancient mayans and cultists who have been in hiding and keeping the bloodlines pure are trying to bring about Armageddon. Now, I probably shouldn't have to explain to you that ancient mayans were NOT white guys, and didn't exactly fight with guns, what's more these paticular guys have magic. As part of the game setup from various walkthroughs your only able to fight them with very specific "mysical weapons" as anything else is totally ineffective. Sure a guy carrying a spear might seem silly, until you think conceptually that this guy could probably walk through an artillery barrage and slam that spear through a tank. They don't show anything like that so I guess it didn't sink in, but it's implied in the whole "here is the one weapon that can actually do anything here" which you upgrade with differant abillities apparently rather than collecting differant weapons.
To me you really have to stretch in this one to really say there was any racism here. You had people from a primitive civilization acting and looking like it... big frakking whoop. To be racist you'd have to go further than that. For example if their magic did't work or whatever. See a KKK type portrayal would have these guys insisting on acting this way despite common sense in a set of surroundings totally at odd with their behavior, and being unable to cope. If they went running around screaming "bad Juju" and similar statements out of place with the setting and blew powder around which did nothing while they got gunned down (intentionally, not by bad AI) it would be one thing. This game however for all of it's craptastic presentation is taking itself pretty seriously in the sense that these guys are supposed to be ancient mayans/cultists returned, they have working magic, and actully can end the world. By definition you could say it's the opposite of racism since these guys are by definition being defined as the most powerful beings ever. Their magical accomplishments have dwarfed the accomplishments of the rest of the world, and the only thing that can stop them is weapons drawing on the same basic power base. Stop and think about that.
I also find it hilarious that this game gets ire, yet if you want to get technical games like "The Secret World" are a hell of a lot more edgy in covering the same basic material, and I'm not just talking the current "end of the world" event. In TSW's lore the Mayans were a group of ancient mystical sociopaths out to basically unleash the equivilent of Cthulhu's bosses on the world. Despite the general lack of records or technologies, they wound up conquering most of North and South America before they ran into one tibe out on the East Coast called "The Wabanaki" who had enough magic to stand up to them. The Wabanaki were in the process of losing when the vikings who had discovered North America decided to get involved (this game is based on ancient conspiricies, including that one), and invoked their own gods who turned the tide of the battle and lead to the defeat of the Mayans. This is all covered in game lore, and in one paticualr instance called "Darkness War", where your characters as champions of Gaia are basically sent back in time mentally to fight the battle in the place of the actual Wabanaki of the time so you can use your super magical powers, in the midst of the throwdown with the final boss, a viking high priest literally walks up casts the spell "pwn everyone" using a very important (storywise) magical sword as a focus, and allows you and your allies to beat this monster you'll probably recognize from Cthulhu mythos inspired Artwork (here referred to as an Ak'ab, with this one being the great grand daddy of all Ak'ab).
Unlike "2012" this is all really well written, well presented, and utterly cool. It's not racist at all. On the other hand if your looking for a fight you can spin it that way pretty easily. Especially if you want to throw an Aryan spin on things, I mean the Nazis love their viking runes and such. It actually takes LESS effort than with "2012" (which I could do to play devil's advocate if the direction such an arguement could be made from isn't obvious).
TSW isn't all that successful a game either (went FTP in record time), so I don't think it's a matter of pressure. On some levels I just think Jim was groping for something to throw at th egame to make it seem even worse, which it really didn't need. From the videos and game reviews/descrptions I've seen, I never got the impression (though there were a few jokes, not intended to be taken seriously) that there was anything remotely racist about this.
As far as RE5 goes, I see it as the poster child for why we need to keep liberals out of review media, or at least edit their political comments. People set out to create a contreversy where there wasn't one, and to validate the statements of fringe whack jobs looking to get five minutes of fame with race comments to keep that contreversy going. To be blunt Africa is a bloody hell hole, needing to aid the peeople living there due to the wretched conditions is one of the big battle cries of international charity groups and human rights coalitions. Presenting it as a NICE place to live would actually be inaccurate and a bit insensitive on it's own (sweeping it under the rug so to speak). Even when it comes to the tribals it's no big deal, because like it or not tons of people down there DO dress and act like the typical African natives of lore still, that's not racist, it's the truth. Groups ike National Geographic do articles on it from time to time, and on top of it... and in the height of irony... liberals love to go on about protecting the indiginous peoples and their lifestyles and pretty much keeping it that way. I the left wing kind of absurd because on one hand it works to prevent the modern world from changing these people, but then gets all enraged when they are shown the way they are in a bad situation. From a liberal perspective they can call you a racist (misusing the term) going in either direction, including my own point of view that these people should be modernized and brought into the rest of society, as opposed to being kept in ignorance to preserve an archaic society for the amusement of anthropology students. The specifics of that and what it entails might not be entirely nice, but I think what we see going on is far more cruel, especially in the long run.... at any rate, when those "contreversial" tribals show up in RE5, what exactly is the issue? Unchecked sentinent bioweapons go ripping through the region, and are expected to stop at those groups of people? Killer Viruses should be politically correct?
A much longer rant than I intended, but honestly people crying "racism" and similar things over mainstream video games kind of irks me. If you want to do that kind of rant, find one that is actually racist.
As a general rule, REAL racists on the fringe tend to be very overt and open about their work, especially when groups like the KKK, Aryan Nation, and other "major" groups are involved. "Ethnic Cleansing" for example (there have been online reviews when it was newer) includes information in the game about how to get in touch with real racist groups if you agree with the message. The creators explaining at one point that they wanted to produce games like this to "give young white kids hope". They also tend to be concerned with the hear and now, not things like "well, what if the Mayan prophecies were correct, but they actually meant the Mayans were returning in force to use magic to kill us all and end the world... what if there was a chance of stopping them by using similar kinds of magic, wouldn't that make an awesome story/video game?" which is pretty much the thought process behind "2012".