Gallery: Bloody Redemption in 9 Violent Videogames
01fallout-660
<style type="text/css"> .caption {background:url('http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/11/violence_blood_2.gif') no-repeat;} </style></head><body>Members of the Supreme Court talked free speech this week when they debated a California law that would ban the sale of violent videogames to minors. The justices made some bloody good points — both for and against the law — that could hint at their final decision, which is expected before June. Justice Antonin Scalia's remarks were particularly clever and entertaining, even as he pondered the serious issue of whether upholding *[Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association](http://www.scribd.com/doc/40744855/Schwarzenegger-v-EMA)* might lead down the slippery slope of censorship. "You are asking us to create a whole new prohibition which the American people never ratified when they ratified the First Amendment," Scalia said. "What's next after violence? Drinking? Smoking? Movies that show smoking can't be shown to children?" Here at Wired.com, we don't understand what the fuss is all about. In order for a game to be regulated, the law would require it to have no redeeming social, political or cultural value. We did some brainstorming and found that even the most violent videogames are simply bursting with redeeming values, so none of them can be banned. Here's the proof. __Above:__ Fallout 3 --------- __What it is:__ An action/role-playing game set in a nasty, post-nuke apocalypse. __Most violent moment:__ Thanks to [Fallout 3](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2009/01/gamesfrontiers_0126)'s Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, or VATS, players can target and shoot specific parts of enemies' bodies. These attacks are rendered in slow motion, leading to some strikingly graphic cases of blood spattering, particularly when people get shot in the head. __Why it has redeeming value:__ Fallout 3 tells a story of war. How it affects us as people. How it never changes. How even after a nuclear catastrophe that devastates the world, humankind is still fighting for religion and territory and belief systems that are all ultimately irrelevant, but drive peoples' decisions nonetheless. What's particularly interesting about Fallout's violence is that it's not necessary — players can feasibly go through the whole game without shooting all that many people. You might have to kill some mutated animals, but peoples' conflicts and quests can usually be resolved through peaceful dialog, computer hacking or mental manipulation. By choosing to blow peoples' brains out — which usually looks disgusting if not downright disturbing — the player is picking the easy way out. You can choose violence, Fallout 3 says to players, but the results might be messy. *—Jason Schreier* 
02pyramid-head
<style type="text/css"> .caption {background:url('http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/11/violence_blood_3.gif') no-repeat;} </style></head><body>Silent Hill 2 ------------- __What it is:__ An atmospheric Japanese horror game. __Most violent moment:__ Whenever the aptly named monster [Pyramid Head](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Head) (pictured above) carves up victims with his enormous knife. __Why it has redeeming value:__ Movies like *[The Usual Suspects](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Usual_Suspects)* are famous for pulling the rug out from under viewers, suddenly revealing that the stories they've been telling you are something very different than you originally thought. Silent Hill 2 horror game pulls off a far more sophisticated version of the trick. It begins as a fairly straightforward (but extremely effective) *Resident Evil*-style game, with unexpected shocks and gruesome supernatural creatures. But after hours and hours of play, it becomes apparent that the standard horror trappings are figments of the protagonist's imagination, which he has created to protect himself from even deeper horrors of his own making. That makes it sound cheesy, but it isn't. It's bold and effective storytelling. *—Chris Baker* 
03bully-660
<style type="text/css"> .caption {background:url('http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/11/violence_blood_1.gif') no-repeat;} </style></head><body>Bully ----- __What it is:__ A sandbox game set in the dog-eat-dog world of a modern schoolyard. __Most violent moment:__ [*Bully*](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2006/10/71922) protagonist Jimmy Hopkins is 15 years old, which might make it seem especially disturbing when he beats down other kids with a baseball bat. __Why it has redeeming value:__ Jimmy isn't just beating up kids for the sake of violence — he has specific goals and purposes, most of which revolve around defending helpless students and fighting off bullies. Forced to fight his own battles when he discovers the ineptitude of the school's authority figures, Jimmy rarely attacks people without a good reason. Bully, more than it glamorizes any sort of violence or disruptive behavior, takes a reflective approach to the question: Why do bullies bully? Between Jimmy's dysfunctional family and the sociopathic tendencies of students around him, it's hard not to find some significance behind the game's non-bloody violence. *—Jason Schreier* 
04bioshock
<style type="text/css"> .caption {background:url('http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/11/violence_blood_4.gif') no-repeat;} </style></head><body>BioShock -------- __What it is:__ An undersea action/adventure game. __Most violent moment:__ The first time you see a Big Daddy impale a man with the enormous drill on his right arm. __Why it has redeeming value:__ Non-gamers only experience games as brief snippets of video, usually action sequences or cut-scenes. I don't think many of them realize how well a game can convey a sense of place. I wish they could all spend a few hours wandering through Rapture, *[BioShock](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/news/2007/08/bioshock_review)*'s Objectivist utopia-turned-dystopia at the bottom of the ocean. You could spend hours examining the details of a single room: The Art Deco environments full of luxe fixtures and Truman-era advertising logos are in a state of crumbling disrepair, overlaid with cryptic graffiti and blood stains. Corpses are everywhere, and the attention to detail is so great that you can usually tell how a person died by examining overturned furniture and blood-spatter patterns. The game's story is conveyed through this painstakingly wrought environment more than it is through dialogue and cut-scenes. And as you get to know the place, it changes the way you feel about the feral, genetically mutated inhabitants of the undersea city, which the game forces you to massacre. Dressed in their dilapidated finery and clutching makeshift weapons, they are both terrifying and pitiable, like a cross between the party guests in the Shining and the Donner party. *—Chris Baker* *Image: [Akiraman](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ariaanime/1116046529/)/Flickr* 
05god-of-war-660
<style type="text/css"> .caption {background:url('http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/11/violence_blood_2.gif') no-repeat;} </style></head><body>God of War ---------- __What it is:__ An action-adventure game that draws on Greek mythology for its vengeance-fueled storyline. __Most violent moment:__ Pretty much the whole *[God of War](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gamelife/2010/04/god-of-war-3-2/)* series. Between ripping the wings off harpies and impaling Greek gods with protagonist Kratos' blades, it's not unfair to describe God of War as a veritable bloodbath. __Why it has redeeming value:__ Bloodbaths are what Greek mythology is all about. Ancient stories of Greek gods and heroes — including epics like *The Odyssey* and *The Iliad* — are filled to the brim with all sorts of gory details and violent imagery. To bring them to life with honesty requires the depiction of scenes that might not seem so politically correct in today's world. God of War might seem gratuitous with its mature content — and in many ways it is — but that just puts it on the same level as those ancient stories. It'd be irresponsible to gloss over or ignore that violence. *—Jason Schreier* 
06left4dead2
<style type="text/css"> .caption {background:url('http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/11/violence_blood_3.gif') no-repeat;} </style></head><body>Left 4 Dead 2 ------------- __What it is:__ A four-player cooperative shooter set in a zombie apocalypse. The game faced classification problems in Australia due to intense gore. __Most violent moment:__ The Left 4 Dead sequel introduced melee weapons, many of which could dismember the infected and splatter blood on the in-game camera. Hack up enough enemies and your screen would be nothing but a dripping red smear. __Why it has redeeming value:__ I hate to cry "realism" when discussing zombies, but if the world ended tomorrow and you had to shoot your way to safety, the experience would not be a pleasant one. *Left 4 Dead 2* dialed up the carnage in keeping with the game's horror setting. In order to survive in that world, players have to do some despicable things. If the monsters just vanish when shot, as they ended up doing in Australia, the nightmare simply isn't as scary. *—Daniel Feit* 
07chessmaster
<style type="text/css"> .caption {background:url('http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/11/violence_blood_2.gif') no-repeat;} </style></head><body>Chessmaster ----------- __What it is:__ A computerized version of a thousand-year-old board game. The character classes are all rendered in a very abstract fashion, but there's no getting around the brutal and bloodthirsty nature of this masterpiece. There is no compromise or diplomacy in chess; there is only war. It presents a Manichean world of black and white, where the only options are total victory or utter defeat. It's a world of cold pragmatism and Machiavellian strategems, where a bishop thinks nothing of eliminating a queen. __Most violent moment:__ Whenever hapless pawns sacrifice themselves to suit the whims of their king. __Why it has redeeming value:__ *StarCraft 2* has great graphics and carefully balanced races, but it's no match for this, the perfect military strategy game. *—Chris Baker* 
08mortal-kombat
<style type="text/css"> .caption {background:url('http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/11/violence_blood_1.gif') no-repeat;} </style></head><body>Mortal Kombat ------------- __What it is:__ A fighting game released in 1992 that utilized digitized actors, and copious amounts of gore. __Most violent moment:__ Every hit in *Mortal Kombat* resulted in a pint of blood flying across the screen, but the game was most notorious for its Fatalities. Players could finish off their opponents by impaling them on spikes or tearing their heads off, among other methods. __Why it has redeeming value:__ Like *Grand Theft Auto*, *Mortal Kombat* inspired a wave of me-too gross-outs that weren't worth 10 cents, let alone a quarter at the arcade. Where *Mortal Kombat* excelled was in giving every move in the game tremendous weight. Never mind the splotches of blood — when you landed an uppercut, the cabinet practically shook from the sound effects. Having real actors to play with instead of cartoon characters helped, too, which is one reason the series lost a lot of luster when the humans were dropped in favor of 3-D models. As far as the violence went, much of it was downright Looney Tunes in its silliness. Ripping a man's heart from his chest? *Temple of Doom* did that eight years earlier and it was rated PG. Jim Carrey did it in *Dumb and Dumber* and it was played for laughs. *—Daniel Feit* 
09gta
<style type="text/css"> .caption {background:url('http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2010/11/violence_blood_4.gif') no-repeat;} </style></head><body>Grand Theft Auto III -------------------- __What it is:__ An open-world game where you play a nameless thug given free license to do whatever you want. __Most violent moment:__ Like I said, do whatever you want. Ignore traffic signals, run over pedestrians, throw grenades around at the airport. Kill a cop and drive his police cruiser into the ambulance that comes to his aid. Did I mention this game came out just weeks after 9/11? __Why it has redeeming value:__ *Grand Theft Auto*'s sandbox design was a revolution for the gaming industry, as evidenced by the countless imitators in its wake. Its free-wheeling nature depended on letting players be as bad as they wanted to be. Even the name of the town, Liberty City, reflected the game's unchained attitude. And yet, the game wasn't without rules: The police responded with increasing hostility as your crimes grew in magnitude. Kill enough cops and the army would arrive in a near-indestructible tank to put you down. Nothing says "actions have consequences" like a turret pointed at your head. *—Daniel Feit* 
