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VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper has found his place in the cultural lexicon as a kind of mythical boogie man, a serial killer so far removed from the actual pain and terror he caused that he has become more like a character than a historical figure. While Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper manages to find a decent middle ground between being exploitative and sincere, it begs the questions: when does tragedy transition into entertainment? At what point does the murder of five women in London's slums become fair game for the media? Released in 2009 by Frogwares, Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper is the fifth game in the Sherlock Holmes adventure game series, which has also pitted the fictional detective against the likes of the thief Arsène Lupin.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Custer's Revenge (18+ or is it, with the graphics!)
Few will likely now recall the just how many adult games were on the Atari 2600. Before video games became the multibillion dollar industry that they are today, they were just another new form of media–which meant it was only a matter of time before the adult games showed up. Custer's Revenge doesn't fall neatly into the category of "adult" as it's profoundly lacking anything remotely close to titillation. The gameplay in Custer's Revenge is simple. The player controls Custer, a pixelated version of the United States Lieutenant Colonel who lost spectacularly to the combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes in the Battle of Little Bighorn. A naked Custer inches his way along a horizontal plane, dodging incoming arrows, to his goal: a naked and bound Native American woman. Another version of the game, General Retreat, reversed the roles, but was still bad.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Kholat
The Dyatlov Pass incident is one of the strangest events in Russian history, and its mysteries have inspired generations of conspiracy theorists. In 1959, nine experienced ski hikers set off for a trek in the Ural Mountains and disappeared. Their frozen bodies were later recovered, but that's where the mystery comes in. The hikers' tent was slashed to bits from the inside, and in their flight the group had left their shoes behind. To make matters worse, one of the group had her eyes and tongue removed. That's where Kholat picks up. The game places the player in the role of a hiker following the party's doomed expedition route. While an official investigation found that the hikers had died of natural causes, some have posited that the likes of an avalanche, infrasound-induced panic or even the Russian government were responsible.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare redefined the console shooter when it was released back in 2007, but it also did some pretty messed up stuff along the way. One mission in particular, "Death from Above," allowed the player to control an unmanned aerial vehicle with the objective of killing as many enemy targets as possible. While the Call of Duty franchise has largely steered away from addressing actual wars since Modern Warfare, instead opting to pursue fictitious conflicts with made-up antagonists, the kind of UAV technology feature in the game was effectively ripped from the headlines–the rules of engagement, however, were not. For example, the UAV can be used to destroy civilian buildings, which is a direct violation of the Hague Conventions' treaties and declarations about how war should be conducted.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
God of War (Mythological)
It's easy to forget that at some point much of the ancient Greek world was dominated by a belief system that purported the pantheon of gods that included Zeus, Hades and Athena was real and very involved in human civilization (or at least the manipulation and frequent destruction thereof). Kratos, the protagonist of the God of War franchise, basically tears a hole through said pantheon, leaving little unbroken in his wake. While it would be easy to call out God of War for poorly adapting the Greek gods into moustache-twirling monsters for the modern age, the reality isn't too far off. The Greek gods were actually an incredibly nasty, petty bunch whose crimes include genocide, assault, and turning people into animals against their will (and then violating them). No wonder Kratos is always so mad.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Tattletail
Let's take a break from the war crimes, holocausts and general assault on all things decent and talk for a moment about Furbies, the fuzzy animatronic toys from the '90s that took the world by storm. While a novel concept, Furbies were actually incredibly taxing to maintain and kind of annoying. The game Tattletail brings that all back in one frenzied rush of nostalgia. Tattletail is a game developed by Waygetter Electronics that puts the player in charge of feeding, charging and grooming a Furby-like creature, all while a malevolent force is hunting you throughout your house. Just like an actual Furby, Tattletail won't shut up, so it's always drawing monsters to you. Whoever did the sound design on this game deserves all the accolades in the book–Tattletail is just as sonically grating as a real Furby.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Spec Ops: The Line
White phosphorus is no joke, and that seems to be one of the major takeaways from the 2012 third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line, which attempts to tackle the madness of war while adhering to the run-and-gun style of the time. As a result, the game frequently dips into the surreal. One such moment comes just minutes after a white phosphorus attack, which sees an entire city block of enemies seemingly petrified by the deadly chemical. White phosphorus is a gas that burns on touch. The gas can burn both structures and flesh. In the case of Spec Ops: The Line, the white phosphorus attack was used to show the horrors of incendiary weapons, the use of which are regulated by the Geneva Convention's guidelines.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
The Town of Light
Video games have never been great at portraying mental health issues, but luckily some games, like The Town of Light, have stepped in to shoulder the responsibility. The Town of Light follows a girl, Renee, as she explores an abandoned asylum in Tuscany, Italy. A former patient herself, Renee recalls some of the hospitals more gruesome practices as she wanders. The asylum setting is actually based on a real place called the Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra, an Italian mental hospital that harbored 6,000 people at one point, and was notorious for its cruel treatment of patients. It's said the asylum kept only 20 sinks and two toilets for every 200 patients, while barbaric practices like electroshock therapy and induced comas to treat illness were not uncommon.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Ethnic Cleansing (Who names their game that or even makes a game on it!)
Look no further than Ethnic Cleansing if you're on the prowl for a truly reprehensible video game. Ethnic Cleansing bears that title easily, as its one of just a few games to be developed by a white supremacist organization, in this case National Alliance, as a form of twisted propaganda. The game's content is depressingly predictable. A first-person shooter, Ethnic Cleansing tasks the player with gunning down stereotypical depictions of people of color. According the chairman of National Alliance, the game was designed to be proactive and push a racial segregation agenda. In case the real-world tie-in isn't obvious enough, the game was released on Martin Luther King Jr. Day for $14.88. The number 14 is a white nationalist code linked to the now-defunct newspaper Fourteen World Press, while 88 is hate group slang for... well, praising Hitler. What's up with these guys and numerology, anyway?
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Assassin's Creed III
Assassin's Creed III isn't a terrible game by any means, but its wonky, often downright wrong portrayal of American history mixed with the fact that the game never really felt like much of an Assassin's Creed game combined to make it a disappointing outing for the series. To its credit, Assassin's Creed III didn't shy away from key issues of the time. The slave trade, for example, couldn't be foiled simply by assassinating a few overseers and freeing their slaves. A downloadable story for the game took the opposite approach, though, imagining the first American president, George Washington, as a tyrant every bit as bad as the repressive regime from which the colonists had fled. For every step forward Assassin's Creed III took, the game itself seemed intent on taking another two back.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Six Days in Fallujah
Perhaps one of the most controversial video games in recent memory, this war game would have been set during the most recent Iraq War, but was cancelled shortly after its announcement. Perhaps deemed too prescient, Six Days in Fallujah would have focused on a battalion of U.S. Marines fighting the Second Battle of Fallujah, a six-day firefight that took place in 2004. The game itself was announced in 2009, a mere five years after the battle. Controversy enveloped the title after its announcement, with veterans and advocacy groups alike claiming the title was disrespectful. The developer, Atomic Games, which had interviewed U.S. Marines, war historians and even Iraqi insurgents, cancelled the game, causing significant layoffs. The studio apparently went on to finish the game, but it was never released.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Fight of Gods (Mythological)
Graven images have long been taboo in many religions throughout the world, but an upcoming fighting game called Fight of Gods looks to buck that cultural trend. Much of the game's godly pantheon of fighters consists of deities long out of vogue in the worshipping world, but a few are timely enough to ruffle some feathers. For example, the game recently revealed its latest fighter: Jesus. While Jesus has long been portrayed in every medium from stained glass to potato chips, the sight of a cross-bound Christ fighting the likes of Zeus and Guan Gong will certainly cause some Christians to do a double-take. Luckily, the game hasn't gone down the route of including Muhammad as a playable character, which is smart since images of the Arabic prophet are considered deeply offensive to his followers.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Video games court controversy for all kinds of reasons, the main one being that a bombastic, crass scene in a game invariably gets people talking. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" mission is just that. The mission sees the player walking astride a group of terrorists as they gun down civilians in an airport terminal. Joseph Allen (the player character), undercover as Alexei Borodin, is able to engage in the massacre with an array of supplied weapons, or simply watch the chaos unfold. The scene was a thematic follow-up to a moment in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare that forced the player to endure a nuclear attack. While the scene was largely considered bold upon release, time has cooled that opinion as mass shootings have become commonplace and terrorist attacks on civilians have only increased. Too real, and maybe a bit too now.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Counter-Strike. Hunting Yankee (You guessed it, North Korean!)
Hunting Yankee is a video game that was created by a North Korean firm as a propaganda tool that allows players to take aim at American soldiers. It's a first-person shooter and graphically looks terrible–a little like a poorly textured Counter-Strike. Hunting Yankee is just one of many North Korean propaganda video games. Others, like Confrontation War and Guardian, are crude mobile games that focus on naval warfare. Interestingly, North Korea's navy, called the Korean People's Navy, is one of the country's weakest military branches, boasting less than 800 crafts, most of which are antiquated and only fit for river and coastal patrol, not warfare. It goes without saying that relations between North Korea and the United States have been strained lately, but hopefully that aggression stays contained to game jams.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Battlefield Vietnam
Vietnam was a hellish war that stretched on for 19 long years. Only now, 42 years after its conclusion, are we starting to fully understand its ramifications. While game series have occasionally flirted with settings based on real wars, the Battlefield franchise saw fit to tackle this messy war in 2004 with Battlefield Vietnam. To its credit, a lot of thought went into this online shooter developed by Digital Illusions CE. The gameplay was somewhat asymmetrical. Players' loadouts would vary wildly depending on which team they were assigned. The American team relied more on heavy artillery and vehicles, while Vietnamese soldiers were reliant on their ground forces and map mobility. Still, it’s a fairly grisly prospect to play a video game based on a war known for its misuse of chemical weapons, civilian casualties and traumatized veterans.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Papers, Please
Papers, Please is a game with a good heart, but that doesn't mean it's easy to stomach or enjoyable to play. The game places the player in the role of a border official tasked with allowing or denying potential immigrants entry into a fictitious country ruled by a regressive regime. As the game goes on, the menial tasks required of the player become increasingly more elaborate while the amount of time allotted for them decreases. One wrong move, and your pay could be docked or you could be allowing a suicide bomber across the border. The overall feeling of playing Papers, Please is one of intense exhaustion brought on by the game's unrelenting tone and the reality that regimes like the one depicted in the game are depressingly real. The game features a variety of endings that include the player's execution and imprisonment.
More on the way. Stay tuned. Let's see if dustin/chef comes with goodies today.
Wow I missed a lot again! You guys are partying hard!
3 giveaways to be precise. But, I strongly believe that the best is yet to come.
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
CHERNOBYLITE
A lot of video games have been inspired by the infamous Chernobyl disaster and this 2019 game is no different. “Chernobylite” is the latest video game that focuses on a sci-fi survival gaming mode in order to run to a safer zone.
The game might not be considered a “horror game” per se, but, most if not all of us are familiar with the resulting tragedy of the 1986 disaster that rippled throughout time and into the present.
Ah neat! I got a VPS and a t-shirt last time that I'm thrilled with. So I won't be pushing too hard his time.
But mostly just busy. I'll pop in from time to time.
Are you guys looking forward to anything in the new year?
@dustinc flash sale?
VIDEO GAME TRIVIA - GAMES BASED ON TRUE STORIES
Silent Hill (Not sure if I already posted this)
Silent Hill is never a pleasant place, nor an easy video game. It’s always been famous for its jump scares and spine-chilling experience, and with a new real-life location reference comes a new territory of fear! The inspiration is Centralia, in Pennsylvania. The tragedy that took place in this small town was of a fire breaking out at one of its mines. The people couldn’t contain it and the vicious fire led to multiple sinkholes which, in turn, resulted in the town’s population plummeting to a dismal “0”. And if that doesn’t make you feel a little bit nervous of the game, then we’re sure the next section will do the trick.