Not Now

Looks odd, doesn't it? Or perhaps that's just me. But it doesn't look like english - it doesn't quite look right or normal. Like for a second, it's something else - a foreign tongue, some cryptic code - Not Now. Perhaps it's the incorrect, though intentionally dramatic, use of the capital letters for both words. Who would know the answer - perhaps a semanticist ... if such a thing truly doth exist. Or just Freud. But then he'd say something entirely aside from the point - still being the genius that ... he was. Never mind - I've already treaded too far from ground that I can lay fragile claim to being familiar with.

Thoughts of late have centered around a couple of things. There's, of course, the usual questions of validity. Memories are an odd thing - no matter where you go or what goes on, they always come back to haunt you. Things you thought you forgot sort of prey on your mind. And you can't really escape or run away to find some respite. It's tough and it's shit. But that' s the way it falls sometimes. Like words running in my head of past relationships and my inabilities to keep them ... alive, as such. Stuff that kind of just etches a mark on your soul. Forgotten but never gone. Inconsequential any other day of the week but today.

Violence. "Condemned" on the Xbox 360. Now before anyone even thinks of misunderstanding anything about to be said - I think that this game truly rocks. It kicks new kinds of ass heretofore unkicked in gaming. Now, past that, this game is also really violent in a disturbing way. I'm not one to say that games are violent or that they inspire violence in any but those within whom violence already exists. However, ... I'll explain. In "Condemned," you play the role of some cop who's framed for murder by a Serial killer and have to walk through the levels beating up on drug addicts and other miscreants who otherwise want you dead. It's played from this cop's eyes and guns are at a premium, so your primary choice of defence, or offence if you look at it that way, are melee weapons like pipes, shovels, hammers - anything you can get your hands on.

Now this is where the game follows its own path. When you swing a weapon, the screen swings with you. Making you feel the strength behind the blow. When you connect with some little bastard's face, he cries out in pain and drowns out the dull thud of the connecting blow. Blow splatters from his face or gut down onto the ground or nearby objects. He may lunge at you to catch you off guard, but if you time it right, a quick kick to the shins will send him reeling, ready for a whack to the back of the head. What gets me - and the reason why I have stopped playing it - is that this violence is much too ... "real" and accessible. Not that I could hit someone on the head with a lead pipe. But where the oft-maligned Grand Theft Auto is cursed for being violent, it's almost comical - it's a dark fantasy lived out by the gamer. It's so detached from reality that the violence is along the lines of Tom and Jerry. Inconsequential and without realistic problems.

In "Condemned," though, it becomes all too real. With each swing of your weapon, the adrenaline rushes through your veins and soon you're whacking the corpse of your foe repeatedly to make sure he's dead. Or maybe this is just me and I'm beyond the point of stability. No - I'm not about to violently slaughter or harm anyone. That's just not my way. But subjecting myself to a reality where the violence is painfully realistic in its depiction, certainly can't help the mindscape as it reacts to the world around it.

While on the subject of gaming, let it be said that the "King Kong" game on the 360 is a fucking marvel. While the graphics might not be the next-gen revelation, the gameplay and design is just sublime. That's all.

I think that I shall depart this for the time being. I've been sleeping far too late ... of late. Treading that fine line between being late for work and being really late.

Late, eh?

Till a later date! AH HA!