Innocence Lost
by Kat
I is pretteh, but me yummeh wiz hoi sin sos
After seeing the reaction to my last article I am now slightly concerned about how I may be coming across to friends, family and anyone else who may lurk on this fine site. I want to take a few moments from your day to try and persuade you that I’m honestly not a psychopathic loon on the verge of committing The Great Westcountry Massacre of 2010. Away from games I like to think I’m a fairly docile, friendly person. I like to keep up with the latest lolcats. In Springtime I pass by the stream everyday to check for ducklings. Sometimes I even indulge in a spot of baking – some flapjacks or banana bread. I promise I’m not the monster I may have painted myself. In order to reflect this I would like to mention a couple of the sweeter, less gory and twisted games I enjoy playing from time to time.
Peggle
More addictive than crack laced Jaffa cakes, you cannot get much more cutesy than this game. It has giant rainbows that shoot across your screen to the strains of Ode To Joy, a unicorn, special magical powers (or “abilities” but that doesn’t sound as sweet), kooky background art and it even gives you a diploma at the end. For the few uninitiated the gameplay is simple. You shoot balls at a screen filled with blue and orange pegs in the hope of eradicating all the orange ones before you run out of shots to fire because… well, I can’t remember this being explained. I’m not sure why these orange pegs have to be obliterated. What have they ever done to us? Is the Peggle Institute actually training us to be Peg Terrorists? To partake in the ethnic cleansing of anything orange? Maybe having “the music from Die Hard” should have been a clue? I’m not convinced this game truly represents my nice side. Perhaps I should move on to a better example…
It wasn't long ago that Peggle was the word on everyone's lips... then again... so was swine flu
Viva Pinata
This is one of the first games I played on the Xbox 360 and it started as a peaceful, relaxing experience. Tending to my garden, planting bulbs, harvesting carrots, squealing in delight when my first Whirlm appeared. When you have two of the same creature you can start breeding them using a mini-game where they have to reach each other through a peril-filled maze but then it’s all love and dancing. Aww, sweet! You now have a happy family of three! Then one day a Sparrowmint lands in your garden and eats Mummy Whirlm. Catastrophe! Until you remember you have two Whirlms left and can breed more so you continue without giving it much thought. Taking a step back however and you see you are increasing your colony by mating Daddy Whirlm with Daughter Whirlm and then with other brothers and sisters in one big incestuous mess. Viva Pinata’s gameplay is based around murder, survival and inbreeding?.. Next!
There is nothing more satisfying than hanging something from a tree and smacking it with a stick until everything inside falls out, and pinatas are great fun too!
Beautiful Katamari
A delightfully wacky experience which involves rolling up big balls (katamari) of earthly items to create planets and stars while listening to upbeat Japanese pop music. It’s brightly coloured, you collect gifts and find your cousins. All this is done to help your father, the King Of All Cosmos who spends most of the time berating your efforts. In fact he’s a bully. Nothing you do is good enough. Your katamari rarely come up to size. The poor Prince suffers this verbal abuse, this parental bullying, in silence. Probably for fear of being struck or locked under the stairs. On top of this, what starts out as rolling sticky bundles of sweets or board game pieces soon turns into fusing animals, homes and terrified humans to the ball as the King requests bigger and bigger katamari. The game eventually involves the complete destruction of planet Earth. Oh.
This screenshot shows one of the many easter eggs where the ugly hypnotist type guy gets to smack that woman around the head with a tennis racquet until she bleeds. It explains the protrusions on her ugly weird head.
Perhaps these amiable looking games aren’t quite so innocent after all. Where I think I’m playing something light hearted and family friendly, underneath actually lurks depravity. At least you know exactly where you stand with your Gears of War or Call of Duty. You have 18 certificates on the case, you know there will be murder and violence but these so-called “cute” games can infiltrate you undetected. Where people thought the gore and bloodshed in more adult titles could be construed as adversely affecting gamers perhaps we should be taking action against these seemingly innocuous games aimed at the more innocent among us. The media and do-gooders may jump on the more obviously violent games but I believe that true corruption lies with Peggle.
Last five articles by Kat
- Falling For Fallout?
- I MAED A P0ST WITH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!1
- One Girl, Two Pads
- The Gaming Closet
- 24 Hours In Reach
I was laughing way too hard at this.
I’m actually completely jealous of the idea behind this, and I think you should totally make more of these!
While the rest of us know that true corruption lies with Peggles.
Must be hard for you to try and find a game your girls can play when ever game has its dark side.. Or maybe it’s you.
great stuff Kat.
VP2 was a truly horrible game as, until you figured out a way to stop him, Prof. Pester would habitually destroy your best pinatas. That bastard.
So funny, fantastic article
You’re quite right…Viva Pinata was extremely odd and depraved, especially with the enjoyable incest and shovel murders. Being able to shovel beat a creature until it was gasping its last, ready for some sinister phantom to drift across your garden and claim its life was just eerie but the story was even more bizarre: the two parents buggered off on a ship, leaving one of their kids to be lured away and turned into the weird phantom. They didn’t even give a shit…someone call child protective services.
Oooooh! Judge Judy won’t like that at all missy!
I found the ironic tone of this piece totally amazing and had me chuckling away, the protestations being diluted with each passing word… awesome!! I haven’t played ANY of the games mentioned above, primarily because I assumed that they were quite saccharin and overly sanitised to appeal to either kids or the wider non-gamer audience… but, given the inclusion of murder and incest, I’m now sorely tempted! It’s quite amazing how you’re drawn to the macabre Kat, especially since you’re such a sweet and lovely person in real life with a penchant for pink and fluffy bunnies etc. Maybe you’re a witch. Or Satan?
Peggle clearly supports the ethnic cleansing of ginger people and is training us for G-Day.
I’d trust you in a Zombie Apocalypse Kat but not to raise my Pinata’s. I worry what you’d do to them, the ‘nice’ facade doesn’t fool me!
I love the twists on the common standpoints Kat, feel free to bake me some Flapjack anytime
“…strains of Ode To Joy, a unicorn, special magical powers (or “abilities” but that doesn’t sound as sweet), kooky background art and it even gives you a diploma at the end.”
You just described my university experience. I was, however, just becoming familiar with the joys of Captain Morgan’s finest rum and Terry Gilliam films, and went to a fairly modern institution that tried too hard to be contemporary.
Whatever. I love Peggle. It’s stupid, there’s no real skill involved rather than pure luck, and it’s incredibly addictive. I can’t say I’ve played the other two, though I did play a Katamari game on the PS2. Katamari Damacy. I never quite figured it out either, and quickly got over the glorious realisation that I could roll over people and suck them into my massive ball. Those games are kind of a one-trick pony.
Very amusing article, Kat. Unfortunately. Because chuckling really hurts just at present.
Terry Gilliam Films!
I was exhausted at a friends a few months ago and sitting on their couch, they put on Time Bandits and I was just phasing in and out of concsiousness. Thought I was tripping my tits off everytime I opened my eyes, never watching that ever again!