Torture // Current

Supreme Court Votes to Hide the Truth

The post-Constitutional Supreme Court has voted to cover up the truth about abuse of... more

Progresshiv
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1 day ago
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38 comments

Church of Scientology accused of torture and forced abortions

Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, has voiced “concerns” over the Church... more

WakeUpPeople
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14 days ago
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42 comments

Sam Seder Shuts Down Limbaugh & Cheney on Torture @ BreakRoomLive

http://breakroomlive.com In this "Cheney edition" of Random Rush, Sam tunes in as... more

BreakRoomLive
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6 months ago
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McCain Denounces Torture

On TV show "Face the Nation", Senator John McCain spoke out against the Bush... more

PaulTheFifth
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3 months ago
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15 ways to be tortured..or do the torturing, either way...take notes

This post is fit for Halloween. I hadn't even heard of some of the torture methods on... more

Skyscraper08
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1 month ago
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S21.The.Khmer.Rouge.Killing.Machine.1of2

As hundreds of thousands of people slowly starved in the rice fields, a select number... more

freeforall2008
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10 months ago
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1 comment

Jailed reformists have been tortured in an attempt to force them into TV "confessions"

EXCERPTS: Jailed Iranian reformists have been tortured in an attempt to force them... more

capt_ayhab
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5 months ago
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2 comments

Obama approves sandwich-boarding

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order today approving the... more

TheSkunk
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7 months ago
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0 comments

The Nancy Pelosi "Scandal" Made Simple: BreakRoomLive.com

http://breakroomlive.com Did Nancy Pelosi know about the Bush administration's... more

BreakRoomLive
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7 months ago
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Iran, la musica come resistenza

La libertà che molti iraniani vorrebbero è anche quella di ascoltare la musica che... more

hyperion74
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5 months ago
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1 comment

No Mercy and Ample Ways to Die

Whenever people complain about violence in video games, my riposte generally involves the “Saw” film series, and that usually shuts them up pretty quickly.

In 2007 a minor controversy broke out when games-ratings boards in the United States and Britain effectively banned the original version of Manhunt 2, a survival horror game by Rockstar. After diving into the gut bucket to examine depictions of human mutilation in Manhunt 2 and “Saw II,” I found that the movie was far more realistic and disturbingly explicit.

But now comes the first Saw video game, released recently by Konami for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles. (A downloadable Windows version is slated for release later this month.) After spending more than 10 hours in perhaps the most depressing, least redeeming virtual environment I have ever visited, I can report that the Saw game proudly represents the franchise established by its big-screen predecessors.

If being tormented by a crazed killer named Jigsaw as you stumble around a dank, not-so-abandoned old insane asylum filled with freaks and shotgun traps is your idea of a good time, Saw is the game for you. On the other hand, if a highly polished, varied and interesting experience is what you’re looking for, Saw is not it.

Those two ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but Saw is far more successful in conveying atmosphere than it is in delivering the intellectual and motor-response engagement of a fine game.

But does the game really qualify as “torture porn,” the moniker attached to films like “Hostel,” “Saw” and their sequels? Not really. As with more traditional pornography, live action with real actors is still far more graphic than anything whipped up by a computer. When it comes to tearing people apart and watching them writhe and howl in agony as they die in gruesome ways, Hollywood special-effects wizards are still far more advanced than digital-game technologies.

In the Saw game players rummage around in search of clues inside cadavers and toilet bowls full of used syringes. Human heads are routinely squashed, ripped off bodies and blown away by explosives. And yet the player is never treated to the sort of lush, saturated close-ups of oozing, gaping wounds that inspired critics to compare the films with sexual pornography in the first place.

Developers and publishers often lament that video games are unfairly held to a stricter standard than films when it comes to explicit content. That there is a higher standard for games is undoubtedly true. Movies routinely win commercial release with R ratings while including sexual and violent material that would be considered unacceptable in a game.

But is such a double standard unfair? Games, after all, are interactive. And with the power of interactivity come responsibilities on the part of writers, designers and developers that go beyond those thrust upon novelists and film directors. Perhaps part of that responsibility means consciously refraining from combining interactivity with the most explicit graphics possible.

With the Saw game, Zombie Studios seems to understand that. As gory as it may be, the game seems to exhibit a modicum of restraint on the part of its designers and artists.

But for all that, what makes a great game is not how it looks but how it plays. And it is quite clear that the Zombie team spent far more time on the visuals than on the play. From a game-play perspective Saw isn’t horrible, but it is not particularly interesting in more than a few spots. There are a handful of puzzle types, like lock picking and circuit rewiring, that are repeated over and over. And how many shotgun traps must one man disarm? Dozens? Hundreds?

Moreover, there may not have been a clumsier, less-responsive combat system in a major game in the last year. Every swing of a baseball bat, pipe or mannequin arm feels as if it is being forced through molasses.Whenever people complain about violence in video games, my riposte generally involves... more