6. Prototype
Speaking of massacring innocents (which we werent), heres Prototype, a game about doing just that. Well officially its a game about superhuman Alex Mercer trying to save a city from a mutation-inducing plague while simultaneous attempting to uncover where all his endless list of terrifying new powers came from, but anyone who has played it for more than five minutes knows that isnt the case. What the game boils down to is a murderous rampage across a vast sandbox city, with players slicing their way through thousands of soldiers and screaming civilians for their own short-lived amusement. Its a game for the children who like to pull the legs of spiders, a game where jumping into a helicopter and smashing someones skull open against the window is considered a laugh. The main character is at total ease with regular mass murder, despite supposedly being an ordinary, non-homicidal bloke before everything kicked off, making it seem as if the game is saying, Hey kids! Murders not a big deal. Look how easy it is! This may be an over-reaction of course, but any game that lets you cut 14 people in half with a single swing of your tentacle arm is hardly classifiably as anti-violence. It even forces you to eat civilians alive to get your health back up for God sake, with the only other option being to abandon whatever excitement youre dealing with to go sit in a corner for five minutes until it regenerates. Theres nothing wrong with violence in video-games, yet the extreme level of it in Prototype left me feeling genuinely uneasy and guilt-ridden after ever session. If you can think of a defence for it then please share in the comments; Im going to take a shower, writing about this game has made me feel all dirty.