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Old 09-16-2006, 11:40 AM   #15 (permalink)
Jinn
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By suggestion of this thread, I downloaded it and played it. It's not bad.

It's a 2D isometric game, similar to games like Final Fantasy II or III - it looks like it was made with RPG Maker.

Whomever made it (Danny Ledone, as I've found out) did a great deal of research into Columbine and loaded the dialog with a fair share of satire and inside jokes. One that made me laugh was when you're walking around you see a broken pipe. If you click on it, Dylan says something to the effect that it's a shame the repairman is going to be mistaken for the third shooter (something he would clearly not know).

When you're loading up on CO2 bombs and guns at the beginning of the game, there's a Marilyn Manson CD you can pick up. I thought it was funny because when you select it, it says:

"Even though I'm not really a huge fan, the mainstream media will probably jump all over this guy for what happens today..."

You find Marilyn Manson CD!

And you can actually equip it as an "Accessory" on either Dylan or Eric. The same goes for the "Doom 3D" game, and it boosts your accuracy with all of your guns by a great deal.

The game is well composited and flows seemlessly, but the instructions are relatively vague. When you're tasked with placing the bombs in the cafeteria, it doesn't mention that you've got to get them out of Dylan's trunk first. I kept getting to the cafeteria and I couldn't figure out how to place them. Little did I know, I didn't even have them yet.

The music is well composited, and certain tracks fire up at key moments. Du Hast fires up when Dylan pulls the fire alarm, You're all so Fucking Special when you get your guns, etc. Although it is MIDI quality sound, it is very well timed and suceeds at making the game more immersive.

A few tips that I saw:

Trying all of the different attacks available to the two is novel at first, but it becomes tiring eventually. You'll soon switch to Auto Combat mode just because it's tiring to select your rifle over and over again. Be warned, though, that you can get jumped by up to 3 janitors at once when you're heading towards the library. The first time I almost died to them - use Napalm or the Tec9 because they both hit multiple targets at once.

The Jocks are the hardest, and can actually often dodge your attacks. You're best to use a Propane bomb or use the rifles of both boys. When you encounter the group of Jock Boy / Preppy Boy / Church Boy and Black boy, make sure that you also use your area-effect attacks.

Make sure you kill the nerdy girls when you see them, as they drop Luvox, an antidepressant and an effective heal potion.

Even with it's tiringly repetetive combat system, Columbine Massacre RPG does pretty well - nicely timed music and a very solidly researched story. There are quite a few snippets of the past (flashbacks) and dialog between the two characters that lets you see the "Massacre" from Dylan and Eric's side. Much of the dialog and video clips from Dylan and Eric are reminiscent of fight club - the strongest survive, this is the new generation of humanity, etcetera. Unfortunately, the game is rather short and only ended up being an hour or so of play time.

At the end you're shown quite gruesome pictures of Dylan and Eric after killing themselves, and you're presented by a monolog by one of them... it begins "In this very last moment, many things run through my mind - maybe it could've all been different somehow.."

I'd give it about a 7 out of 10. Amusing, controversial perhaps, but nothing altogether special.

I recommend you play it, just for giggles.

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EDIT: I also found a neat article about "Richard Castaldo, who was last paralyzed from the chest down after being shot in the arm, chest, back and abdomen by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold during their attack on Columbine High School, emailed me recently about our post on the Super Columbine Massacre RPG."

Quote:
Do you think it glamorizes what happened at Columbine?

There is a part where after the character's representing the killers in the game die, and then the game shows an extenended real-life montage of what happened that day. And it shows their blood-soaked corpses, and isn't pretty. Which to me deglamorizes what they did. I've heard of some stories where some students try to make folk heroes out of these killers, which is very disgusting to me. I think people who have that mindset and then play this game and see that part it would make it real for them. As opposed to having this sort-of romanticized version that some people have.

But, at the same time there are some dialogue in the game that comes up after you kill the students that refers to you as being "brave boys", which i would hope was supposed to be ironic, because clearly what they did was not brave or heroic in anyway, it was quite the opposite. It has you killing students with absolutley no protection whatsoever. Which is what actually happened. So if the killers (or anyone else for that matter) thought that what they were doing was heroic in any way they were deeply fooling themselves. People ask me all the time, "Did you know them?" And my answer is of course no, i didn't. And, I didn't do a damn thing to either one of them. So, I think the game kinda highlights that. That there was no real rhyme or reason why specific people got killed.
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/feature...rpg-171966.php
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Last edited by Jinn; 09-16-2006 at 11:50 AM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost
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