Bloody video games.
They've caused their fair share of drama over the years, with violent action and gory killing
attributed to all kinds of societal harm.
These days, a certain amount of bloodshed is tolerated - but not so long ago a splash
of red pixels was all it took to start a fuss.
Join me as I prepare to dive knee deep into blood, guts, and video games.
Death is no stranger to gaming: from the very beginning, the need for a failure state has
led to the morbid metaphor in each game over.
The technical limitations of the earliest video games made the realistic depiction of
bloodshed difficult: detailed injury impossible to render with low-resolution monochrome graphics.
Instead of anything more grisly, in 1975's Gunfight, slain opponents simply crumple into
a heap and exclaim 'got me!'.
The first video game to really court controversy was Death Race in 1976, in which you run over
innocent pedestrians to score points - but despite the fuss, the game's visuals are tame.
For most of the golden era of arcades, violence was limited to either exploding space aliens,
or cutesy cartoon violence - realism wasn't a major consideration.
By the mid-1980s we saw a slow emergence of bloodier games: fueled by a mix of popular
horror and action movies; and the contemporary system's increased ability to fling red pixels
across the screen.
It did take a while - 1982's rendition of Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the Atari 2600
wasn't quite the gorefest you'd expect - although the goal of the game was to dismember, it
wasn't depicted with any real detail.
Chiller in 1986 was very different, however - a full-on torture simulator with a light
gun shooting gallery in tow.
The game courted controversy from the start, with arcade owners refusing to invest in it
- the idea of shooting unarmed innocents deemed distasteful by some.
In 1987, the digital rendition of Charles Bronson in Death Wish 3 lived up to the namesake
movie - with both enemies and innocent prostitutes alike collapsing into a bloody heap upon the
impact of your rocket launcher.
By this time though, violent shooter games in the spirit of an action movie were just
good clean fun - the Rambo-inspired Ikari Warriors might have seen thousands of pixelated
soldiers cut down by gunfire, but such mayhem was expected of the shooter genre.
Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior managed to find some moral indignation - the bikini-clad
box served as the basis for the player's motivation, and the game's violent content wasn't any
less offensive.
In a world where video games are viewed as children's playthings, brutal combat and decapitation
doesn't go over well.
1988's Splatterhouse saw the player don a hockey mask and cleave demons in twain, with
a protagonist reminiscent of Jason Vorhees.
Although not an official tie-in, it was a successful translation of a horror movie - with
a cast of grotesque enemies and a variety of weapons at your disposal.
As arcade units became more powerful, games like Narc started to unlock the power of a
32-bit address bus, with glorious full colour graphics and copious use of voice samples.
Gore was quite prominent, with enemies often exploding into a bloody pulp - although the
game is clearly aware of society's limits, as the attack dogs simply shrink and whimper
upon incident fire.
The end of the 80s gave us Tecmo Knight: a scrolling beat-em-up with decapitation aplenty
and bucketloads of blood: and Beast Busters, a rail shooter in the vein of Operation Wolf
in which enemies explode in a satisfyingly visceral fashion.
Taito's Space Gun was an Aliens-inspired game in which you desperately shoot off the enemy's
limbs before they lacerate your face - and the Robotron-inspired Smash TV was a gloriously
fun arena shooter: a hyper-violent game show in which your goal is to bloodily slaughter
incoming waves of opponents.
By the early 90s, the pace of technology was moving fast - 16-bit home machines were the
norm, and CD-ROM was slowly emerging as the media of the future - able to hold a whopping
600 megabytes of information.
This allowed developers to deliver Full Motion Video content to home console owners: and
although crude by today's standards, games like 1992's Night Trap were impressive for
the time.
Although not particularly gory, the game was known for the controversy it spawned - realistic
acts of violence against women meant the game quickly led to calls for censorship.
Another controversial game this year made use of realistic digitised sprites and gruesome
finishing moves: none other than Mortal Kombat.
A savvy player with the right knowledge could humilate a defeated opponent with a final
killing blow: such 'Fatalities' normally gratuitously violent procedures that drove home defeat
with explicit dismemberment.
Such a gimmick also helped crystallise outrage, and led to the game being upheld in several
court cases in an attempt to either censor such content or more tightly regulate it.
Eventually, this action led to the introduction of the ESRB - the Entertainment Software Rating
Board - a self-regulatory organisation that staved off governmental intervention.
The introduction of ratings such as 'M for Mature' helped to quash the belief that video
games exist solely as children's entertainment - and gave future titles a freer licence to
explore more adult themes.
Mortal Kombat's popularity also inspired many clones: with titles like Blood Warrior poorly
aping the digitised warriors and violent finishing moves.
Time Killers was notable for its liberal dismemberment, and a critical blow could sever your opponent's
head, ending the round instantly.
Eternal Champions on the Megadrive, and later on the Mega CD, took similar notes from Mortal
Kombat - with frequently grisly finishing moves marking the end of bouts.
The rise of the FPS genre in the 90s followed in the footsteps of the violent shooters of
the late 80s - such titles would cement the word 'gib' into the gaming lexicon.
Doom in 1993 proved phenomenally popular, and its violent nature and satanic imagery
made it a common target for debate.
While for the most part bloodshed was quite measured, should you deal massive damage to
an opponent they would be reduced to a bloody red paste - with a suitably sickening sound
effect.
Rise of the Triad in 94 was a little more slapstick in its approach, with the complete
destruction of your enemies heralded with a shower of blood, guts and eyeballs - with
the game proclaiming 'ludicrous gibs!' as your reward.
Gibbing became the hallmark of the genre, with most later examples permitting the reduction
of your opponents into fleshy chunks - at least until ragdoll physics took hold.
Meanwhile, the horror adventure genre was making good use of the improved graphics available,
with Phantasmagoria in 1995 blurring the lines between video game and B-movie.
With live actors meeting grisly fates, the game was a shade too much for some - banned
in Australia, and many retailers refused to stock it.
Harvester was similar, released the year after - realistic digitised characters and the odd
gruesome cutscene.
As well as chilling adventure, blood and guts would also become an integral part of the
survival horror genre: with the bloodier scenes in Resident Evil serving to enhance tension
and remind you of your fragile state.
The foggy horror of Silent Hill was similar, although much of the game was obscured with
an eerie mist - but with horror games, often the things you can't see are far more terrifying
than anything in plain sight.
The next major controversy was neither a shooter nor horror - but one inspired by Death Race
2000 and featuring high-intensity vehicular manslaughter.
In Carmageddon, pedestrians mean points - and points refill your timer, giving more than
sufficient motivation for the player to mow down crowds of hapless peds.
Of course, the realistic slaughter of innocents rubs censors the wrong way - and the game
was eventually released with green-bleeding zombies instead of realistic humans in the
UK, and oil-spewing robots in Germany.
Some hyperviolent games were even not so lucky to see release, and there exists a cancelled
four-way fighting game for the PS1 called Thrill Kill that had the plug pulled in 1998.
A shame too, as the game isn't half bad - and the thrill kill finales are exhilarating,
as you edge ever closer to your opponent while the chanting intensifies...
Despite the fuss over some games, blood and gore were common currency in first person
shooters of the era: from the grim whine of the cerebral bore in Turok 2: Seeds of Evil,
the flash of the instagib rifle in Unreal Tournament, creating a shower of gibs - or
the spectacularly satisfying shotgun dismemberment in the Soldier of Fortune games.
It's less the spectacle of violence and more the intent: and games with a criminal bent,
like the Grand Theft Auto series, earned the ire of critics for its casual portrayal of
reckless lawbreaking.
Once you broach into psychopath territory you are almost guaranteed dissension: and
in 2003 games like Postal 2 took heavy fire for its more questionable activities.
No game has stirred up more of a fuss than Rockstar's Manhunt, however - a murder-em-up
in which you play a death row inmate forced to commit creative kills for an unseen director's
snuff film.
When approaching an enemy, weapon in hand, you can charge up your attack to unleash a
progressively more brutal strike - with the kill graphically detailed in a cutscene as
your helpless opponent struggles.
Although banned in several countries, the game was popular enough to warrant a sequel
in 2007 - although this was with heavy censorship to avoid the sales-killing touch of an 'Adults
Only' rating.
In the wake of Manhunt, your common-or-garden gore seemed to pale in comparison, and so
games have since been relatively free to tread down a bloody path.
Nobody blinked an eye when Half Life 2 allowed you to launch saw-blades at high velocity
towards headcrab zombies, severing the torso in two - or when nearby flames ignited them,
with their screams of pain fading as their flesh chars.
In 2005, Resident Evil 4 managed to ruffle some feathers with its more gruesome deaths
- in one notable instance a chainsaw-wielding enemy will happily lop your head clean off,
swiftly bringing your game to an end.
It seems losing your head causes others to do the same.
By the start of the seventh console generation, violent games were very much in the mainstream
- titles like Gears of War were an early system seller for the Xbox 360, despite unabashed
dismemberment with the series' trademark chainsaw-gun.
In Dead Space nobody can hear you scream, as the necromorphs pop out of air vents and
rapidly shuffle towards you.
The game teaches you to never trust a corpse, prompting precautionary kerb stomping in order
to avoid a jump scare.
Of note are the grisly deaths: including a particularly memorable scene in Dead Space
2 in which you have to guide a needle directly into your own eyeball.
Eyeballs also feature in Fallout 3, amongst myriad other body parts: with frequent visceral
slow-downs upon critical hits within the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System.
As with the revived Fallout series, we've also seen the return of a few other gory classics,
this time around unfettered by their era.
Splatterhouse saw a fresh coat of red paint in the mediocre but suitably savage 2010 remake.
Vulnerable enemies could be executed in bloody vignettes, and upon taking damage your character
would lose chunks of flesh - and eventually even limbs.
The latest in a long line of Mortal Kombat sequels arrived in 2011, with enhanced visuals,
spectacular X-Ray moves and gorier-than-ever fatalities.
Banned in Australia, Germany and South Korea - the game stayed true to its roots, and did
well both in reviews and in sales.
Ludicrous gibs also made a return in 2012, with a revived Rise of The Triad.
A true old-school shooter, with brutal difficulty and breakneck speed: the slightly zany sense
of humour ties in with an occasionally silly level of bloodshed.
Such violence need not always be for its own sake, and indeed some games use gore to enhance
a narrative: 'No Russian' in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 depicts the slaughter of
innocent travellers as a key plot point, giving ignition to the game's greater conflict.
2012's Spec Ops: The Line was a mechanically mediocre third-person shooter that nonetheless
earned praise from the critics by challenging the modern military FPS cliche: instead of
congratulating the player for kills, it shoves the grisly result in your face in a none-too-subtle
fashion.
Similarly guilt-tinged is the neon-infused HotLine Miami: a top-down exercise in hyper-violence,
that sometimes gives the player pause for their actions, asking: 'do you like hurting
other people?'
As a counterpoint, there's those games which exist solely for the love of gore - designed
purely for the spectacle of killing.
The God of War series is a prime example of such spectacle fighters: comprised entirely
of epic set-pieces, in which you brutally slay, decapitate or gouge out organs from
an entire bestiary of mythological beings.
Similarly stylish is 2009's Madworld: with comic-book visuals inspired by Sin City, the
monochrome combat is liberally splashed with huge amounts of crimson as you perform sadistic
finishing moves.
And of course, gore is par for the course in the horror genre - anything involving zombies
is guaranteed to have its fair share of body parts liberated from rotting corpses.
Left 4 Dead, and its sequel in particular, blend 4-player co-op with massive hordes of
zombies - and a host of ways to force your way through them.
Killing Floor offers similarly gory co-op, with a closed arena and more varied specimens
which attack in waves.
Call of Duty: World At War introduced Nazi Zombies to the series, and was perhaps the
goriest COD in more general terms: with sufficient damage, limbs can be severed from the living
and undead alike.
Every detail of your gory destruction is captured in Sniper Elite 2, and its Nazi Zombie Army
variant: with the awesome slow-motion terminal arc of bullets, paired with gratuitous X-Ray
vision: tearing flesh, piercing organs and smashing bone.
No doubt, rent flesh and rivers of claret are an arousing visual - appealing to human
instinct at a very basic level, and acting as an effective way to communicate injury.
Taken to extremes, flinging gore at a player is a caricature of carnage - reassuring the
concious mind that it's all just a game.
There are, of course, thousands of gory games out there - so please let me know some of
your personal favourites in the comment section below.
Otherwise, thank you very much for watching, and until next time - farewell.