MATURE GAMES ARE GREAT, BUT DO THEY ALL HAVE TO MAINLY INVOLVE STABBING PEOPLE IN THE NECK?

With a deluge of darker games on the horizon, remember to have some fun now and again

The E3 announcements made me superexcited for the next few years of gaming. There are some incredible games coming up, and as I continue to dig through E3 showcases to milk that content, I find myself deeply immersed in the dairy farm of upcoming hits – though to be honest, it can kind of be a bummer, as the attached gaming slaughterhouse is ever-present.

My point being, there are only so many times I can stab faceless goons in the neck before it all starts to just get to me a little bit. Don’t get me wrong, individually speaking I’m looking forward to all of those ultraviolent games, but just the sheer whirlpool of bleakness is getting me down slightly. With a lot of these games pushing the bounds of the fidelity possible, things are becoming more and more harrowing with each new title, with brutal execution scenes, the panicked feeling of being pursued by extreme violence, even the rendering of individual blood drops.

Nathan Drake guns down hundreds of goons himself in the Uncharted series, but at least he has a good chuckle about it. Maybe it’s not the most realistic approach, but then when has pulp adventure fiction ever been about pure realism? Sometimes you just want to kick back and have some fun.

TRIGGER HAPPY

There’s nothing wrong with making mature games for mature players to play while munching mature cheese (last part optional), but sometimes ‘mature’ doesn’t equal a carnival of violence. In fact, it’s often about nuance, which a lot of these devs should know how to do.

Where violence and harrowing stories were once bucking the trend, at the moment it seems to be swinging the other way. At least bright lights like Spider-Man are web-slinging the way to back to that feeling of gaming joy. You need both light and dark from any medium, but it’s hard for the landscape of releases to get that balance right, because not everyone knows what everyone else is doing at any one time. I’m all here for mature gaming, but don’t forget to give me some fun too, devs, please.