Monday, January 30, 2006

For a while, a year or two ago, I embarked on an impossible quest to consume all the Pulitzer-winning books I could acquire. This went at a fine clip until I enrolled in the first third of American Pastoral, whereupon my desire for literature was replaced by an overwhelming compulsion to, how do you say, go blind. It’s unfortunate, and just a little awesome, but these tomes of culture have been replaced by the very devices responsible for the decline of civilization: those damn shiny discs that house everything from games to music to TV shows.

Gun is my media of the moment. Now, this isn’t an endorsement of the product, understand. It’s an action game, set against a ridiculous Old West, with an impressive voice cast and a pretty average everything else. The gunplay’s okay, which makes sense given, y’know, the title, but what makes me a repeat customer is the sheer excess of the game. Frontier life is itself an unexplored territory for me. The Quick and the Dead and Dr. Quinn don’t really cleave to accuracy, I don’t think, so I was pleased to find the following objectives within the first hour of play.

Save (6) whores.

Kill all the Indians.

Escort the chili-eater.

Protect the coolies.

Most of these are taken verbatim from the dialogue. Being a coolie myself, I immediately felt a connection to the game, substantive and profound, because what else could I have felt as my digital ancestors were butchered by those frenzied savages? The correct answer is I felt a pressing need to return to the books–more on this realization tomorrow.