Guys, you havn't even seen the story yet, how can you alrady have these oppinions. Who knows, maybe he ends up to have one hell of a reason to do what he does in the story.
Reminds me of the movie god bless america, and that movie turned out to be one heck of a story to...
A teaser would give you a sense of what the game is about. There's not even a suggestion there might be a story. There's no question that, in the trailer, they're trying to provoke controversy - hence that's their selling point.
The actual gameplay looks redundant. They could have made something interesting if they played a horror or supernatural angle - e.g. He's possessed, or people are zombies. Or they could have played the dark humor angle by making the people/victims caricatures from suburbia (... or even Sims clones).
If the game was about killing Sims I see a lot of potential humor. What they've shown actually looks pretty boring.
To play off of what dascoyne said, maybe there is a compelling reason for the character to take such actions. But even if that's the case, it's sure not being marketed that way. It's being marketed based
purely on shock value, and frankly, that suggests to me that the game itself is nothing special.
See, when I see an entertainment product being marketed largely on some sensationalist aspect -- ultraviolence, raunchy sex, some scene that is "controversial," etc. -- I usually assume that that's pretty much the only interesting thing about it. And the thing about sensationalist aspects in this stuff is that the initial "shock" of it wears off...pretty damn quickly. If there's nothing deeper than that -- and from the marketing...there ain't -- then there's nothing to hold your attention or give the shock any deeper meaning. I'm not against art that shocks. But this just looks like pure exploitation. If it's meant to be some deeper commentary on gaming culture and they're engaging in some kind of subversive art...it's pretty buried beneath "OMG HE JUST BLEW A KID'S HEAD OFF!!!"
For a movie,
sometimes a moment of shock can work. But that's usually because the rest of the film is engaging in some way. But this being a game, and it being marketed as "You get to run around and..uh..kill people brutally. The end," after about your 4th kill, the novelty will wear off. Once you're at that point...the game will lose its interest. It'll be just another shooter. No different from the myriad other games out there where your character shoots aliens, robots, zombies, whatever.
So, yeah, if this is them putting their best foot forward, I'd say they need some tough-actin' Tinactin for that foot, 'cause it stinks.