Welcome to the Gore Awards.
The following content is meant for people 18 and over.
Creating a film is considered a work of art. As far as much of the public is concerned, creating a video game is not a form of art. Yet video games are generally held by considerably stricter standards when it comes to what content is appropriate and what is not considered appropriate. You could argue limitations shouldn’t apply to films since art should not have boundaries, except how will video games ever become art with the boundaries that are currently in place? I’ve seen some horrific films that are filled with blood and other movies where people’s insides become outsides. Take Dead Alive, Evil Dead 2, or any Saw movie as an example. You can show brutal torture in a film like House of a Thousand Corpses, but attempt something similar in a video game and it’ll be censored faster than it takes for a tabloid to report on Britney Spears.
So Diehard GameFAN would like to give out the following Gore Awards for those developers not afraid to take a risk and show us exactly what it is like to remove someones kidneys with nothing but a ballpoint pen.
Actually, behind all that bravado the only reason I’m doing this is because I wanted to. Screw art. Chicago has giant light displays of mouths that morph into other mouths that spit water. If that’s art, then I’d rather play video games.
So onto the Gore Awards. DHGF will be giving out awards on the following categories: Best Decapitation, Best Mutilation, and Best Amputation. Awards are based upon excelling in the areas of the amount of gore involved, creativity of how the action was done, and overall style.
Let’s begin.
Best Decapitation
The Nominees:
POSTAL
Credit goes to SechMolinari
Postal 2 – One of the few, if only, games to include Al-Queda, anthrax cows, Gary Coleman, and the ability to urinate on random NPC’s make it one of the few games that not just is violent, but is shamelessly so. Not only can you decapitate NPC’s in this game, you can kick the heads around and even use the heads to play a game of fetch with the friendly dogs within the game. That automatically gives the game a nomination.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Credit goes to MRfujima
Introduced in Sin City, GTA allowed the player to wield a katana, which would occasionally remove an enemies head from it’s shoulders. While not the best graphically, there was a certain satisfaction to one of the missions when it ends in a katana duel where you end up chopping off the main enemies head.
No More Heroes
Credit goes to linkkidd
Almost strikingly out of place from the rest of the family friendly titles available for the Wii is Suda51’s masterpiece No More Heroes. In what is one of my favorite titles for the system you play as an assassin who goes around killing people with a lightsaber (or whatever the game wants to call it, it’s a lightsaber). The Wii’s motion sensitive controls aren’t used for regular attacks in this game, but are used for specific finishing moves. One of these moves is a horizontal slash that sends your opponent’s skull rolling across the floor.
WINNER: NO MORE HEROES
No More Heroes is easily one of the most stylish games available on the Nintendo Wii system, and also one of the most violent. Motion controlled decapitations that leave enemies spurting blood and money that you just earned from killing them? No other game can touch No More Heroes in this category.
Best Mutilation
Nominees:
Manhunt
Credit goes to therealzomb
Manhunt, a game so violent that it alone justifies the need for a ratings board to exist. There are some games that should not be played by children, Manhunt is one of the few games that probably shouldn’t be played by anybody. While it was merely a decent stealth game, it was the over the top violence that really brought this game attention. Then again I can think of few things better to deter violence than listening to some dude get off on it in your ear, which would happen if you wore a headset while playing the original Manhunt game.
Gears of War
Credit goes to KaScH88
Have two words ever fit together better than the words chainsaw bayonet? As a huge fan of horror movies some of my favorite scenes are ones that involve chainsaws in some fashion. Motel Hell’s awesome chainsaw battle, or when Ash traded a hand for a chainsaw attachment in Evil Dead 2. The first time I saw Gears of War in action the thing that stood out for me was the chainsaw kill, it was more visceral than just shooting your opponent and completely sick.
Dead Rising
Credit goes to turdferguson81
Dead Rising to me is the best zombie game ever created. Some of that has to deal with the fact that my favorite zombie movie of all time was Dawn of the Dead, which Dead Rising essentially tries to recreate. Capcom scattered the mall with so many weapons to maim the zombie menace that you could play through the whole game and still not have used every weapon.
WINNER: DEAD RISING
Of the three games listed Manhunt probably has the most variety when it comes to finding ways to mutilate someone. But I have to commend the sheer amount of weapons, ways, and just the sheer level of destruction that you can cause against zombies in Dead Rising. Plus it also is easier to justify doing some of these acts to the undead in Dead Rising versus just the insane (or just assholes) in Manhunt.
Best Amputation
Nominees:
Soldier of Fortune: Payback
Credit goes to nizlive
Soldier of Fortune: Payback is a game that is essentially a one trick pony. In this case, that trick is removing a persons limbs from their body. In Soldier of Fortune: Payback, the game advertises the fact that you can blow off enemies appendages, and in fact this is linked to an achievement in the game.
Bloodrayne 2
Credit goes to comunaz
Much like how Soldier of Fortune Payback lets you remove limbs from the body Bloodrayne 2 has gameplay that revolves around doing the same thing, only with the Bloodrayne’s blades instead of with guns. Sure the game wasn’t all that good, but there was some enjoyment in going through enemies like a living blender when not throwing them into garbage compactors or using guns that have ammunition that is replaced by blood.
Ninja Gaiden 2
Credit goes to CaBooBie
Ninja Gaiden 2 is one of those games where you never have to wonder what part of the level you’ve been to before, because chances are if you’ve been there that area is strewn with the body parts of the in game enemies. This is also one of the very few games where even after you remove an enemies limbs it doesn’t stop them from coming after you.
WINNER: NINJA GAIDEN 2
Ninja Gaiden not just outclasses almost any other game with amputation as a feature of the gameplay, but as you play you’ll watch Ryu smoothly move from one attack to the next that it appears as if he is doing an odd sort of dance, only one where arms, legs and torsos rain around him. It is perhaps one of the very few games that has some fairly extreme violence but that doesn’t focus on the gore over the gameplay. In Ninja Gaiden 2 Ryu paints the town red, but does so in a way that just fun to even watch.
That does it for the first, and likely only Video Game Gore Awards. I’m sure some people are wondering why I’m focusing on a gameplay elements that probably shed a poor light over the entire media, but that’s what the feedback button is for.
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