War.
With your host Swith
War is a really strange subject for a game to me, and yet, it’s so suited to gaming. After all, don’t people watch and play sports to satisfy that primordial urge to team up and conquer? As long as man has been playing games of any sort, it’s been focused around war, and the art of domination. Chess, Othello, Go… they’re all tiny wars. Anyone who’s played connect four with our Russ will also know that blood can so easily be spilt over a trifling matter.
Of course, with videogames we can get right in there. Mud up to our knees and blood gushing from all angles, with no need whatsoever to feel anything for the pixilated polygonal aggressors.
It’s always slightly chilling for me when someone enjoys a full-on in your face war-game. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I went to a Quaker school and got down with the whole conscientious objector thing, maybe it’s because I’ve slaughtered a lot of animals in my time and waded ankle deep in freshly gushed blood, the steam still rising from it tainting my nostrils with a metallic sense that never really goes away. Death isn’t that much fun when you’ve killed anything that weighs over 10 stone, and had to palpate it’s organs afterwards looking for signs of disease.
This month, our readers have been making us images on the theme of War. Some poigniant, some amusing, some sad. All magnificent.
Swith
War – a conveyor belt of corpses. Killing machine one minute, someone’s dead child the next. At least we’ll have a few more years of tasty, nourishing oil.
Russ
Em
PaulEMoz
…get your Son to have another pop.
Swith
Kidcasio
Did you know there are some giant monkeys still in the Jungle who don’t know the war is finished?
KidCasio
It was better in 2D.
Kidcasio
Snakey
Jon_Egg
There he goes. Evading a European release through an honourable death.
Jon_Egg
Not so funny now, is it? Unfortunately though… it is.
Fil
Fil
The first Horace of the month. Beautiful.
PaulEMoz
The referee’s a Kraut!
Gloggy
KidCasio
Lans
FIL
Death by mockery.
Ynothna
Pat Butcher would love this.
Russ
Jonathan Smith, creator of Pud Pud is one of russ’s heroes. He’s a little obsessed but we still love him.
KidCasio
Took me a while, this one…
Ynothna
How tall is Hitler’s son? That high.
KidCasio
Mr_glide
Ashcroft
Ynothna
Sad but true. It’s just like a videogame, mom! Just with one life. (Publisher - It's kind of sad but because of the use of black people as the soldiers here we felt we needed to offer additional explaination for this IOM entry. Anyone who has spent any time in working class America, these last few years, will have noticed a disturbing new presence in shopping malls and store car parks: US Military recruiting officers. It is a stone cold fact that poorer communities, and although there are roughly even distributions of poor white and poor black in the US, in particular poor black communities have provided the majority of new-intake troops for the US colonial war. This image is a stark parody on that process - give hope and a career and then throw the poor into the mincer.)
Gloggy
Cheapskate coders. The crowd are billboards, it’s obvious.
KidCasio
Sometimes, you’ve got to bring the big guns out just to get that last little nippy one.
Jon_Egg
Lethargy
No wonder he lost, he’s put his moustache on crooked. It’s attention to detail that wins campaigns.
PaulEMoz
Dio
Not just cockney rhyming slang then.
Skyfall
Curious game, the only way to win is to hit your mate in the arm.
ZenChan
If we keep this up with the Horacing, it’ll be Horace goes suing soon…
ZenChan
TCK
Not tonight, Josephine. I’m sweating like a bitch in an arcade.
ZenChan
Orava
My favourite one this month.
Grue
More of a Ringpeice of War really…
ZenChan
Evilpaul
 
Flabio
Katamari Normandy.
charlieF
Sack
Xav
The efforts and bravery of the field hospital workers is acknowledged by Xav.
K-J N
Cheeky!
Tufty
Chris_b
Everybody’s Gulf… Halliburtons’s contracts.
Moosedude
So that’s it. The tragedy of War, mankind at its lowest and most glorious, all summed up in some dodgy photo-shopped images. Aggression and violence is unfortunately one of our characteristic traits as a species, there’s no point denying that. I feel it every time someone tries to show me one of their photo albums. Fuck, I hate that.
If you’d like to witness the killing fields in all its glory, visit the forum threads where the images were originally posted. There’s a few in there that didn’t make the cut that you might find were better than the one’s I’ve picked out.
http://forum.wayoftherodent.com/viewtopic.php?t=2656&start=0
http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=41946&start=0
Next Month’s Image challenge shall be…
Returning the Favour.
Your old gaming machines have given you so many hours of fun, isn’t it time you paid a little something back? Put away Photoshop for one month, and go outside and take some photos of you treating your consoles as it deserves to be treated. The more adventurous or touching the photo, the better. Just please don’t come to us to bail you out if the pigs turn up while you’re fucking your NES down an alley.
Post images in the Way of the Rodent forum thread, or alternatively email them to ImageofthemonthNOSPAM@gmail.com (removing the NOSPAM, bit of course.)
October 2005
|
