I saw a tweet that said “holy shit” and it was some footage of some bro playing The Last Of Us 2, a game I don’t really have much of an interest in playing because, well, I’m too cool for school. And it’s a clip of the videogame lady running around a room killing all of these dudes and man, it’s horrifying–like she’s jumping around slashing throats and heads are exploding and guts are all around and–you know, holy shit indeed! It was a flashback to the couple weeks my partner was into Mortal Kombat 11, which has this super goofy 80s style story where a bunch of goofy heroes fight a bunch of goofy villains and then they goofily threaten to rape each other, goofily rip each other open, goofily desecrate each others’ corpses, goofily cover themselves in entrails, goofily quipping the whole time–anyway, I guess it’s all pretty goofy!
(I appreciate that Kano begins battles by taking a piss.)
Anyway so I look at the comments of that Last of Us 2 video, and everyone is praising the bro, because apparently playing this well is something really hard to do, and apparently the graphics are really, really good. This is a game that got praise for the realism of a scene where a homunculus mashes a burrito against its mouth and pieces of the burrito disappear and if you squint, it almost looks like the doll is actually eating the food which you can later retrieve from a hatch in the back. Maybe it’s more impressive in-engine, or maybe it’s just a case of pearls before swine, in which case, oink oink. I’m just being too sensitive–I should have more of a sense of humor about the mass death around us, right? I’m just being a baby for living in existential fear of painful. It’s not my fault. I was raised Catholic.
Anyway I’m glad that the bro is very good at playing this game, because it is always nice to see a skill implemented well, and I am glad that the viewers liked it. We live in a cruel, hard world and we must find our joy where we can. t I am at peace being out of touch. I cannot explain how freeing it is.