Rampancy

You knew they would change something, didn't you? If the idea had been to just replay the story exactly as the game presented-- game play included-- they could have just strung the cutscenes together and called it a day. Who knows, perhaps a good portion of the ten million Halo fans in the world would have paid money to see cinema-quality renders of their beloved game.

However, that isn't the way the Halo film is being done. Given that there's a lot of interesting things in the Halo universe to present, and only a few hours in a typical cinema release to show them, it's inevitable that some things won't make the cut, and some things that do will be... different than you remember them.

[image:9940 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] So it shouldn't be a shock to anyone that moments after escaping the lifepod wreck, early in what would be the level "Halo" in the game, the Master Chief is attacked by Covenant vehicles. In the game, those vehicles are Banshees. In the script we've been looking at over recent days, it's Ghosts.

This isn't a major plot point, of course. Nothing substantive really changes as a result of exchanging one vehicle for another, and one could argue that this sequence, as written, is more dramatic than the average encounter at this point in the game. Since you've no rocket launcher at that point, the easiest way to take out the Banshees is with a pistol or an assault rifle-- neither of which would make a particularly interesting encounter that would also be believable.

There aren't any Ghosts in that level at all in-game, and as a player you wouldn't even see one until level five, Assault on the Control Room. Perhaps the writer felt that it was too long to wait. It also goes without saying that in Halo 1 you can't board Ghosts as the Chief does in this sequence; but there's no reason why the writer has to restrict himself to the limitations on character actions that are solely the result of game play mechanics, especially outdated ones.

[image:9941 right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] A far meatier exchange, if you'll pardon the pun, occurs when an Elite encounters a downed lifepod and instructs his minions to burn the human flesh because it "is sacrilege". The nature of the Covenant's conflict with humanity is never fully explained. The Prophets cite blocking access to sacred sites as a motivating factor, but that hardly seems fair given the Covenant's usual methods for accessing them. Here, it seems to be not just what humanity has done, but their very existence-- hence the phrase "all this flesh is sacrilege"-- that is the sticking point.

I think there are still unanswered questions about how Humanity fits into the Forerunners' plans for the Halo installations, and how that role is perceived-- or misperceived-- by the Covenant rank and file as well as the leadership. I also applaud the writer for not backing down or unduly exaggerating this essential point in the story on political correctness grounds in the post-9/11 environment. The Covenant are consistently portrayed in the books and the novels as religious zealots; their religion is the driving force behind their culture. If this aspect of the story remains, no doubt it will become a point of discussion and of comparison regarding current conflicts in the world today. It's refreshing to see that rather than the approach taken to Doom, in which many details were changes for seemingly no good reason at all, that the core of Halo's story is being preserved as originally envisioned in the first game.

About five years ago, I wondered that the introduction of a PC-like console, plus a network service like Xbox Live, might lead to consoles and console games that were just as buggy as their PC counterparts, and that would require constant post-purchase updating to fix the many glitches.

That day is now here.

[image:9359 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] This issue has been stewing for quite awhile; and for a long time, I left it completely alone, hoping that it would just go away.

Except it didn't.

In the past two weeks, Wideload Games' debut offering, Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse, has garnered more press attention for its inclusion in a controversial list of games produced by NIMF, the National Institution on Media and the Family, than it did for being released as an interesting and entertaining Halo-engine game with an innovative theme, and that's just wrong.

The list purports to bring attention to games that parents should watch out for. The twelve "games to avoid" on this year's list included Far Cry, F.E.A.R., Doom 3, Resident Evil 4, Conker: Live and Reloaded, and at number four (with a bullet) our pal Stubbs the Zombie.

What's a zombie got to do for a little respect?

Supporters of the game industry were quick to point out that every single game on that list is rated M for Mature and not intended for children.

NIMF President David Walsh, asserts that the ESRB rating system is "broken beyond repair". How a voluntary rating system that correctly identified all of their 12 "games to avoid" as Mature is broken, I can't really fathom. If I was the NIMF, I'd be seriously worried that people would interpret this list to mean that all the other M-rated games aren't really that bad, and thus would be okay for children. Or that they'd be worried that the industry would respond that their games rated M aren't as bad as these on the list, and should perhaps be rated T instead.

[image:8446 right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] At the end of the day, the ESRB ratings, just like the MPAA ratings, are not enforceable as laws; individual retailers have to enforce them. And just like the MPAA ratings, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. If they don't and consumer watch groups want them to, why they don't lobby the retailers instead of the ESRB or the developers, I've no idea. The idea solely seems to be to pick on the weakest child. The retailers are more interested in making money than pushing NIMF's agenda, and so are the console makers and game developers. The ESRB, as a nonprofit, is clearly the easier target. NIMF and others criticize them for failing to achieve something that isn't even part of their activities-- the enforcement of the ratings by retailers-- so they can muscle the ESRB out of the way and replace it with their own nonprofit group with its own ratings system that would most assuredly by ignored with just as much enthusiasm as that promoted by the ESRB.

Like most of the games on that list (with the possible exception of Conker) Stubbs is clearly intended for an adult audience. It's got adult themes, an adult sense of humor, and it's set in a time period that today's teenagers have only ever seen on Nick at Night.

None of this even touches on the most ridiculous part of NIMF's justification for including Stubbs on the list: that's right, cannibalism. I could waste my breath on how silly that sounds. Luckily, you don't have to. Wideload was also quiet about the list until last week; and while it may be true that all publicity is good publicity as long as they spell your name right, Wideload did respond to the allegations of cannibalism leveled at Stubbs, in a posting that bears the clear fingerprints of lead writer Matt Soell:

Stubbs is a zombie. Thus the title "Stubbs the Zombie." Zombies eat brains. That's what they do. Stubbs cannot just saunter into the cafeteria and order a plate of Freedom Fries. He has to fight for his meals. In fact, actual cannibals only make it harder for Stubbs to eat, which is why this "cannibalism" story is insulting as well as injurious.

It's no surprise that the all-human media cartel resorts to distortions and name-calling; their anti-zombie bias has been evident for decades, and Stubbs is just the newest target.

Of course, some might call Wideload biased in this respect. After all, they did make the game.

Columnist Dean Takahashi also took special exception to Stubbs' inclusion on the list:

But by putting this game on the list, along with "Far Cry" and "Fear," the institute also does a kind of dis-service. There's a stigma to getting on that list, as if the makers of the games were really producing reprehensible stuff with no redeeming social value. It is on the same list, for instance, as "Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories" for the PlayStation Portable and "True Crime: New York." The institute noted that the cannibalism scenes in Stubbs and Fear are more examples of the industry sinking to new lows. But in Stubbs, I don't know if you can call it cannibalism. The zombies eat the brains of live humans in a fairly comic manner, with gushers of blood coming as they do so and the humans screaming "oh you ate my brains" in the process. But they're zombies eating humans, not humans eating humans.

I don't consider cannibalism, in any case, to be an artistic and legitimate form of expression. Yet this game isn't the equivalent of "Night of the Living Dead." Stubbs the Zombie is a satire. It makes fun of the sterile environment of the city and the dumb people who populate it.

[image:9705 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] "It's just the worst kind of message to kids," said Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman of Stubbs' brain-eating proclivities.

Be careful out there, gamers. Looks like the dumb people have escaped from Punchbowl and are overrunning Congress.