As I blew the umpteenth Super-Mutant’s head into a gory paste, I found myself pausing slightly. Pausing to wonder if perhaps there wasn’t actually something to this whole ‘desensitized by console violence’ argument.
 
During the course of my most recent run-through of Bethesda’s masterwork of post-apocalyptic survival, I have killed hundreds of Super-Mutants, Raiders, Mercenaries and God knows what else. Virtually nothing I’ve come across hasn’t eventually felt the searing kiss of shotgun delivered hot lead straight to the face, and I’ve barely even blinked.
 
At first every kill felt different and unique, as the fantastic V.A.T.S system meant that skull after skull exploded, and after each time I was sat there thinking;
 
“Damn that was cool”.
 
However as time passed it took something unusual to even get noticed, such as the time I blew a Raider’s head off her shoulders, and watched as it rolled, and rolled and rolled, eventually dropping into one of the rivers dotted around the game world.
 
But other than that this parade of violence went on without me so much as blinking, and it was only when my significant other looked up from her book and commented;
 
“Are you even aware how gory this game is anymore?”
 
That I actually took a step back and thought about it.
 
She’s one of those gamers who would have loved to have played Fallout 3 had there been a way of cutting down on the violence, as she’s a lover of CRPG’s, but she refuses to play anything with such realistic gore effects, and in some ways I don’t blame her.
 
I like to consider that the gore in the games I play has context, and perhaps it does. Perhaps there’s always a place for skull splitting kill-shots, and shotgun blasts to the gut that leave a man looking like a cheese-less meaty-feast pizza.
 
But sometimes, in my weaker and less manly moments, I think that perhaps we do pay a mental price of sorts, and it does erode our sense of what is acceptable.
 
As a sociological experiment, I would be interested as to the reactions of a group of gamers versus a group of non-gamers to the horrifying video of one of the Dnepropetrovsk murders. As I doubt that a group of gamers hardened by the endless computerised death they have seen would take it as badly as a non-gamer.
 
Which is something that I find a little sad.
 
Though not something that will stop me from buying the latest edition of whatever violent game is out there, as denying myself that pleasure would just be stupid.