I enjoyed the game. But there were things I didn't like about it... and it did a weird thing to me that's been happening more and more lately while I play video games: I reflected on the value of a human life.
I think it was at the point where a bunch of mafia goons in New York were trying to kill me to avenge the death of one guy. It seems like I had killed over a hundred men... all over one killed guy. So it hit me... What are these guys' lives worth? And how many people died keeping me away from one kidnapped lady? Was it worth it to them? They couldn't possibly be paying these goons enough to risk their lives and die by the truckload. It's impossible for each one of these people to be thinking, "He killed 500 people before, but I will be the one to finally take down Max Payne."
Ludonarrative dissonance hit me HARD during Max Payne 3. And I hate when that's brought up, but it really did have noticeable impact on my enjoyment of the game.
I had the same thing when I was a kid. Ludonarrative dissonance ruined a lot of games for me.
I'd be sitting there mashing away at the joystick and I start thinking about it. Is this lone oblong that I control part of a much larger effort or was this essentially the entire Earth Defence in a can, defending a patch of nothingness against an invading alien empire that had sprung forth from their part of this bleak universe of nothingness.
I'd think: What's the point, man?
I mean seriously, they know I'll murder them or at the very least a good deal of them, but they just keep coming... For what? A patch of nothingness equally as devoid as the one they fester in when the Atari is off? Is this some kind of effort by the Aliens to kick start their economy back home by employing a more belligerent stance against other races? Were the alien leaders lying to their people to make them commit to a meaningless war?
Whatever their motivations, they would send wave after wave of ships at me and I would dutifully murder as many of them as I could manage before popping my clogs... and the cycle would repeat.
Sometimes I would sit there in my little Death Pickle and... I couldn't help it, I began imagining those little green bastards burning alive (albeit briefly) in their cockpits just before the ship's hull splinters from the stress and vomits them out into empty space and oblivion. I imagined that the last thing those eye tentacles would see before they popped from the pressures of space, were the burning fragments of a holo-pic of his-hers two tiny podlings; the two back at home on Cassiopeia 17, who sat eagerly awaiting their hermaphrodite father-mother's return from the war and his-her tales of scary oblongs.
"It would ever so make our Splorg Day Celebrations," one would gargle, "if dear father-mother were here to open presents with us."
Sadly, their tiny ear-flaps would not pick up the sound of the black hover car pulling up outside their modest life nest. Nor the car door opening and closing as two somber military aliens jerk up to their door, slowly at first but with more urgency with each step. I imagine the excitement on what passes as a face on those abominations would dissipate very quickly as they answer the door and realise it isn't father-mother. In the distance, there would be the mournful bale of a siren on a tiny space ambulance passing by over the horizon, as the military aliens break the news...
To this day I can't play Space Invaders. It's too much.
