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Politics in Videogames: Social Darwinism vs Leftism in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (by Pickernanny)

Pickernanny recently posted an extensive review of the PS3 video game Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. To make it easier to respond to it, I’m reposting it as a separate article. Note that you do not need to be an avid gamer to find the content of the review interesting. In fact, his review comes just in time as the game is set in an unnamed African country in which whites wantonly kill the black leadership whereas in the real world, as we speak, South Africa is going up in flames, with rioters destroying the infrastructure of the country, not much more than half a century after whites gave control of the country to blacks.

Having recently completed my first play-through of MGR:R, I wanted to bring up some interesting points about the narrative that I probably wouldn’t have given much thought to if I had played it back during its initial release. Story aside, the game was a blast and it was always very enjoyable to string along a complex combo or dodge and parry several consecutive enemy attacks. The graphics and animations were also pretty exceptional. I didn’t expect some of the overtop boss battles going in either (especially early on). At one point during the prologue, Raiden is running full speed down what appears to be a collapsing church building while dodging missiles and hopping over debris to eventually land on the back of a Metal Gear Ray (recognizable from MGS2), then running down the length of its body while your sword traces through cutting it in half. As Aaron pointed out in another comment, the game gets much less intense in this aspect as it progresses. Most of the later boss fights merely take place in an open arena with little to no utilization of the environment, but the combat in this game felt so good to me that I kept playing with much enthusiasm. I do think it would have been nicer to have maybe 50% less cinematic scenes and 20% more game play in the end.

I remember by the end of the game during the final boss fight having a big WTF moment because I found myself actually sort of siding with the main villain, Senator Armstrong, and his philosophy. You see, these American terrorists (along with a suave Spanish man serving as the main antagonist) are implementing this extremely far out plot to harvest the brains of third world children, training them to be elite soldiers via VR simulations, and finally transferring their brains into highly advanced cyborg bodies to be used in what I presume is a highly capable private military outfit. What is the purpose of wielding such power, you might ask? Well, it seems to me from Senator Armstong’s speech during the final fight that he plans to bring down the current political regime and usher in a new, more just era where “the weak will be purged and the strongest will thrive”, as he plans to “make America great again” and create the optimal environment for true individualism and freedom of thought to reign at the expense of the parasitical classes. Having come out in 2013, that latter quote obviously stuck out to me. Senator Armstrong honestly appears to be ‘our guy’, the true populist that we have been waiting for with the power and determination to bring down the corrupt and destructive cabal that rules over us, with the stated goal to end war as a business model and place the destiny of the people in their own hands. It appears to me that this Armstrong character wants to create a new aristocracy based on merit. Have a look at this approximately 7 minute long video containing his speech in an attempt to convert Raiden over to his side:

The game seems self-aware enough to point out in an early conversation between Raiden and his Wolf AI counterpart that Raiden is merely acting on his own bias having been raised as a child soldier, to which Raiden has no objection. This, to me, sets up the hero of this game to be a complete tool who is a slave to his environmental circumstances and at the mercy of the whims of his emotions. He fights because he doesn’t want others to have to endure hardship and adversity. Raiden would rather life keep on going at the expense of those who build civilizations and maintain them, because those who are less capable will either get left behind or dealt with by nature. I believe that it’s implied that Senator Armstrong’s intentions are not to simply go around mass murdering ‘the weak’ as his stated goal is to end war and conflict as we know it. Think of the Bantu in our world, for example, if Western civilization would simply butt out of their affairs and let nature take its course, their numbers would be significantly less as they would no longer be able to feed their current numbers. Not to mention that their population levels would simply not be near as large as they are in the first place if it weren’t due to the medical interventions and standards of living given to them by Westerners in the first place. This would also help with those overpopulation concerns that the left seems so concerned about, though we should be certain that those concerns are merely veils that commoners eat up to fuel a sense of righteousness while allowing our captors to rule without suspicion from the majority. Give an R selected group of people access to K selected technology, and the results aren’t exactly harmonious. Give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish.

It might sound evil and cruel on the surface to turn foreign children into to killing robots, but it’s not necessarily the worst fate for these poor souls. While Raiden takes it upon himself to stand against this outcome, it must be noted that in the process he goes on a killing spree taking the lives of dozens of police officers as they stand in his way. “We’re making the mother of all omelets here, Jack. Can’t fret over every egg”, Armstrong tells Raiden. The question is, how do you go about reversing the colossal fuck up that we find ourselves in our actual reality without the use of force? Armstrong is attempting to overthrow the elite ruling class and you’d have to be naive to think something like that could ever be accomplished through peaceful means.

I write this review because you can find similar themes playing out in all kinds of media from games to movies, you name it. It’s irrational once you dig into the meat of the topic, however, this game illustrates how easy it is to portray a certain message in a positive light no matter how hypocritical and irrational it actually is. To me, Raiden defeating and killing of Senator Armstrong is merely delaying the inevitable. Sure, now some children are spared a particular kind of fate, but it’s not unlike going more into debt. The further you go and the longer you put off your debt, the more interest you incur until eventually it become too insurmountable to ignore. Something radical will eventually come along and disrupt the status quo either way, even though it’s not a very fashionable idea to deal with these types of issues swiftly and effectively, the reaper is coming for his harvest one way or the other.

Another quick example of this type of theme that vilifies the right and exonerates the left in gaming is Vanquish. I haven’t finished the game yet so I can’t exactly tell you what the main villains stated objectives are, but I have a feeling I’ll end up leaning toward their agenda by the end of the game. Vanquish takes place in a sci-fi future where the Earth has become so overpopulated that food and resources are scarce. To help remedy this, a space colony has been constructed that orbits the earth. Without going into too much detail about what’s happening, some super evil Russian guy uses this massive micro wave beam to vaporize San Francisco effectively declaring war on the American government. It’s worth noting that the president of the US looks eerily similar to Hilary Clinton. Anyways, I want to link to this recent music video of an all gay San Francisco choir where they sing about literally coming for your children and converting them. I believe some of the members of the choir are even on the national sex offender registry. Have a look a note how psychopathic the main gay looks into the camera as he talks about corrupting your kids:

Now, imagine what kind of place San Francisco must be in the future if things continue on the same trajectory. When this Russian guy effectively decimated the city, I can’t help but kind of support this narrative. Maybe this example is a little extreme, but the US unleashing nuclear weapons on Japan during WW2 seemed justified, so why not just microwave San Francisco? My final point here will be that perhaps we need to make our own media somehow. We need our own games, tv shows, movies, novels, music etc. and we need them yesterday. It’s easy to propagandize people and it’s necessary, the right has arguably lost the culture war because they didn’t see the value in having a stake in the media. The Right has failed to conserve anything and is continuously seceding ground. Perhaps the reason why the left is so viscous current day, however, is because they are afraid the winds are changing against their favor. The pendulum can only swing so far in one direction before it either comes back crashing into everything on its way, or the entire machine is destroyed into nothing and can no longer function. Which will it be?

24 thoughts on “Politics in Videogames: Social Darwinism vs Leftism in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (by Pickernanny)

  1. I just now completed Vanquish. The way it ended definitely set the game up for a sequel, but I suppose it’s never coming. The based evil Russian guy nukes the colony in order to avoid letting it fall back into the hands of America, and Hillary Clinton 2.0 blows her brains out before the credits roll. I’m pretty satisfied with this ending actually. I’m glad there will never be a continuation. Bravo. As it turns out, Hillary and the Russia guy were co-conspiring some sort of convoluted and the Russians simply decided to preemptively strike San Francisco before the Americans had a chance to make the first move. Seems fair and all. Political fiction is hard to pull off without making some sort of statement or taking a side it would seem. I think it would be nice to see a rise in gaming where stories about people trying to protect their tribe, nation, species or whatever from enemies who embody the traits and characteristics that stand contrary to our actual real life values and beliefs (think Goblin Slayer with a few tweaks, for example).

    There’s a based guy on twitter by the name of American Krogan who has been working on a review for the Bioshock trilogy. I’ve never played those games but they are have some very kosher leadership to say the least. I’ll post links to the open thread whenever they are available.

    1. How did you like Vanquish? I didn’t like it quite as much when I gave it another spin recently. Just like MGR:R it start really strong. There are more highlights in between, like the mid-boss that assembles itself from scrap. The art direction is quite phenomenal. In my opinion, those two are the best games Platinum produced. Bayonetta did not appeal that much to me. On a side note, Raiden in MGR is wearing heels, similar to Bayonetta. I think Platinum simply took the Bayonetta model as the basis and was too lazy to modify it. I found it quite disturbing when I first noticed it.

      American Krogan is great. I watched all his videos on Bitchute. In particular, I recommend his long series on the Jews and the Visigoths. He also has a great analysis of Red Dead Redemption II, carefully laying out its anti-white bias. I have this game sitting in my pile at home (I was randomly offered it for 10 Euros, complete and in mint condition, so I saw little reason not to get it), but so far I could resist the temptation of buying a used PS4 to play it. Bioshock is koshered indeed. I didn’t play it but I cringed when I read those soyed-up game journos waxing lyrical about it. The game presents a fake ethical dilemma that is downright stupid when you think more than a few seconds about it.

      EDIT: I think American Krogan was the first to point out that you can shoot at everything you want in The Last of Us II except at the interior of a synagogue. I’m not sure what that synagogue has to do with the rest of the story, though. I think he also drew attention to the “endless generations of survivors” monologue of the Jewish lesbian love-interest of Ellie (lol), who was uglified for the game. Probably it was easier to render a bigger nose and a flatter chest. Imagine running a multi-billion company and burning a franchise into the ground to push an ideology!

    2. I thought Vanquish was a lot of fun. It sort of reminded me of Gear of Wars with the whole cover mechanism, except instead of the nauseating camera shaking feature displayed while sprinting you get this sort of weird tunnel effect when dashing. I assume it’s there to make you feel like you’re going faster than you actually are. The Nemesis was a cool enemy. Once I figured out that you can just take a heavy machine gun to its body until it fragments, hit its core with an EMP grenade to prevent it from alluding attacks and melee it or hit it with rockets if you had ‘em, then it was really easy to deal with. The difficulty increases every time you re-encounter it because the battlefield gets smaller.

      I can never unsee Raiden’s heels now, it even look like it lifts his calves up. Now that you mention it, he had these claws also that arguable served a tactical advantage, but combined with the heels just make them look like long fingernails that a secretary might sport.

      What you mentioned about the Last of Us reminded me of an article I read a little while ago where Microsoft attempted to offer Nintendo to buy them out and they literally laughed in their faces. Also, apparently ol’ gates is trying to get firm footing in the Japanese gaming market. Along with owning all the farming land, what we need is pozzed VR gaming to go with all those yummy bugs and 3D printed meat deep fried in soy oil.

    3. I noticed Raiden’s pointy fingernails but I originally assumed that they are supposed to symbolize claws of an animal, going well with his exposed row of teeth. Yet, faggotization as a prime motivation of the creators is probably a better explanation. There is absolutely no reason for him to have high heels, just as there is no reason for him to have long claw-like fingernails. My initial reaction to Revengeance was quite negative as I noticed the high heels right away. I found this only tolerable because you don’t really notice them when you play.

      I don’t want to imagine what Microsoft would have done to all those beloved Nintendo franchises had they succeeded in buying Nintendo. Mario would now rescue Luigi, and pound him in the ass. Princess Peach and Rosalina would have scissoring sessions while a gaggle of toadettes dance in circles around the bed, Link would be a girl, every character would be fat, Samus from Metroid would weigh 300 pounds, let her flabby tits hang out, and have tattoos all over, and 60% of the Mario Kart cast would be black, 35% Arab or Mexican, and one or two, obviously the ones with the worst performance, would be white.

    4. I won’t link to bitchute since it has usually been flagged and put my comments in the spam folder when I’ve done so, but I just watched Krogan’s video on Doom Eternal and at the very least it would appear they were pandering to frustrated white males with that entry. I might get into that game sooner than I meant to. Doom Guy is certainly a specific type of archetype as pointed out by Krogan, the alpha white male that has to step in and clean up the mess which in this case is due initially to a white female under the psychic manipulation of the invaders. The 2016 version was pretty good, and the sound track was so killer that I had way more fun than I think I would have otherwise.

      I just remembered seeing a meme recently pointing out how Link from the Zelda series is essentially an aryan archetype who continually reincarnates throughout the ages to deal with some bullshit that some Middle Eastern asshole (Ganon) stirs up, which usually involves abducting the aryan princess. I also remember from The Ocarina of Time lore that Ganon is born to a desert tribe of all women in which a male is born periodically (like every 1,000 years or something). Could this be a reference to the harem system practiced in parts of the Middle East where only the top men have access to more women that they can handle?

    5. If a comment with a Bitchute link ends up in spam next time, by complete coincidence, of course, then just let me know and I’ll take care of it.

    6. “I don’t want to imagine what Microsoft would have done to all those beloved Nintendo franchises had they succeeded in buying Nintendo. Mario would now rescue Luigi, and pound him in the ass. Princess Peach and Rosalina would have scissoring sessions while a gaggle of toadettes dance in circles around the bed, Link would be a girl, every character would be fat, Samus from Metroid would weigh 300 pounds, let her flabby tits hang out, and have tattoos all over, and 60% of the Mario Kart cast would be black, 35% Arab or Mexican, and one or two, obviously the ones with the worst performance, would be white.“

      Fuck, that’s disturbing but probably not too far off from the end result. Should gaming ever come to that point I would probably be satisfied searching out hidden gems from the past or just dropping the hobby altogether. Maybe as the tides potentially start shifting again here in the next decade or so we’ll see video games change to fit the new demand. One can hope. Not necessarily for our sake, for the younger crowd.

  2. The pendulum can only swing so far in one direction before it either comes back crashing into everything on its way, or the entire machine is destroyed into nothing and can no longer function. Which will it be?

    To add to this: the further the pendulum swings to one direction, the harder and faster it will swing back. Last time, we saw Hitler rise from a nobody to becoming the (short-term) liberator of the West. Next time, we may get a guy with the mindset and determination of Hitler, the oratory powers of Hitler, the looks of Catboy Kami (What’s that guy up to nowadays? Let’s hope he’s not rotting in a federal prison somewhere), forming a grand coalition. There is an obvious nationalist groundswell, so I really wonder what the end game will be like. Another possibility is death by degrees. Just let a few US states secede and we’ll see for how long Washington will be able to pull off its incessant bullshit.

    What would also help is the U.S. entering a skirmish and losing. There was a recent report on the Navy that attested that it is really top of the line when it comes to diversity and inclusion but is facing challenges when it comes to ancillary matters such as battle readiness: https://www.foxnews.com/media/sen-cotton-expresses-real-doubts-about-us-navys-ability-to-defeat-china-in-battle

    1. Yes, what is Kami up to? I lost a lot of interest in him when I found out he has a legitimate history of banging traps.

    2. In response to the United States naval capabilities, I recall watching recruitment films comparing the US vs China vs Russia. The latter two seek to fill their ranks with strong, capable and masculine men, while the US is busy taking on little girls raised by lesbians.

    3. “This better be a pay-ops. Where did you read this?”

      No, I don’t think it is. I even recall an audio clip where he admitted it to someone (Destiny maybe? I can’t remember who) and was joking that they’re often hotter than real women. There’s pictures of him posing with his trap and receiving affection also. I’ll dig them up for you.

    4. I’d be interested in checking this out. It’s more of a morbid curiosity.

      I noticed that you changed “psy-ops” to “pay-ops”. Your term is more fitting, and more to the point, because the misinformation online is in fact bankrolled. I’m not quite sure who, but I have a hunch.

    5. I’m going post multiple links so it may get canned in the spam. If I can find the verbal admission later I’ll post it as well.

    6. That’s one way to destroy your burgeoning online career. Did this guy not know who his audience was?

    7. Well, to be fair, early on he was cross dressing and sucking black dildos on stream. The writing was on the wall.

    8. Yes, the more you look into him the more bazaar it gets. There are plenty of photos floating around of him dressed in women’s outfits if you search. I first thought he was counter-signaling for shock value but now I wonder if he’s just a massive troll and everything he did was for attention.

    9. I was not aware of this at all. Considering that he used to stream half-naked, as well as in outlandish costumes, would support the hypothesis that he is just a big attention whore.

  3. Metal Gear Rising did one thing better than probably any other action game: making you feel incredibly powerful, and not in a cheap way. I think for the rest of the game I simply chased the high after the first boss battle. Have you played Ninja Gaiden Sigma? I have not spent much time with it yet, but it gives you a similar sense of power, probably a better one as the skill ceiling is higher.

    1. No, I haven’t yet checked out Ninja Gaiden Sigma. I was looking in to those at one point, though. Please let me know how you like them. I want to play Doom next and maybe Dead Space.

    2. Are you going to play Doom on PS4 or PC?

      I have both the Dead Space and the Ninja Gaiden Sigma trilogy for PS3. When I was on my PS3 buying spree, acquired a few collections as it was more cost-effective. Games I was not certain I would keep I tended to give a quick spin to see if I may potentially like them. The first two games in the Ninja Gaiden Sigma games passed this test with flying colors, the third feels different but it has its supporters online, so I’m keeping it for the time being. The graphics are still pretty good and the gameplay of the first two games seems quite fantastic. Dead Space is still in the “maybe” category. It’s a much slower game, but it seems solidly made. I’ll also give MGS: Ground Zeroes as well as Phantom Pain another try, but I think I need a bit more time to better appreciate them.

    3. I have a physical version of Doom 2016 for Switch which I really enjoyed, and I downloaded Eternal 50% off a couple months back for the Switch as there is no physical version available yet. The skill ceiling is a lot higher for Eternal so I believe it’ll have quite a bit of relay value.

      I had forgotten about the Ninja Gaiden series until you brought it back up. I love to keep finding all these older games for cheap and am surprised at how much more dopamine inducing games like MGR:R are (arrrgh) than virtually 95% of everything that comes out these days. I believe Dead Space was a good purchase for whenever you’re in the mood for something more suspenseful, perhaps with a more mysterious narrative than your typical action game.

      There’s one game I found for the PS2 that I’d really like to check out one day. I’ve added Haunting Ground to my list. It was originally meant to be Clock Tower 4 but got rebranded after CT3 performed so poorly. This game can run you up to 300-500 USD since it is rare, so this will definitely be a enjoyed in its rom form.

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