Gamertell

I am a coward.

At sleepovers in my childhood, I’d close my eyes during particularly scary portions of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, I’m 25 years old and still can’t listen to Reagan’s “possessed” voice in The Exorcist and I only was able to watch about a half hour of the remake of The Omen. For a brief time after watching all of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I would make a conscious decision to be in bed and asleep by 3am.

But I’d like to think I’m getting better, and its all because of Fatal Frame.

It all started around Halloween in 2002. I was in college, and taking a night Japanese class with my friends Shawna and Vivienne (not their real names). Often, when class would get out, we’d feel like actually doing something, rather than going home, studying and getting to bed. You know - productive stuff.

Shawna was, and still is, a horror game fan - and good at it too. She suggested we rent Fatal Frame from Blockbuster and return to Vivienne’s nearby home for a game-a-thon. Vivienne and I had never heard of the game, but Shawna made it sound interesting, so we instantly agreed. We figured it may help us get in the spirit of the season…

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If you’re into games and gaming culture at all, you’ve surely heard far too much about Uwe Boll, the director of some of the worst videogame movies ever made, including Alone in the Dark (which has the honor of being “1% fresh” on rottentomatoes.com), Bloodrayne, House of the Dead, and the recent In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Boll is famous for his terrible films, for boxing his critics, and for his confusing attitudes towards gamers and games in general.

A recent comment he made in an interview on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld caught some attention in the great game blogosphere. From an excerpt published on Destructoid:

“A lot of video games have no story. I did the movie House of the Dead and got bashed and I said, what were you expecting, Schindler’s List? I showed zombies chasing people and this is basically what the movie delivers. I don’t know what they were expecting if you make a movie based on an ego shooter where you kill ninety minutes of people non-stop.”

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