On the Enjoyment of Critical Analysis of Video Games: A Tomb Raider (2013) (Xbox 360) Review Part 2

So, after just shy of 1600 words of a preamble, we might be ready to see what this game has to offer. Now I've completed the game once, though not 100% (I saw the challenges I had left and decided I needed some time to gather my thoughts) so I think I can give a fairly comprehensive account. If there's some hidden documents or lore you get for a 100% completion drop a line to the usual addresses.

The first thing is that the game dumps you in very quickly, from selecting your difficulty to the first instance of what will be a long, almost aristocrats joke level of pain is less than 30 seconds, as the Endurance is racked by storms and ripped apart, Lara almost drowning before being thrown off the ship, waking up tied up in a sack. From here is a series of limited gameplay bits, where you first set the sack alight, and fall on the only spike on the ground. From there is a mini tutorial of sorts, as you move and solve different little puzzles to get a hang of the controls, or face a small quick-time event. Both of which have the same conclusion, some sort of painful endeavour, before you finally make it out into the Coastal Forest: the first proper area of the game, though still mostly a tutorial, the goal merely to find the means to survive, which means a source of fire and food.

And it's here that I can get the actual gameplay aspects out of the way, so if you're after a review of this as a game, rather than an interactive story, I'll signpost the actual gameplay review parts. The graphics are absolutely incredible. The character animations are smooth, the textures are amazing, the character models manage to avoid the uncanny valley effect by being both stylised and relatable enough to reality and are really beautifully done and the attention to detail is just staggering. The actual locations you explore are open world and relatively small but the amount they manage to pack into the areas is fantastic, full of little nooks and crannies and secrets that I think I trebled the gameplay time just having fun looking for them. The fire effects look amazing, and it's clearly something that was a priority for the development team, given the large amount of puzzles and set pieces that require the use of fire to solve. The platforming is a heavily refined variant of the Underworld system, being essentially jump, drop and move around on different bits of the scenery. Unlike Underworld though, the climbing controls when not on a straight ledge are far more responsive, so you don't often feel like you should be able to climb to a nook that you can't. The controls are very responsive, something that again wasn't in Underworld due to a slightly dodgy animation engine.

The gameplay structures itself as a pseudo-open world with different areas that you can explore at will, full of secrets and different things, inspired more by Assassin's Creed this time than Prince of Persia. Helping in this regard is Eagle vi- sorry, Instin- damn it! Survival Instinct, the latest incarnation of the very useful indicator system. Hitting the left bumper makes a pulse hit and turns the screen grey scale to identify all the useful things you need to know on the screen in different colours. Enemies in Red, climbable stuff in white, where you need to go as a shining beacon and so on. Basically if you didn't like it in Assassin's Creed or Hitman Absolution, it's not exactly necessary to complete the game but it does very much help, particularly since in this very dense jungle there are far more things to catch you out, like rope traps that send you upside down.

The final part of the tutorial of sorts requires you to collect a bow from a poor former explorer and hunt a deer, and people who like hunting a bit too much will be pleased to know that both head shots and heart shots are one shot kills.

It's this kind of attention to detail that you must value in review you know!

This allows Lara to get back to the camp, enjoy some deer and watch some videos her best friend Sam was to put on youtube. Yes, there's a found footage aesthetic in the game where Lara and her surprisingly large supporting cast (for comparison, in the early games you had maybe three characters total including the butler, and even in the Crystal Dynamics games you only had three sidekicks, also including the butler) interact and try desperately to break the stock character types they've clearly been assigned. Joining Lara on this intrepid adventurer is the Geeky one, the Spineless one, the Ripley, the best friend with awful luck, the native american, the old captain and the Northern Bastard.

The main issue is it's a large cast for a survival game, particularly when for massive portions of the game you only get to interact with one of them over the radio, 'Northern Bastard' Roth. Each of them does get a character moment, typically when they die, but the interesting part in the discussion is generally Lara, not the other character, which in itself is interesting since in most of these games you have the exact opposite issue: A great supporting cast carrying a deliberately underdeveloped protagonist.

One of the things I think that is fixed right from the start of this is that unlike the trailer, Lara is given some stellar voice work, and her writing and vocal mannerisms capture a lot of different disparate effects in a small amount of words, proving that some of Prachett's father's influence rubbed off. The dialogue Lara has with other characters, and more fundamentally with herself is very well told, and because for large stretches of the game Tomb Raider is a one-woman show, she is naturally the one who develops the most and in the most interesting ways.

And speaking of which, it's probably time to get into the scene that caused so much controversy in June, to see if context aids the uncomfortable imagery, as Rhianna Prachett argues.

The scene in question comes surprisingly quickly, barely an hour into the game, at the end of the second chamber, Lara and Spineless (sorry, his name's Whitman but for almost the entirety of the game he's one dimensionally pathetic, occasionally adding elements of prissyness) get captured by a group of Russian-esque mercenaries or scavengers, who rough up the captives, including backhand slapping Lara to the ground. This leads to an interesting stealth section with your hands tied behind your back where you end up in the situation in the trailer, caught in the middle of a tiny hole in a structure, forced at gun point out and trapped as the guard attempts to touch her in a rather uncomfortable quick time event. There's only two (maybe three) vaguely sexual parts to the scene until it becomes a struggle for the gun the scavenger is carrying until the inevitable shot. Now, in the trailer it kind of cuts away here, but the scene afterwards justifies the ordeal, as Lara breaks down and swears that she's just killed someone, before picking up the gun and attempting her escape.

Now, it's clear that there is no actual threat of rape in the code, if you mess up the quicktime button press Lara gets strangled: an awfully visceral death but not sexual in the least. The issue I have is that they make the vague pass at having the attack sexualised but don't do anything to justify it or to imply it has consequences, as if it was only there to make the man in question look like a sadistic idiot. A lot of people feel better about it but I still maintain that adding a sexualised element to it in any way was unnecessary, since any kind of sexual abuse, assault or even harsh language about women (I think “fucking bitch” might get said once throughout the game) isn't ever mentioned or hinted at again. It's a gripe, but it's a gripe that is more than forgiven by the following fifteen minute section of the game where Lara escapes the abandoned village where she was brought to, having to shoot scavengers that fire at her, which is probably one of the most effective, tense and emotional fifteen minutes of pure gameplay I've played in years. Part of this is the excellent gunplay and cover systems. Gunplay is standard, LT to aim, RT to fire with Lara automatically hiding behind cover, but the viscerality of it is emphasised, and it makes you feel a thick cocktail of emotions. It's not like Spec Ops: The Line, which made the gunplay adequate but not fun, to add to the narrative's message on the horrors of war, since it is still enjoyable in its own right, but the scene before it, the first taking of a human life then the desperate cries as Lara guns down people, asking them to leave her alone as she blows their brains out is oddly effective, and makes me believe Rosenberg missed a trick. I didn't feel like I wanted to protect Lara, particularly not in that very patronising “I wish to protect you because you're a cute girl” way he was implying, but there was parts to the initial gunplay where the player and Lara's pain matched, at least to a certain degree, which like in The Line, can only be a positive thing regarding the effectiveness of the narrative. This is probably the emotional high point, the big change where Lara stops being a headstrong fastidious intelligent student and becomes a survivor and an adventurer.

That makes this a bildungsroman. I don't care what you lit snobs think!

There is actually a significant amount of weight to this being a bildungsroman, which to non-pretentious northern bastards like Roth and not like me, is a novel of development, where a child struggles to become an adult and find his place in society. Think something like Great Expectations. The key to a bildungsroman is indeed the struggle and I suspect that's what the developers were going for, in a rather hamfisted way. The idea is you feel all this pain and horror and mangled emotions first, and then, like Lara, build yourself back up through force of will. It's surprisingly effective, and probably is why the majority of the game looks less and less like the first hour and a half. The game, as part of its development from a survival horror (indeed, the bit in the mountain village feels like a very truncated version of I Spit on Your Grave, albeit without the particularly grotesque, gruesome and uncomfortably exploititive parts of that premise), but the next few scenes feel less and less so. Sure, survival is still a vital part of the game, with the game very tepidly promoting stealth in a few areas (this isn't MGS3 though, don't expect to pull off a no-alert pacifist run here), but ammo is plentiful, the controls are good and you get greater rewards for fighting, although of course you run the risk of death, which refreshingly unlike most games is something that is actually quite likely on normal mode, even if you adapt to the cover system quickly. Survival becomes less a matter of concern and more a matter of getting more experience points which you can spend at base camp.

Now that the more intense parts of the review are out of the way I can finally get into the last major part of the gameplay system: Base Camp. Base camp is effectively the fires in Dark Souls, a kind of save point, but also the place where you can upgrade yourself (with skill points you get from XP you get from killing enemies, finding hidden items and raiding optional tombs) and each of the four (well five, if you count the axe you use to pry open doors and boxes) weapons you get (through finding salvage, the other collectable). Both are fairly expansive, though if you go off the beaten track even a tiny bit you'll probably get enough experience to get all the extra skills, and most if not all of the weapon components which get you the best versions of each weapon. If it sounds like I'm not selling it much, all I need to tell you about it is that you can get a shotgun that lights people on fire. It's awesome, though I think it does reflect a problem with video game narratives a bit, particularly ones which deal with the theme of killing, since it tells you this is bad and you should try not to end up like the monsters you fight and have the abyss stare back at you, yet at the same time the more you play with the weapon customisation and skill sets the more fun the gunplay is, particularly when you unlock the weapon finishers, special moves you can do up close when you hit the Y button after knocking someone over. It's not a big deal, since the game does have moments where you do feel that guilt the game is trying to make you, mostly early on, and by the end it's part of the bloodthirsty nature of the character people didn't like when she wiped out entire species of tiger in the early games.

Speaking of the early games, the primary challenge of the bildungsroman is to connect the scary survival stuff with the supernatural tomb raiding of every other game in the series, which is done through the Island itself. Yamatai, in the Dragon's Triangle (the Japanese equivalent to the Bermuda triangle) is an island racked by freak storms, most of which, in true Resident Evil fashion, destroy your only means off the island, over and over again. Seriously, at least three planes and helicopters get demolished in the game that you try to escape on. The idea is there is no escape, caused by the mysterious Queen Himiko, a sort of Boadicea-like figure known also as the Sun Queen. The game's thematic through-line is the nature of myth as a reflection of some kind of truth. In game this refers to the question of how real the myths of Himiko are, but you could take a metafictional reading here and claim that it's a comment on the Myth of Lara Croft herself, and how much of the 'reality' of the character was seen in the earlier games, or more recently how much of the game itself was really seen from the myth of the trailer. It's an interesting theme, and part of what justifies some of the later interactions with the characters is their inability to see the connections between myth and reality. Lara Croft in particular is a well suited protagonist to a game suiting this theme, as she herself is haunted by the ghosts of her pasts, of her late father who she early on in the game condemned for believing in myth, her feelings changing as she realises there was more truth than she could first see, and that change, that acceptance of her heritage and her family is also a symbolic acceptance of the heritage and the tone of the older games, although whether it's an acceptance of the shorts I think is a mystery that won't be solved until the inevitable sequel.

The game itself runs about 8-20 hours, depending on just how much of a completionist you are, and of course not counting DLC, which I didn't get any of with my copy. The pacing regardless is superb throughout and there aren't really many deadspots even if you're hunting for collectibles given survival instinct and the beacons systems. There are optional tombs to raid, although these are more like simple physics puzzles rather than the huge multi-level environments of old. Still a ton of fun though and I suspect what most of the DLC will consist of. There are a few glitches with the game, particularly with regard to the physics engine and how the game deals with Lara being out of the physical bounds. Once I managed to make a box push Lara through the geometry and out of the game world, which took me out of the experience a little bit. Mercifully it only happened a few times and a quick reload checkpoint thing meant I only lost about two or three minutes of progress total. It's a very enjoyable ride from start to finish, with only a few little lumps and bumps in between and tiny gripes, and seemed to simultaneously enrapture me in its awe and wonder and gave me enough to ensure that a critical reading of the game and its story was positive.

The final question on everyone's lips is whether this is a good feminist game and it certainly tries to be, the little gripe with the trailer notwithstanding. Lara is a character of deep layers and hidden strengths and with each challenge another veil is parted to show another strength. I get the complaints with the character in the past, that she seemed to barely exist in the world where the challenges exist. She knew the answer before it was asked and barely seemed to be in any danger. They say legends are born from tragedy and triumph, and with the new Tomb Raider, the balance is struck between the two, and hopefully in the same vein, there is something really empowering about Lara's tragedy and triumph here, that felt organic, rather than either a cardboard character or the subject of a feminist thesis.

Verdict: Just buy it already, I can't recommend it more.

On the Enjoyment of Critical Analysis of Video Games: A Tomb Raider (2013) (Xbox 360) Review Part 1

Hey there, I've just completed (though not 100%ed) the New Tomb Raider game and thought I should provide a somewhat lengthy review of it, not just as a game or a gaming experience, but through the feminist critique people threw at it during those initial trailers. Because the complete experience of the game is vital to most readings of this game in particular, there'll inevitably be spoilers, even though you've already figured out how the game will turn out. Also, while I'll try to be academic about it, large chunks of it will have to do with my own personal experience of the game. So yeah. Have fun!

Preamble: Things Left Behind

You figured it would happen eventually.

Last year I posted the first part of an aborted analysis I was going to do on the issues of gender equality in video games, particularly in the protagonist archetype. Effectively the nub of my analysis is how the gaming heroine experience changed, from barely existing, to distaff counterpart, to the mixed blessing of the 'Girl Power' era, where action girls were created that amazingly missed the point, before moving to a worrying trend where, far from being equal, female characters would be lightening rods for serious abuse in a misguided attempt to be 'serious' or 'edgy', while male characters seemed to be the same bulletproof action hero fantasy figures they always were, just with even massiver muscles. I stopped that, mainly because I didn't feel I'd researched enough feminist theory to really do it justice, but it is something I maintain is the case.

The first game I planned to talk about was Metroid Other M, a painfully misguided game which tried to make a character who never speak never shut up. The biggest problem wasn't that though; it was the rampant misogyny, shown mainly the strange patriarchal complex Samus developed at the start of the game, obsessing over the 'perfect military mind' Adam, doing everything he told her to despite having no reason or incentive to do so, and not daring to touch the equipment she has unless Adam says its okay, and being so obsessed she runs through a volcanic area, burning herself alive until Adam lets her turn on the Varia Suit she already had! Then there was the bloody maternal metaphor, which including such things as Samus being drawn by a distress signal called a “baby's cry”, which was hamfistedly monologued about for a good five minutes. It read like the developer shockingly realised Samus was a woman and was like “Oh no! What do women do? Have Babies? Alright, there's our central metaphor, we are aware of gender issues!” And then there was the Ridley fight, where she developed a PTSD that seemed to serve no purpose but act as a trigger for abuse sufferers and I could go on for an eternity about it. It was living proof that a bad story badly told can ruin what was otherwise a very fun game.

The other game was the then-upcoming Tomb Raider, and I'm glad I waited until I put the controller before I touched it. The main dilemma with the game is obvious. The game is pitted as a reimagining of not only the series' gameplay, but primarily the series' protagonist, the unflappable Lara Croft. She's always been a polarising figure in feminist debate, considered possibly the greatest emblem of the 'Girl Power' era; she kicked mountains of ass, was a smart, interesting character and was in the business of tomb raiding entirely for herself, however that was offset by her image, which was cheesecake and increasingly exploited to drum up sales (a running gag went for a while in the 90s about just how big Lara's breasts would get, given they got bigger each game). Sexualisation in video games was hardly a new thing in video games; even Metroid had it if you beat the game fast and complete enough, but it was one of the most prolific and successful examples. It was difficult to really condemn or celebrate her as a feminist figure without coming to complications about representation, she was too strong to be sexy and too sexy to be strong, apparently.

As an eight year old struggling with the complicated all weapons code and accidentally making Lara blow up in Tomb Raider II, all of this went way over my head, as did most of the sexualisation stuff. It was something you heard about and giggled about like you did about anything adult when you were that age; I was too young to understand it enough to be affected either way. Regardless, I loved Tomb Raider, and tried really hard to beat it and let her get the Dagger of Xian.

After reminiscing, I kind of want to play it again, regardless of the fact Lara is a tank in a tank top in that game. The gameplay was fun and the writing slightly better than one could expect from that era.

I was also too young to realise certain problems with the action girl era. I just thought they were cool and wondered why there weren't more of them, then shrugged and went on to play Mario.

I really got into the later three games before this latest reboot (Legend, Anniversary and Underworld), coded by Crystal Dynamics (who completely incidentally designed the Gex series of games, which were far too awesome to fade away). The pacing was quicker, clearly inspired by the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time series and their flowing parkour style of platforming (Incidentally, the last game Core Design, the original makers of Tomb Raider made was called Free Running and somehow was stodgier than the Tank-like Tomb Raider games they made previously). Lara's wit also quickened and sharpened too, the return of series creator Toby Gard probably having an effect on the direction of the series. They were fast fun, full of secrets and cool things and had enough of a plot to string together the more impressive physics puzzles and set pieces.

There is a point to this preamble, I assure you.

After the allegedly disappointing sales of Underworld in 2009 (It sold 2.6 million copies, so take what you will from the 'allegedly'), there was much speculation as to the matter of why it didn't sell, and in the end they put the blame on the alleged bulletproofing of the character, internally dubbing her “Teflon Lara”. She never felt in any peril, or at least in any believable peril and despite no parkour platformer ever having serious peril and threat as a part of it (Prince of Persia in particular making it near impossible to lose with various timeshifting and magic powers), the decision was to reboot Lara Croft as a younger, more vulnerable figure who it was hoped you'd care for more than a climbing running avatar.

The result of this is already clear to people who saw the reactions to the trailer for “Tomb Raider” (named pretentiously as such like all reboots to imply the earlier game never happened. See Also: Prince of Persia). What was meant to be an attempt to portray Lara as less badass and more fragile was taken out of proportion by pretty much everyone (including me). The trailer had over 50 screams and grunts of pain, there seemed to be a bizarrely fetishistic amount of pain, and most covered in the press there was an unfathomably uncomfortable scene with overtones of sexual assault and sexualised violence. None of this was helped by Ron Rosenberg actually saying they 'try to rape her' in an interview shortly afterwards, and various other things that caused a majority of feminists to want to lynch the bastard (including me). It is a shame he positioned the story as because it meant a large amount of the other things shown in the trailer were ignored, such as the new gunplay system, hunting, and some more traditional platforming parts.

Blaming all this on a misunderstanding of the project he was in charge of is a bit of a fools gambit and doesn't justify anything he said or implied, but there was a lot of it. His comments about how Lara becomes like a wounded animal in a flight or fight scenario or how the player desires to protect Lara probably sounded innocuous in what he understood of the game, failing to realise that pretty much everything he said exuded an unfortunately putrid misogyny, effectively implying to an unknowing crowd that we are both playing the damsel in distress and her knight in shining armour. In short, the way he worded it made it sound like some kind of male power fantasy that somehow leapt out of the TV and into your lap. Couple this with the Hitman Absolution trailer and it doesn't surprise anyone other than the team at Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics that there was a huge debate about misogyny in video games (including me, well, partly).

The thing is, what the project designer says is one thing, and the complete opposite reaction by Rhianna Prachett, the lead writer is quite another, but in the end it is down to the finished product and the way the game is played to reveal something about the video game Zeitgeist and whether it's still as hostile to women as was perceived back in June.

New content

Hey guys. So much for one update a week at least eh? Well hopefully I can make up for it with a big review I will post in two parts tomorrow on one of the hot topic games at the moment: Tomb Raider. I've a hell of a lot to say (in fact i spent the last two and a half hours writing a journal article's length review on the bloody thing) but I hope you'll enjoy it.

Insane Clown Posse Releasing a Song about a relatively recent Murder-Suicide. Exploitative or not? An impromptu review.

Hello there fans of the Clinkening. I know I've been absent for a while due to graduation, applying for loans and jobs and really stuff that doesn't matter to anyone who reads this blog (as in the empty space) and I have been working on material for the site, which should come up in a day or so (I'll start a 3 a week update schedule though the things I do will for the most part be two short things and a long thing each week, or something that equates to that.)

But enough about that, what could rouse me from my thousand year Avalonian slumber? Why, it's the controversy surrounding the Insane Clown Posse and their brand new video entitled Chris Benoit. If you exactly how offensive calling a song that is, welcome Pro Wrestling fans, there is nothing for you here. But ICP, their connection to pro wrestling and the harrowing events surrounding Chris Benoit's last days are all irrevocably connected in this piece, so first I'm going to have to show anyone who doesn't know why this is offensive the ropes (pardon the horrible horrible pun).

Chris Benoit was a professional wrestler, but really what he did in the ring (which was a lot) is in the minds of most who know of him irrelevant compared to what he did in the last few days of it. In 2007, Chris Benoit was found strangled to death in his home where his wife and son also lay dead. Extensive reports suggest that Chris Benoit murdered his wife and child before killing himself and that bit of the story is regarded as impossible to refute. The problem was why he did it, the leading theories either being steroid abuse (though unlikely given forensic evidence) or the sheer abuse on his body (and particularly his brain) basically destroying his ability to reason.

Really, the reason for his actions is largely irrelevant as the fact that it's a deeply controversial and relatively recent tragedy concerning professional wrestling, and has for the most part relegated the once-prominent sport to the sidelines of modern pop culture. The Benoit case tends to be something to rather avoid, as most discussions about him tend to lead into loud abusive cul-de-sacs with each side accusing each other of being murderer's cheerleaders or not open-minded enough or something. The petty feuds of wrestling fans really hide the issues of this and really stops the event from being seriously explored, not helped by the somewhat partisan attitude of the people who have written about it. Thus, as utterly odd and moronic as it sounds, perhaps a song could use the song as a metaphor to explore the deeper issues surrounding Benoit and the tragedy of his family. And even more oddly, perhaps people who are neutral regarding pro wrestling and the incident may be the ones to do it! People like the Insane Clown Posse!

I think that last paragraph may have cost me my credibility, my sanity and my dignity in one well aimed swoop.

However, what is absolutely the case is ICP and the Juggalos have a very interesting relationship with professional wrestling, particularly the emergence of the backyard wrestling and extreme wrestling scenes within it. You know, the bits people mock of kids wearing slipknot t-shirts hitting each other with florescent light tubes while forty illiterates catcall and wail? ICP own a promotion called Juggalo Championship Wrestling but before that they had a big connection to wrestling, having stints in the three main promotions of the era; ECW (the guerilla pro wrestling association), WCW (owned by AOL Time Warner which at the time was the biggest corporate entity in the USA) as well as WWF/E, also known as the only one left at the time of writing. And I don't just mean they went and plugged their crap; they actually wrestled as well. Not very well but they did! So if anyone had the right to create a song based on such a distinctly wrestling-centred tragedy, it would be the Insane Clown Posse surely.

I was going to say, maybe it should be someone with talent, tact, subtlety and not a front for evangelical Christianity, but that'd be unfair (and in the latter case not entirely confirmed). Most of what I've personally heard about ICP is from second hand sources and the very scant number of songs I've heard (Yes, including the meme-tastic ode to stupidity Miracles), so I'm willing to give them a try. If only a relatively neutral artist can get away with a song about Benoit, maybe only someone who's not a predisposed hater or Juggalo should be the one to review it.

It starts off in typical ICP fashion, with a discordant pseudo-carnival backbeat, like Hunter S Thompson going to the circus. It tends to work quite well and actually creates a slightly unsettling atmosphere for some of the songs, though its abuse like in the celebratory Miracles means that occasionally it lapses into sarcasm, parody or a simple lack of imagination, quickly launching into our hook, with a male and female voice duelling “A Catastrophic Demise” and “Unmeasurable regrets” (oddly also parsered as “I'll measure up all regrets” which makes distinctly less sense) chants. This kind of works although you can tell just how badly they have to mangle the words to get them to fit the meter.

The first verse by Violent J (and yes, I had to look up which is which) is actually not too bad, relatively simple flow but it works, and the lyrics discuss a deranged damaged mind going over the edge in a way that won't blow anyone's mind but at the same time gets the idea across without cliché or really stupid metaphors, although “pull your tongue out with pliers dispatch” (oddly parsered in the lyrics I read as “player dispatch” which doesn't even sound right) is a bit of an odd metaphor to use, an odd time to use hashtag rap when the rest of the song seems to avoid a lot of what makes modern rap music so unlistenable. And then we get to our chorus, which again sounds okay, a crescendo to the talk of nearly being at your limit, all the anger, outrage and negative emotions burst out of you and you go insane, or as the song puts it, you're “heading for the worst”. While not, bad, you have the issue of the backup vocalist “I'm Chris Benoit!” after every single line, which I assume is to connect the subject of the title to the chorus, which is your thesis statement about the themes of the song. The song appears to be claiming that Chris Benoit was slowly being driven insane by everything around him and that he suddenly snapped and killed his family. I'll spare you the insane nitpickings about how that's impossible and just say that based on the police reports done it is indeed impossible.

Shaggy 2 Dope's verse doesn't really do much different, essentially being another series of synonyms for being pushed over the edge to the point where you lose control. Now, generally when you have more than one rapper in a rap group (like Run DMC, Public Enemy, NWA etc) it's because you have several rappers who each have their own flow and verbal ability, which spices up a song which could start flagging by the third verse otherwise. My issue with the ICP is that they don't seem to do this. Other than the paint and the fact one's thinner than the other, they're hard to tell apart, probably not helped by the very slow beats that they create. Also, while “Eject my controller” is quite a clever line, it doesn't rhyme with “over” no matter how hard you try.

At this point, the biggest mention of Benoit (the title of the song after all) is just Shaggy and the backup singers saying it. Until of course after the second chorus where they include one of Benoit's wrestling promos in the middle. Benoit's main characterisation in pro wresling was that he was a bringer of pain, the crippler that could make you feel so much pain you'd surrender and hope for mercy. In other words, the promo they used was just like any other wrestling promo so I'm not entirely certain why it was used. I can only assume because of the connection between the pain he caused in the ring and the pain he caused out of it, which suggests that the duo read Ring Of Hell in lieu of doing research.

The song is really not bad. It's pedestrian, with a rather weak flow, lyrics that aren't offensive but are in effect a series of synonyms for “I've gone insane” and a beat that while initially rather good doesn't ever go anywhere or do anything of interest (though not to the same banal degrees as Soulja Boy). However, by naming itself after a murderer, it forces itself to be a thesis statement on the man, and other than some very transparent references to his name, the use of one of his promos and the music video being set in a makeshift ring, the concept is largely wasted in favour of a song about insanity I'm almost certain they've released about a dozen times by this point. And so an attempt to understand real tragedy through art is once again wasted. 'Tis a shame.