Who You Gonna Call?
by wjw on April 28, 2015
I was chez Abraham last night, and watched as Kat played one of the XCom series, video games about an elite force of soldiers tasked with repelling an alien invasion of what looks to be Middle America. Just as Master Chief leads the elite alien-fighting Spartans in the Halo series, and Nathan Hale leads another elite alien-fighting outfit in Resistance, and an elite force of ninjas fight aliens in Ninja Crusaders.
And I thought, why hasn’t anyone made a video game in which the aliens have to be fought by the numbnuts who would actually get the job? (Well, other than Bubba and Leonard in Redneck Rampage.)
I mean, why is there no video game in which the New Mexico National Guard has to repel an alien invasion of Roswell?
That would make an awesome first-person shooter. You’d have to keep a close watch on your health bar, because your character is middle-aged, out of shape, and might have a heart attack if you have to run too far in all your equipment. Every so often your gear would break and you’d have to go back and retrieve stuff. You can’t see the enemy without your glasses. To avoid contamination by alien bacteria, you’d have to don your MOPP gear, which you can do one leg at a time if you don’t fall over. You could boost your energy by dry-swallowing ground coffee, chewing tobacco, or eating MREs (but only if you can figure out how to open the package). Or maybe it’s better to stop at the convenience store for some doughnuts.
And of course the war stops when you have to pee, climb out of the MOPP suit, then climb back in.
Just getting to the battlefield might take twelve levels. And then you have to wait for the truck with the reserve ammunition, because it blew a tire sixty miles back.
There would be supplements featuring the State Police and the County Sheriff’s Department.
This is no-fail commercial magic.
I’m going to sit back and wait for the big offers to come rolling in.
I don’t know anything about creating video games, but I’d read that a short story.
One of my favorite novels is William R. Burkett’s “Sleeping Planet.” He wrote that one half a century ago, and not much else, for some reason.
In it, Earth is invaded by a massive alien force, resisted by a lawyer in Atlanta, a crippled truck driver in London, and the (imaginary, but devastatingly effective) legions of the dead… it’s the same basic schtick as Eric Frank Russell’s “Wasp”, where someone finds what is now called the “tipping point” and proceeds to attack it. (properly, many tipping points, but you get the idea)
Sleeping Planet is, I find, recently (2013) reissued as an ebook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sleeping-planet-william-r-burkett-jr/1114202207?ean=2940016051864
From the first paragraph I was going to say something about the mass amounts of rookie deaths and cannon fodder destruction in the original XCOM UFO Defense but you went in a different direction with that. XD
It has to be said that I usually identify with the cannon fodder.
And then the twist – you’re actually to crack down on unionists.
Or black folks “rioting” by holding up banners demanding justice.
If NM were *really* invaded by aliens, all we’d have to do is feed them green chile. They’d have no immunity. Game Over.
You’ve also got the amazing resource of New Mexico Tech at hand. I see a story featuring a pack of students led by some crotchety faculty members doing a number on the alien hordes…
Back in the early 1990s during the previous military action in Iraq, it came out that the alliance had some huge “bunker buster” bombs ready to use, but the “refit some bombers to carry them” part was way behind schedule.
A museum in England noted the dimensions and weight of the bomb, then announced that while the various Air Forces of the alliance didn’t have any aircraft capable of delivering the bomb, they did: one of the few Avro Lancasters still flying, and pilots certified to operate it.
Their offer was declined, but… the Voices serve up an image of an ancient bomber still in its WWII colors, boring southward in the night to do the job it was made for so long ago… escorted by a flight of F-117 stealth fighters.
“Ah, Captain. It would have been *glorious*.”
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