Who You Gonna Call?

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.