Here's a new screenshot from gangsta adventure 25 to Life, due for release on PC, Xbox and PS2 in September. As you can see it features a room full of people presumably gunned to death by the young black man in the foreground, scowling menacingly, shotgun in hand. You'll find very similar scenes in all the other identikit gangsta games due out this year - 50 Cent: Bulletproof, Crime Life: Gang Wars, Fear and Respect, Final Fight: Street Wise (a beat 'em up, but still set within the same Menace II Society milieu)… there are others but I became mentally drained trying to remember them.
I don't think I saw one review of this year's E3 exhibition that didn't mourn the frankly embarrassing glut of 'me too' urban blasters, with their soulless appropriation of tired gangsta rap clichés. It will be interesting to see how consumers react – will they lap up these conceptually bankrupt GTA hangers-on, or will they tire of so many teenagers in gold jewellery and street wear blowing each other away for no reason? I hope it's the latter. Wannabe titles are inevitable, of course – the same thing happens all the time in the movies. The difference is, in the movies, there are plenty of images to counteract the negative stereotypes. I'm not sure that's the case here.
Oh well, it is possible that the industry has worked through its violent little ghetto fantasies now. And perhaps those videogame executives currently squirming in their seats with excitement at the prospect of some tasty tabloid coverage, will eventually realise that there will be no moral backlash, no histrionic tabloid outcry. Manhunt shifted the goalposts into immeasurably darker territory. Gangsta crap is yesterday's news. You never know – some good may come of this.
