Can anyone remember magician Paul Daniels’seminal retro computer game Rabbits? Maybe, on the grounds that it was one of the worst computer games ever set to code, you can’t. But I do. I do because I spent minutes that turned into hours that turned into days trying to complete it.
I was reminded of that precious lost time – time I could have spent reading À la recherche du temps perdu in its original French, or learning to salsa dance, or basically doing anything that wasn’t trying to make a crudely drawn rabbit collect “magic items” for no discernible reason – when I was asked to test-run Morrissey’s new vegetarian computer game, This Beautiful Creature Must Die.
The game is a collaboration between the Smiths and Peta and takes a similarly vintage approach. However, This Beautiful Creature Must Die is more knowingly retro – a deliberate 8-bit homage, rather than just a completely rubbish computer game. It’s also rather addictive. You’re tasked with having to save various animals as they move helplessly towards spinning blades of death (nobody could accuse the game of failing to incorporate Morrissey’s notoriously laidback and fun persona) while avoiding blowing up the various bombs that appear from time to time for reasons I don’t quite understand.
At first, it seemed fiendishly difficult to last even a few seconds without some poor pig or other being squelched by the slaughterhouse machinery. But, in true Rabbits spirit, I soon found my skills blossoming and my score progressing from two to 12 to 47 to 135. I dare say it will keep improving, and I can only hope I don’t discover some crazily high “target” needed to complete it, otherwise I really will never get around to salsa dancing to Proust.
According to Morrissey: “This game is the biggest social crusade of all as we safeguard the weak and helpless from violent human aggression. You don’t get that from Pokémon Go.”
It’s certainly fun for a few minutes, not least because it has a brilliant chip tune version of Meat Is Murder as the background music – it’s all bleepy and sad. Maybe they should put out a whole Smiths album of it. But does it make me want to dismantle the meat industry and/or forgo the odd burger? I’m not sure, to be honest, but it certainly makes me less likely to play Rabbits again, and that’s good enough for me.
