Nobody tell Jack Thompson this, but GTA is pretty weak as “murder simulators” go. There are far better games for that.

Not that GTA did a bad job. You can gun down civilians and shoot cops for hours on end. But it is to simulation as H.A.W.X is to DCS: A-10C Warthog. It doesn’t capture the intricacies of murder.

Here are my two top contenders for “Best Murder Simulators”…

Hitman: Blood Money

Hitman: Blood Money doesn’t want you to be a bloodthirsty mass-murderer. It encourages you to be the proverbial “silent assassin”. What makes Hitman such a good all-round game is that it lets you fail those expectations.

Everyone who’s played Hitman has done this, right? After competing a mission perfectly you wonder to yourself, “how many people could I murder with the kitchen knife after dressing up in the Santa suit?”

It’s then you realise how Hitman’s relative realism is a far better murder simulator than the likes of GTA. GTA cops are like Santa — if you’re bad enough they just know. How does that fairy story teach anyone anything useful about murder?

Hitman is much better. Kill unseen and no-one will suspect a thing. If you are spotted, kill the witness before they can talk. And failing that, get the hell away and change your appearance if you can. You’d be surprised what you can do in the time it takes a witness to run to a guard, and for that guard to run back to the scene. You can often blend in with the crowd of rubberneckers on your way to the exit. These are much better lessons for the murderer-in-training.

It gets better (worse?). The image above is from the wedding level, where I killed every single person in the level save for the bride (it’s game-over if she dies) and a small number of female guests who had found invulnerability on the dance floor.

What was my motivation? To see what the newspaper would say. I’d been a goody-two-shoes assassin through the whole game and just wanted to see the polar opposite report of “accidental deaths”.

It’s amazing how easily I started to think like a terrorist. I stole two wedding gifts and planted a bomb in each. I subtly dropped one on the crowded dance floor. I retreated to a neighboring building overlooking the festivities and placed the other bomb at the entrance. I found a good window and set off the first bomb. Concerned wedding guests and security men rush to the scene, wanting to help the injured. Then I open fire with my silenced sniper rifle. When some security men come for my building I set off the second bomb. Then, taking a shotgun and ammo from the downed guards, I stroll the manor house and pavilion tents, blasting away the survivors that had taken refuge inside.

This kind of cold, calculating sophistication is not possible in GTA 4. The best you can do in that game is find a busy street, or climb onto a building where the cops can’t reach you. It doesn’t let you put bombs in gift boxes, or train you to smuggle guns past security in food trays, or show you how pulling a fire alarm can get people to crowd together in a small area…

Dead Island

Playing Dead Island cooperatively with friends I like to joke that the game should’ve been called “Train Station Thug Simulator”. (Any rail simulator companies out there? That idea is for sale if you’re looking for addon ideas.)

If you don’t look too closely, Dead Island has first-person melee combat of the likes familiar to gamers ever since William Blazkowicz knifed the Nazi guarding his cell.

Play it, however, and you’ll experience something different. I’m not talking about aiming for certain parts of your opponent — that’s something normal even in non-murderous things like boxing and fencing. I’m talking about the kicking.

Topple an enemy and you can kick him (or her!) to death as he lays on the floor. It might not seem too bad a tactic mano-a-mano. But with four players it transforms into thuggery. An enemy will wander up to your group, someone will knock it down, and then everyone will crowd around laying the boots in until it’s dead. Especially strange to see is when one player, distant from the others, finds and floors a zombie and everyone else sprints up to join in the kicking.

You simply don’t see this kind of thing. It’s illegal in most combat sports and for those where it isn’t a participant may yield or the ref can call the match. Even a mindless bar-room brawl or school-yard fight ends when one person falls. You’re not even supposed to do that sort of thing in war.

As for games, the only ones that come close are some fighting games, but most of them have mechanics that prevent repeated ground attacks. Jann Lee can only jump on your spine once before you’re guaranteed some time to stand-up.

How much does it matter that the Dead Rising enemies are zombies? A lot, really. These zombies will want to keep fighting no matter how beaten or outnumbered they are. Given the (presumable) permanence of their new condition it’s almost inhumane to leave them alive.

It still is a strange spectacle, to me.

What’s My Point?

I’m not saying these games should be censored. Kept away from minors, certainly, but not adults. It’s not even a matter of bad taste — Hitman discourages pointless murder and Dead Island has you thuggishly killing monsters, not men.

Really, I have two points:

First is that the idiots out there who criticise games don’t know shit. I might actually listen to someone who knows enough to point out the most violent or most cold-blooded games. I don’t think I’ll be listening to anyone who thinks Halo is a great training tool for snipers. (Remember: shoot each person twice — the first round takes down their energy shields!)

Secondly it’s interesting to note how easily I (and, I assume, many people) can adapt to thinking like a mass-murderer or violent thug. It shows that the barrier to killing is not as simple as never having thought of it, or never simulating it, as censorship supporters might claim. It’s that people find the idea of killing others morally repugnant.