Viva Caligula
Web-based Flash game
"Rome is corrupt! Kill everyone to save Rome!"
That's the basic gist of Adult Swim's new Flash-based Web game Viva Caligula. You personify the mad emperor Caligula as he goes on a neighborhood-to-neighborhood killing spree through Rome, taking down senators, housewives, gladiators, prostitutes and basically everyone else who crosses his path. And you have fun in the process, at least until your conscience catches up and you feel a bit sick about the scenario you've just created.
While not historically accurate per se (the actual Caligula did not, for example, turn into a were-bear and disembowel 63 bath attendants), Viva Caligula broadly reflects how the emperor's poorly documented reign has been interpreted by most modern historians and commentators. The guy killed a lot of people, many of whom were patently innocent of any crime, real or imagined.
The game itself is fairly straightforward. The player roams through the seven hills of Rome (seven levels that range from the Forum to the market to the catacombs), killing inhabitants to gain points, and plundering amphorae to gain health-restoring food or rage-enhancing wine.
Wine is one of the three things in the game that builds up Caligula's anger-o-meter. The other two are killing innocent people, and screaming into your computer's microphone. Seriously — the game allows you to scream into your microphone in order to boost Caligula's rage. Once the meter fills up, you go into "Rampage Mode." The damage you deal is doubled, and blood splatters all over the place.
Also, rather than merely slumping to the ground and bleeding out, your victims become disemboweled and split apart into chunks.
Yay!
As the game progresses, the emperor amasses an arsenal of 26 different weapons (one for each letter of the alphabet) from the good old-fashioned axe to the enemy-charming zambogna. These weapons lend the game the lion's share of its charm. Some are ranged weapons; others, slow heavy hand-to-hand weapons; others are animals; and one of them is opening your toga in order to stun people with your manhood.
The game's art is impeccably elegant, and its designers deserve a lot of credit for putting together a color scheme and collection of background objects that conjure up a cartoonishly beautiful and elegant vision of ancient Rome. Even the game's map (which indicates the un-exterminated parts of various levels) is a work of art.
While not blazing any trails in terms of gameplay or concept, Viva Caligula is a diverting romp, and is guaranteed to distract even an experienced gamer for 20-to-40 minutes, until the tediousness of gutting yet another centurion exceeds the pleasure of trying out a new method to gut yet another centurion.
That said, the game does offer pause for thought. You, the player, take on the persona of a spree killer. The more you kill, the better you do. But wait: the spree killer is clearly a deranged psychopath, so it's actually critical of violence. But wait: the violence is entertaining and the blood is more comic than tragic, so the game actually celebrates violence. But wait: the repetitive nature of the slaughter eventually numbs you to the fun and makes you consider how sick the essential concept actually is. But wait: you don't kill any babies, children or invalids, so it actually pulls its punches.
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Finally, but wait: There's a sexual element to the game's violence. The aforementioned "stun with manhood" weapon can be used to freeze fleeing female characters before you, say, stab them to death with a knife. Is this a problem? Is it any worse than Grand Theft Auto, wherein you cavort with a hooker and then kill her? Lower resolution, for sure, but a pretty grotesque experience to "role play," upon further consideration. The game's designers would, no doubt, defend the "manhood" weapon as a nutty joke; the icon for the manhood weapon is a rooster (or, "cock," har) and you hear a rooster crow when you pound the M key. Speaking personally, the concept of exposing yourself to someone (of either gender) before killing them is so far removed from Space Invaders (or even Halo III) that it kills the fun of what might have been otherwise been an entertaining game. But other players might not mind. Or they might think the game's creators essentially guilty of a sex crime.
That said: It's not as though you can make choices and that the game rewards you for doing evil; there's no real branching, no real moral core. (Although what, other than the old Ultima games, has ever handled this particularly well?) Despite the characters' identities, the actual "story arc" of Viva Caligula is about as morally complicated as Space Invaders. Whether it's an entertaining diversion or a morally sick piece of digital detritus depends upon the player sitting at the keyboard. Since the Adult Swim audience skews young, male and hard-to-shock, chances are pretty good that Viva Caligula will be heartily enjoyed — without a second thought — by most of those who play it. And that's a shame.
— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)
