Y’know folks, readers, loves of my life, I’ve been biting my tongue on this one for a week or so now. Prompted by a post on TIGS, I’ve finally got the impetus to get off my fat bearded backside and make a confession.
I love Stalin Vs Martians, it’s brilliant. There. I said it. There’s no going back now. You’re never going to look at me the same again, are you?
Ok, ok, it’s like this folks. I’ve got a beard. It’s pretty hairy all told, as beards are. I’m want to stroke it. Really. I like stroking my beard. I’ll stroke it over books, I’ll stroke it over films and I’ll stroke it over games all when the want takes me. Shit, these days my film tastes appear to have descended into little but beard stroking much to Mrs Bob’s despair. Beard stroking has a nice place in my ever so futile existence on this planet. I probably stroke my beard more times than any one man should. That’s me for you.
And that’s fine.
Oh, my musical tastes too. If I were being polite, I’d say they were “eclectic”. Go on, you can see for yourself, I have no shame here, readers. The list is a tad weighted recently due to doing a lot of coding and I tend to listen to less offensive comfort music whilst coding and sure, Spotify has made a fuckery of some of the tags but generally I’m happy to be listening to Jesu one minute, Scott Walker another and Kylie after that. It’s all about my mood, folks. Which brings us in a rather odd manner back to my beard and my habit of stroking it.
The thing is, there’s a time and a place for beard stroking. Sometimes though, you have to turn your brain off, move that hand away from the beard, put your feet up and go along for the ride with something.
Sometimes I don’t want to stroke my beard. Sometimes I want to reach inside my brain and flick a switch to “off” and let something take me away from all this. Sometimes I’ll indulge in the ancient art of zoning with a trusty psychedelic shooter, sometimes I’ll sit down on the sofa and watch some utter drivel on the television, sometimes I’ll reach out to the bookshelf and pick something really, really dumb to read and consume it in half an hour. Life, dear readers, is full of choice and I do so love that. Whilst I’m the kind of person who could stroke his beard over the absolute joy of crap television, crap music or a crap film, sometimes it feels a little bit inappropriate and like, well, you’re thinking too fucking hard about things.
Here’s the nub, chaps and chapettes. If you’re even thinking of stroking your beard over Stalin Vs Martians stop right the fuck there. Step away from the keyboard and go and punch yourself in the face till the urge goes away. It’s not meant for that and you won’t find too much of it here. If you’re about to turn around and say “…but, but, but, Stalin Vs Martians is shit!”, give yourself a slow clap then punch yourself in the face till the urge goes away. You’ve missed the point completely.
Of course Stalin Vs Martians is shit. It’s absolutely meant to be shit. And wait for this… it’s what makes it brilliant. Woah, heavy. I know, I know, indie kids. It’s a tough one isn’t it? A shit game that doesn’t pretend to be anything but. Doesn’t that just explode your brain? Where’s the ten page dissertation on the hidden meaning? Where’s the frowny meanderings on life and death? In 2009, surely all shit games have to have some fucking meaning? That’s progress, man. That’s what Indie is all about, right? No wait, hang on a second. No, it’s not.
You see, it takes all sorts of different things to make up our gaming landscape. If we’re willing to accept The Path and it’s profoundly broken game because it has something to say then we should accept Stalin Vs Martians with its deliberately broken game because it has nothing to say. Having something to say is overrated anyway. Shit, we’ve all got something to say at some point but do most of us know when to shut up?
Stop looking at me like that.
Not that any of this matters because Stalin Vs Martians doesn’t give a fuck. That’s where its brilliance lies. From the very first moment when it asks you to stand up for the national anthem and then plays the entirety of the Russian National Anthem at you, if you haven’t realised by now that someone’s having a massive laugh I really don’t know if there’s any hope for you.
Look, it has an entirely useless menu option asking whether you like cats or not. It’s got the most ridiculous spot the difference games for loading screens, it comes bundled with music videos, Stalin himself signs off your mission briefings like a teenage girl writing love letters across the classroom, the martians are the bloody aliens from Toy Story ferchrissakes. Throughout the game you’ll hear your little soldiers pipe up “My name is Ivan. I like you”. Worryingly, they’ll say it so often it’ll start to drive you completely batshit insane. When Stalin does appear eventually ingame, he’s a massive colossus towering over every other unit on the map. Even the FAQ on the games homepage contains this gem:
Vopros: If you were Stalin for one day, what would you do?
Otvet: Your mom!
Amazing. And yet, despite all this blatantly absurd and deliberately stupid stuff we still folks crying “that’s shit” as if the creators were somehow meant to be going out of their way to make a playable 40 hour epic masterpiece that we could all stroke our beards over. Even more amazing.
It boils down to this. Stalin Vs Martians is dumb B Gaming. It’s punk as fuck. There’s nothing to it beyond the cries of “Is it funny? It’s in” and you know what? It is fucking funny. Brilliantly so. It’s proper hahaha laugh out loud funny at times and others, it’s funny because it knows precisely what its making you endure whilst playing it. Stalin Vs Martians wants you to laugh along with it. Perhaps you’re not a funny man. Perhaps you don’t find humour in the reaches of absurdity that Stalin Vs Martians is willing to go to. Fair enough, different strokes for different folks.
If, like me, you’re willing to sit there, turn your brain off, drop all that you expect from a game and go along for the ride then Stalin Vs Martians is a punk gaming masterpiece that deserves to be played, enjoyed and yes, laughed at.
Whatever you do though, don’t stroke your beard at it. It’ll probably burn it off for a giggle.
