Chainsaw Catharsis

This was writ­ten for Critical Distance’s August/September Blogs of the Round Table, on the sub­ject of “cathar­sis.”

I don’t think of myself as a par­tic­u­lar­ly vio­lent per­son.  I haven’t been in a fight since I was eleven years old.  I don’t like slash­er movies.  I get real­ly tired of the bang-bang-bang rat-a-tat kaboom rhythm of most shoot­er games.  I only made it about halfway through Max Payne 3 before giv­ing up out of a sense of dis­qui­et­ed bore­dom.  I can stom­ach gore, but I don’t seek out gory enter­tain­ment for its own sake.  God of War makes me supreme­ly uncom­fort­able.

So why is it, then, that killing an enemy with a chain­saw in Gears of War is one of my favorite things in videogames?

The Lancer is the arche­typ­i­cal Gears weapon: an ugly grey machine gun with a chain­saw for a bay­o­net.  It’s bru­tal, indus­tri­al, mas­sive, loud, and heavy, like every­thing else in Gears of War.  Everyone and every­thing in Gears is dirty, built like a freight train and ugly as sin.  The main pro­tag­o­nist has promi­nent neck acne.

Anyone who writes about Gears writes about the “Gears feel,” that pon­der­ous sense of stick­i­ness as you maneu­ver your walk­ing tank of a human through and around innu­mer­able chest-high walls.  The way the screen shakes when you run, the solid thump as your char­ac­ter slams into cover and the meaty pop­ping sound of a well-placed head­shot, all com­bine into a sense of weight.  The Master Chief may jump and skip around the bat­tle­field like his armor was made of cot­ton, but Marcus Fenix feels tired under all that metal.

Nowhere is this “Gears feel” more promi­nent than in the chain­saw kill.  It takes a long time, but it’s irrev­o­ca­ble once it’s start­ed.  When you rev your chain­saw, black smoke pours out of the end of the gun.  You have to be entire­ly too close to your tar­get before theani­ma­tion trig­gers.  Your con­troller shakes the entire time, as your chain­saw cuts through armor and skin and sinew and bone and final­ly leaves behind noth­ing but chunks of meat and rivers of blood.  Your char­ac­ter screams the whole time he or she saws an enemy in half.  Both your char­ac­ter and the cam­era are cov­ered in blood for a few sec­onds after.  I find that I uncon­scious­ly grit my teeth the whole time.

It’s bloody, vis­cer­al, gross, and incred­i­bly cathar­tic.  You feel a lit­tle bit dirty after­wards.

I don’t usu­al­ly find vio­lence in videogames to be cathar­tic.  It makes sense in the­o­ry: “I have had a rough day at work, so I will take it out on these zombies/aliens/opposing sol­diers,” but in prac­tice I find vio­lent games just make me more tired.  After a dif­fi­cult day wait­ing tables, deal­ing with obnox­ious cus­tomers and the ten­sion that comes from being triple-sat while there are yet more peo­ple com­ing in the door and that’s right there’s no hosts on Tuesday night so it’s real­ly just up to you and the other two servers and the chef is ring­ing the bell and two cus­tomers want more bar­be­cue sauce and this guy doesn’t like this cock­tail because it tastes smoky even though you TOLD him TWICE that it was made with mez­cal the igno­rant jack­ass and the phone rings and it’s a massive-to-go-order-that-is-going-to-goof-up-your-whole-rhythm-and-ask-a-thousand-questions-about-the-menu-even-though-everything-is-clearly-printed-on-the-gorram-website etc. etc. etc., the last thing I want to do is place myself in anoth­er stress­ful sit­u­a­tion.  I just want to drink too much bour­bon and play easy-mode Audiosurf until I fall asleep in my chair.

Even when I haven’t had a hard day at work, shoot­ers don’t relax me.  Whenever I play com­pet­i­tive shoot­ers online, I wind up more stressed out than when I start­ed.  I’m con­stant­ly wor­ried that I’m let­ting my team down, angry when some­body else starts trash-talking, or morose when I’m just get­ting my ass kicked by peo­ple that appar­ent­ly don’t have to work for a liv­ing.  That high you get when you do lead your team to vic­to­ry is won­der­ful, but in my case, it’s also fleet­ing and annoy­ing­ly rare.

So what is it, then, about the chainsaw-kill that’s dif­fer­ent?  For starters, it usu­al­ly hap­pens in Horde mode, which is coop­er­a­tive with friends against the com­put­er.  This is part­ly because I usu­al­ly play Horde mode (for the above rea­sons) and part­ly because it’s very dif­fi­cult to land a chainsaw-kill on anoth­er human.  It’s gen­er­al­ly more effi­cient to switch to the Gnasher shot­gun for close-quarters com­bat than it is to whip out the chain­saw, because most of the time, while you’re revving your chain­saw and slow­ly advanc­ing upon your enemy, he or she is turn­ing you into chunky salsa with a shot­gun of his or her own.

But it’s also in the nature of the kill itself.  In many games, killing an enemy is not, in and of itself, par­tic­u­lar­ly tense.  The badguy pokes his head out of cover, you blow it off with a sniper rifle.  But the chain­saw kill is rife with ten­sion.  When you rev your chain­saw, you have to stop shoot­ing and slow­ly advance towards your tar­get.  If you are shot while revving your chain­saw, you stop revving your chain­saw and stum­ble back­wards, mak­ing it more or less impos­si­ble to recov­er.  So you have to get close to your tar­get by other means, run­ning across the map, tak­ing dam­age from near­by ene­mies, try­ing to get behind your tar­get.

Once you’re there, the cen­ter of your screen fill­ing with red as stray bul­lets impact your armor, then and only then can you rev up your chain­saw and cut your enemy in half.  In later games, if the other guy also has a chain­saw, you first have to get through a quick chain­saw duel, mash­ing B as fast as you can to over­pow­er the other guy first.

It’s bru­tal, egre­gious, and incred­i­bly sat­is­fy­ing.  The cathar­sis after a suc­cess­ful chainsaw-kill comes not only from what­ev­er real-life emo­tion­al bag­gage you might be work­ing out on the poor bas­tard, but also from the emo­tion­al ten­sion the mechan­ics built along the way.  While prep­ping for a chainsaw-kill, you are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly vul­ner­a­ble and pow­er­ful: exposed to attack and able, if you can just get close enough, to com­plete­ly ruin some­body else’s day.  The ten­sion builds as you wait for the enemy to run towards you or qui­et­ly try to sneak up behind him.  You become wor­ried, ner­vous, and eager, and when you pull it off, all those emo­tions are super­seded by a sense of bloody tri­umph.