Rock, Paper, Shotgun

By Adam Smith on November 26th, 2012 at 12:00 pm.

Games about snipers tend to involve a lot of things that aren’t sniping and in the case of Ghostlier Warrior, stabbing men in the armpit will be a significant feature if this footage is to be believed. Men are shot from afar, it’s true, but the majority of a sniper’s working day is not spent squeezing the trigger after an intake of breath so sharp it could cause a lung to collapse. In order to entertain the masses, armpit-stabbing replaces hours of lying prone in the dark, weeing in the accumulated mulch and foliage, suppressing memories of home, silently awaiting the day’s first human contact which ends in a moment of detached violence. That would be a horror game and this is a game about war.

I’m guessing that armpits bleed excessively when punctured, or are generally unprotected, or provide a route to the lungs that doesn’t have barriers of bone? Whatever the reason behind the very deliberate insertion of a blade into their soft flesh, my brain has decided to imagine what it might feel like if somebody stabbed me in that very spot. I’ve reacted by protecting myself as best I can. Until this moment, I didn’t know that armpits could be clenched.