Introducing Christi Junior’s Based Morality Rating System for video games! Well, it’s not my rating system exactly, but a modified version of the +4/-4 Moral–spiritual value ratings used by Catholic film critic Steven D. Greydanus:
Now, I really like his system, for 2 reasons in particular: First of all, it distinguishes the artistic qualities of a work from its morality, while still acknowledging that a well-crafted work that promotes genuine evil can not be recommended. Something Greydanus is exceptionally good at, unlike most “moralistic” reviewers, is engaging with even an Evil work as a piece of art, and critiquing its strengths and weaknesses as art in an even-handed way. His review of Million Dollar Baby is a great example of this (the overall F score is solely because of its -4 moral value, because the artistic/entertainment value is actually rated relatively highly):
Another good example, much closer to home, would be our very own @SerfnUSA's review of 86, which while disgusted with the moral content of the work not only praised aspects of the story, but made genuinely unique and insightful points about how it successfully utilized the light novel medium for storytelling purposes:
Not all Enemy media is obvious garbage like Netflix anime adaptations or race/sex-swapped rehashes of old movies. Some of it is intelligently structured and expertly crafted. It’s helpful to be aware of this, without of course losing sight of the fact that such works are not only still evil, but more dangerous than they would otherwise have been.
The second reason I really like Greydanus’s rating system is that it allows for simultaneously positive and negative moral ratings (as well as a purely Neutral rating when appropriate), sometimes spanning almost the entire rating spectrum:
This I find rings very true. Indeed, most JRPGs I’ve played would certainly be getting mixed scores in the Based Morality department, since they’re huge games that cover a lot of ground, including moral, religious and political terrain, and due to it not being kiked goyslop it’s usually not uniformly supportive of everything that’s bad in the world.
Why even have Morality ratings in the first place tho? Both for the sake of convenience and for the sake of making comparisons. Whenever I talk about a particular game, I often see people ask stuff like “wait, I heard this game was pozzed, are you saying it’s actually good?”, so it will be nice to quickly and easily be able to give an idea of where it lands in terms of its Pozitivity, as well as how it compares to other similar games. Also, ever since Christ Centered Gamer went away, I don’t see anyone openly rating video games in terms of their moral content anymore, and given the state of the gaming media, they’d just further reward Evil if they did anything. So I definitely feel like there’s a void that needs filling here. But what do I mean by Based Morality? I’m so glad you asked…
@VidMasterEon@SerfnUSA Imma a cheat a bit and use examples from multiple forms of media:
+4: Camp of the Saints. To the extent that works of fictions can save the West, this book would be at the very top. It mercilessly breaks down the current White self-hatred and its inevitably catastrophic consequences, and forces the modern White man to confront the kinds of questions he desperately wants to pretend don't exist.
As far as video games go....maybe Angry Goy II, lol.
+3: Castlevania 64. From what I've seen, this is easily the Castlevania game with the strongest Christian themes and the most positive depictions of Christian morality. And even the more "secular" storyline directly justapoxes a mother's self-sacrifice with a selfish bitch sacrificing her own child to gain immortality. Something tells me that Actrise the Witch would be a big RBG fan.
+2: Xenoblade 2. This score would be somewhat mixed, but ultimately this is a game with glorious fanservice and sheer beauty on display, an extremely refreshing take on a JRPG God, and even some spicy lines about ungrateful refugees and implications about lesbians being Groomers.
+1: Zelda Ocarina of Time. A number of mild cases of presumably accidental racism and sexism that Salon nonetheless once wrote a whole article bitching about.
Neutral: Lots of platformers, racing games, sports games etc, though pozzed game devs seem to be finding ways to pollute these genres too.
-1: Most Ace Attorney games. Various cases of female on male violence double standards, and a somewhat fucked up message that defense attorneys should never work for guilty clients.
-2: Fire Emblem Three Houses. This is a pretty mixed case, but you got a clear shitlib bias, trannylator "localization" fuckery, various gay Supports and your generic Racism Bad message.
-3: AI The Somnium Files. An openly tranny character (being referred to by his "preferred pronouns" of course, even by the AI character who really should know better), two pretty major characters being faggots (all these faggots are supposedly good guys btw, and one of them is described as openly hating "conservatives") and who could forget, a ridiculously forced and spectacularly cringe pro-LGBTP propaganda speech by a young girl character.
This is still a pretty weak -3 tho, Invincible the TV show would be a more clear-cut example. I laid out the many reasons for this in my writeup.
-4: -5: Honestly, I do what I can to avoid exposing myself to shit like this in full, but The Last of Us 2 is an obvious example, I'm just not sure if it's -4 or -5. Just from watching a few analysis videos I've already seen Jew propaganda, faggot and tranny propaganda, Religion Bad, the one White Christian male character people cared about being brutally murdered for shock value, retarded Revenge Bad morals, ugly and degenerate sex acts etc.
@ChristiJunior@VidMasterEon@SerfnUSA It's basically impossible to have a mainstream +4 in any medium anywhere in Current Year, and even in Japan +3s are uncommon. In America damn near everything is negative, with the best being stuff like Top Gun: Maverick that approaches 0. Spy x Family is the best recent thing I can think of at a +3. Attack on Titan probably settles at being +2 though it swerves quite a bit.
@ArdainianRight@SerfnUSA@VidMasterEon That rings very true. I would however argue Top Gun: Maverick is either +1/-1, or purely Neutral leaning positive, it's definitely not overall negative.
AoT could have been anime's answer to Camp of the Saints, but hell if I know how to place it after that abortion of an ending, I've literally never seen the quality of a story nosedive that dramatically. Ironically, strictly on my Based Morality scale I'd consider the ending pretty Based, potentially VERY Based even (even if accidentally, like with American History X), literally all my objections to it are on the grounds of writing quality.