In my absence, my team chose Oliver Stone’s JFK. Instructions were sent via the university’s intranet-based email system – something outdated, even at the time. Thing was, I didn’t know anything about this. My class had been divided into random teams to explore the accuracy of a semi-fictionalised historical film of our choice. With few morals and a big student loan, how could I resist its sub-$6 price tag, especially when the pound-to-dollar ratio was nearly two to one? University challengedīack then, I was coming to the end of my first year at university. When I was 18, at a time of need, I discovered the game completely by chance. Then again, if some game developer made a game about a possible Soviet sympathiser braining one of my loved ones in front of thousands of people, I imagine I’d take umbrage, too. As an experiential game, though, it became one of the most loathed, notorious creations of a generation, even courting the disgust of JFK’s brother, Ted Kennedy. Still, I don’t think anyone would have described it as an “art” game. It might not have helped that it was marketed as a combination of interactive history and skilled competition, or that the average playthrough was around a minute. Way back in 2005, JFK Reloaded also never fully felt like a game. Similarly, a lot of gamers hate these interactive stories for the same reason they just don’t fulfil the urges that led them to pick up a controller in the first place. All four, I think, are excellent – and they scratch an itch that standard genres of gaming often barely touch. But when is a game not a game? It seems to be a question we ask ourselves a lot more regularly nowadays, especially with the ever-growing popularity of “art/experience” games like Gone Home, Proteus, Three Fourths Home and Dear Esther. That said, JFK Reloaded was barely a game. Yet 13 years ago, a game was trying to prove that the much-known original findings from the Warren Commission were correct – and that even though I’m sure the latest info is still interesting, it’s not going to be revelatory. In a typical show of magnanimity, self-declared humblest man in the world and, coincidentally, impressively consistent liar and wanton narcissist, Donald Trump, somehow took credit for letting the data release happen, despite it being on the cards for 50 years. I started writing about JFK Reloaded a few months ago but put it on the backburner, long before hearing the news that the previously-classified and highly controversial John F Kennedy assassination files would finally be released to the public. The time was right to finally complete this retrospective.
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