Featured Image Credit: Steam/PBS
Topics: Steam, PC, World News
A new video game "loosely" based on controversial teenager Kyle Rittenhouse has been released on Steam, and it's about as bad as you'd expect.
For those who might not recall, Rittenhouse was charged with the fatal shooting of two men back in August 2020. The teenager claimed he had travelled to Wisconsin from Illinois to provide medical aid and protection during the civil unrest that erupted in Kenosha as a result of the shooting of Jacob Blake by police. While there, he fired on protestors in the name of self defence.
Rittenhouse was ultimately acquitted in November 2021, and has since become something of a hero among those on the right who believe he was doing his duty as an American, and that it was his right to bear arms to defend himself. The left has widely criticised the verdict of the trial, seeing it as another example of the systemic racism inherent in America.
Enter Acquitted, a new twin-stick shooter from first-time developers Nordic Empire Games that looks to celebrate the fact Rittenhouse is a free man with all the subtlety of a hammer to the face. Nordic Empire Games appears to have forgotten that regardless of the verdict, two people died that day in August.
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The game is hardly a direct version of events, but it's not the most cunning attempt at satire we've ever seen, either.
"Face the media-manufactured outrage of braindead mobs in a fully destructible, randomly generated riot zone as you try to get home from court alive after each self-defense trial," reads the synopsis on Steam. "Shoot, hack, blast & build walls & turrets vs tricky AI in this brutally intense shooter!"
Despite looking like a fairly generic and unimaginative twin-stick shooter, Acquitted currently has overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam. They are... pretty much exactly the kind of reviews you'd expect to read on a game like this.
"Dead commies make me happy," reads the one-line review of one particularly warm hearted friend of humanity.
"After so many years of pedos and terrorists running censorship, this is a breath of fresh air and hope," adds another. "Love this game!"
I do wonder how many of the people celebrating this particular piece of satire usually complain about developers putting politics in games. Or is that only an issue when you don't agree with what's being said?