Games reflect their era: true. Eighties games reflected the 80s: well, yes. Is there anything we can learn about how games reflect an era's attitudes towards masculinity? Given that the most recent Aliens game features not a Colonial Marine but Ripley's daughter, sure.

This article, however, is . . . what's the word? Problematic. The Reagan-era game protagonist, says the author, "are distinguishable predominantly by their physical appearance and by what actions the player can make them do. These characters are muscled, weapon-toting men on the side of justice who defeat countless swarms of clearly delineated bad guys. The game demands that the player beat all these bad guys, or else lose all their health and receive a game over. The necessarily simplistic action allows for a clear binary between good and bad, much the same way that the simple thrills of their film inspirations do." So . . . we're stating the obvious as an insight now? That's okay; been guilty myself. He adds that the side-scrollers feature "exterior threats, mercenaries, special government military units, and the catastrophic potential of powerful weaponry—all common trends in '80s action films."

And it's different now? Apparently. The Reagan-era ways of Manhood had curdled by the 90s, he suggests, and this is the result:

I think they're delineated as evil by the fact that they are from hell. You have a goal: stop them from coming through the portal and kill everything to appease the dark gods. What made it different from the run-and-gun games of the 80s was the perspective of the player, not the amount of carnage or the nature of the enemy.

Elsewhere in modern manhood: This is priceless.

What follows is a prime example of an under-employed and intellectually inert pothead wandering through the day with an attitude that's either happy or dopey, depending on your interpretation. He found a dog!!! Oh it was someone else's. Hey, time for another K-cup - eh, never mind, still pretty high. And so on.