We’ve seen virtually every other imaginable story where some fantastic menace of one kind or another wreaks havok on an unsuspecting populace. How about having a monster from a well-known video game turn up- where people recognize that it is indeed from a video game, and are freaked to see it somehow impossibly be real?
Actually, a large number of video game monsters aren’t much more formidable than an armed homicidal maniac. They’re dangerous in video games because you’re usually on your own, retreat isn’t an option, there are hundreds, if not limitless numbers of them, and weapons and ammo are often limited. Most of the ones in games I’ve played could be hunted down and killed by reasonably alert and prepared defense forces, provided the monsters didn’t have limitless reenforcements either from teleporting, respawning or parasitizing victims. One major exception that comes to mind is:
It’s a fairly typical day in Anytown USA. In the heart of downtown car and pedestrian traffic are going about their business. Suddenly in the middle of a busy street there’s a flare of greenish light. And standing there fifteen feet tall is The Cyberdemon, from the original Doom. For many unlucky bystanders, it’s loud low-pitched “RRUUUUUHRRRH!” as it spots humans to slay is the last thing they’ll ever hear. Chaos breaks out and hundreds die as it’s rocket launcher slaughters everyone in sight.
The police get called and the first units on the scene perish under the monster’s overwhelming firepower. Eventually a surviving officer contacts his superiors and manages to get across that “there’s a freakin’ MONSTER KILLING EVERYONE! Call the GODDAMN ARMY!! We need ARTILLARY!” S.W.A.T. teams are mobilized but they fare no better: automatic rifles do little but annoy the creature, and scores more officer bravely but futilely die.
Eventually the local National Guard units arrive on the scene. They discover to their horror that the monster is even deadlier than they thought. It somehow can produce limitless rocket rounds from within itself, maintaining an incredibly rapid rate of fire. The rockets it fires travel in perfectly straight lines unaffected by gravity, with limitless range; helicopters hovering a thousand feet up and a mile away are shot out of the sky. The monster seems to instantly know the position of any human within line of sight with it, and it has perfect aim. People a mile away from it suddenly find themselve under a barrage of missiles. The handful of soldiers who live long enough to get within grenade launcher or shoulder launched rocket range of the creature are appalled to see it take explosions that would rip an armored car open with seemingly no damage. (The defenders can’t know that in fact they are inflicting harm on it- it’s just that until it’s last drop of life energy is expended it can instantly regenerate from any wounds. By this time it’s lost 2/3 to 3/4 of it’s original HP but this doesn’t slow it at all.)
Finally heavy artillery arrives in the form of tanks and APCs mounting heavy machine guns. They take losses from the Cyberdemon’s rockets but are at last able to inflict enough damage upon the creature to kill it. Whatever internal magazine serves as the source of it’s ammunition explodes, leaving behind little except gore and the large metal hoof of it’s mechanical leg. Hundreds, if not thousands have died, footage of the rampage floods the world media, and a small army of federal agents descend upon Id Software, to be met by another small army of lawyers.
