Since copying any images from the show would get me into trouble with Fox, I asked Jeff K. to draw the episode for me.

I have a special place in my heart for any form of media that chooses to exploit words such as "virtual", "cyber", and "Information Superhighway" like a six dollar whore. I believe more people should use these wonderful phrases, as it makes it more obvious to the rest of the world that you're some kind of moron who shouldn't be trusted to wash my car. Films like "Lawnmower Man 2" and websites such as "Mony's Virtual Fun" are glaring examples of how completely stupid people sound when they start spewing these "high tech" catchphrases like verbal diarrhea. I had originally thought "The X-Files" would be a little too hip to fall into this clichéd pit of stupidity... but should've known better when this seasons' episodes began, and I became more and more convinced that Carter had been replaced by one of the braindead zombies from Mars that Mulder is usually running away from every other episode. "FPS" is one of the most embarrassing episodes every created (I chose not to use the term "written", because it appears as if they simply took a poll at a local grade school and asked the kids what we be "ultra cool" to put in a show).

The episode opens up to a few geeky guys in body armor and head communication devices, screaming at each other and sweating alot. This is because men are stupid apes and are solely motivated by guns and violence. A couple people monitor them from a booth while they continue to shout and yell like a bunch of mentally handicapped Paxil addicts. To further enforce the notion that FPS fans are hyperactive nuts with an insatiable bloodlust, one of the people watching them says, "If we don't let these boys out, they're going to kill each other!" I think that this a pretty accurate assertion, because if you've ever played a game of Jailbreak before, you'll know that the captive cells are full of large, sweaty Male / Grunts that are just dying to tear their fellow teammates limb from limb. This is because all males are stupid and cannot control their urge to kill things. I can vouch for that, especially after watching this episode. Once it was over, I grabbed my collection of Cris Carter football cards and began to draw tiny handlebar mustaches on his face. This was the closest I could actually get to revenge, second only to walking up to Mr. Carter outside the nearby "Hotdog on a Stick" and forcing him to eat all the medical waste that has been dumped into the drainage ditch behind my apartment.

"Level one" involves everybody shooting whatever's in front of them.

Anyway, the geeks get into "The Game" and begin level one. Level one is somewhat difficult, challenging the players to hold their guns straight ahead of them while enemy motorcycles attack by utilizing the ingenious battle tactic of "driving straight forward". I guess the kinks in the AI haven't been worked out yet, because even though the bikes were shooting at targets that didn't move in any direction, they never were able to hit them once. Perhaps the AI was programmed by the guys from "Mortyr". All the motorcycles (or are they "Cybercycles"?) are blown up, and Geek Squad Alpha goes to level two. Level two is the infamous "Germans shooting from buildings" game, which further helps tie-in this game to the aforementioned "Mortyr". The fat player instantly gets shot and killed, because fat people are nothing more than cannon fodder and laughingstocks for our personal amusement. The geeks ditch their fat corpse friend and one of them is quickly killed by a dominatrix (or is she a "Cyberassassin"?) in the basement (or is it a "Virtual Basement"?) of a parking garage (or is it a "Virtual Parking Garage"?).

Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate these murders at FPS (for future reference, I will refer to the company "FPS" as "FPS - The Virtual Cyber Information Superhighway Game Company") and Scully checks out the "FPS mainframe" for "cyberthugs" (I am not making these quotes up). There's some brief dialogue scenes which are even more idiotic than the "action" scenes and involve phrases like:

I dare any of you to say one of those lines in public without laughing! You can't do it, can you? Rumor has it that Mulder and Scully had to be hopped up on goofball to do those scenes without breaking down into hysterical laughter. I also heard that Chris Carter enjoys inhaling industrial solvents.

I think this is supposed to be the female assassin. I can't tell, I'll have to ask Jeff K.

According to the head biz guy at FPS - The Virtual Cyber Information Superhighway Game Company, they are planning on creating and selling this violent game to arcades in the malls. Nobody bothers explaining how this would be physically possible, as the game can apparently only digitize the real space around them, and just kind of retexture it. For example, in order to let the geeks play level one in a city-like surrounding, the players have to stand around in a large, warehouse-like room that is the EXACT size of the city surrounding them. I'm no math whiz, but I think a game like this would really suffer in a mall's arcade. The only possible themes the game could use would have to be along the lines of "Battle Inside a Closet", "The Man Standing Next to You is a Killer!", and "Watch Out, It's Really Close And Perhaps Deadly!". Our heroes come to the shocking conclusion that there's an assassin (or is it a "Cyberkiller"?) inside the game, so they ask Thresh - er, "Daryl Musashi" to come over and frag it. According to the software engineers at FPS - The Virtual Cyber Information Superhighway Game Company, Daryl is the best gamer in the history of mankind. Even better than Jesus, who didn't use mouselook. They all group around the monitor and watch Daryl get ready to rip shit up. Here's the strategy he used, which was undoubtedly what made him the reigning king of FPS games. You may want to take notes.

With the exception of the last step, I can understand how this would make Daryl a FPS killing machine. Man, the only thing better would be to crouch in a darkened corner, shooting your blaster! You'd be unstoppable! My only question is why Daryl didn't call people "camping fagots".

Scully examines his bloody corpse and says things like "virtual death" and "virtual mayhem". This is supposed to make her sound more intelligent, but it has the same effect as marching her onto each set wearing nothing but a pink clown suit and a gigantic sign that reads "I AM SMARTE" on her back. Maybe they should've talked about how much RAM her SCSI PCI BUS has on its IRQ Interrupt. She and Mulder begin arguing that all men are stupid and addicted to violent video games because guys are really stupid primal monkeys. Her point is that all men are stupid and addicted to violent video games because guys are really stupid primal monkeys. Mulder responds by squinting alot. Scully suggests that "if women ran the world I can tell you we wouldn't have these kind of games". I assume that if women ran the world, they would enjoy losing money by producing games that appeal to nobody. Sorry Scully, but we already have a South Peak Interactive.

The gaming crew digitizes the woman who offed the geeks, and they are able to texture her despite never seeing her before. This is no doubt due to the miracle of their wondrous operating system, SA MoFOS, which can do anything, no matter how illogical and bogus. They trace the person down to a sleazy hooker named "Jade Blue Afterglow", who got her name by drawing random words from a hat. She admits that she let the local hospital digitize her body for cash, which I'm sure was a valid and legit medical experiment and not just something called "Let's Put a Hooker With Big Tits Into the MRI And Then Masturbate to Her Naked Model". I think Paul Steed might've had something to do with it, because I recall him being a doctor. A LOVE doctor.

I'm not sure what this is a depiction of.

Mulder's conspiracy-obsessed friends are pulled into the game and come under fire from the "Virtual Hooker". Mulder decides to step in and save them because it offers a unique opportunity to wear sunglasses that make him look like an exotic insect. Oh yeah, and he doesn't look ANYTHING at all like Neo from "The Matrix". The geeks run out of the game and attempt to shut it down by rewiring the harddrive on a nearby 486 SX. When this proves to be unsuccessful, they try mashing a few keys on their keyboard that ships with all Gateway computers. I could almost see the "Instant Internet" button on the top row, near the number keys. Mulder battles the "Cyberwhore", and shoots his gigantic gun alot. Both of them. The assassin does a bunch of flips and makes clones of herself that explode (which normally doesn't happen until at least level 12). I thought things couldn't get any worse, and then they did. The backdrop instantly changed to a "Wild Wild West" setting, and Mulder starting shooting at slutty cowgirl clones. Then Scully comes in, there's a tank, some explosions, and "shift-alt-bloodbath". I kind of lost it at the end and forgot who I was. I just started wandering around my apartment, attempting to chew on the drapes. Oh yeah, somebody said, "she's input herself into the game - we have to download her!" and then I blacked out again, only to wake up in the back of a pickup truck, missing my pants.

This episode was humiliating to me, and I'm not even directly associated with any gaming companies. All this techno "virtual cyber" shit is so 1992, back when people thought that VRML and floating magenta cubes were the wave of the future. This show undoubtedly helped perpetuate the myth that gamers are nothing but raving idiots who's bloodlust can only be temporarily quenched by a woman's breasts. This theory can be backed up by looking at such wonderful magazines as "Incite Gaming". But for the rest of us that aren't nearly as stupid and horny as these writers would like the world to believe, this episode was truly something awful... and it wasn't "The Matrix".