YouTube: Phenom Gaming

Though the GTA series has long made conservatives fraught with rage and worry, it hilariously handles weed like someone who’s never inhaled in their life.

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There are almost too many cringe moments with drugs to list when it comes to Grand Theft Auto, an adult video game series for adults. The most cringe example from the series has to be in Grand Theft Auto V, when Trevor Phillips, the game’s crazed gun runner and drug dealer character, smokes a joint from a stranger.

So in one of the best-selling video games of all time, when the cool criminal player character smokes a joint, he immediately starts seeing murderous clowns with assault rifles all around him, which puts the player into an immediate, actual fight for their life. You need to dodge bullets and kill the clowns to stay alive, all while, stay with me here because it was 2013, Trevor screams and yells things like, “I fucking hate clowns.” It’s some goofy shit.

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You can also literally smoke too much weed and die in GTA Online, which is an interesting choice considering it’s basically impossible. You’d have to smoke “nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within fifteen minutes” to die, which means my editor and I have come close and maybe we should chill out a little bit.

The rest of you are fine. Whoever is in charge of drug references at Rockstar Games, however, is a narc or at least just needs more days off.

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4. Smoking during battle and doing drug drops in Saints Row

Saints Row provides players with increased combat powers when marijuana is consumed. (You know, because that’s what happens when I smoke.) It does, however, come with a stamina hit, after the coughing. Hello fellow kids, I too get *checks notes* a hit to stamina after experiencing coughing fits when I sm–oh, okay, well the stamina hit after a dab is true.

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I am able to focus better on video games when I’m high, though, and Saints Row giving you a nice boost in damage resistance when consuming weed feels like a handshake between the two of us. But smoking weed also gives me and the Saints characters mania—I mean a distorted and cloudy perspective. So, okay, there’s a little bit of truth to the wacky weed antics of the Saints Row franchise, but that doesn’t excuse its lame drug-dealing side quests.

What are these? And how did VIDEO GAMES, of all things, manage to make DEALING DRUGS not cool, when even the text-based DOS game Drug Wars made that kind of cool???

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In 2022’s Saints Row, where you play a capable member of an outlaw gang, there are quests called Drug Pallet Pickups.

These are an amalgamation of fetch quests and the infamous “Press F to Pay Your Respects.” There’s no meaningful gameplay interaction, other than finding the locations in the environment on your own, or with the help of the in-game map. You press a button to interact with the pallet and it simply disappears, leaving behind money. It’s the “Bingo!” for me, tbh.

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We don’t even know what kinds of drugs are packed away on these palettes, but fetching them is so boring, I don’t even want whatever’s in there.

5. Weed Shop 2, Weedcraft Inc, and all the other lame-ass ‘Hempire’ games

A screenshot from Weedcraft, Inc.
Screenshot: Vile Monarch
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I’m sorry. Sure, any Farmville clone is automatically at least sus, on notice, and likely to be called lame, but all “Weed Tycoon” games are particularly pathetic, looking like an amalgamation of AMC’s Breaking Bad and every single Facebook farming and mafia game your mom plays all day on her iPad.

In the cringe and very square Weedcraft Inc, players must manage a weed empire and ugh, how do developers keep making drug dealers so boring? Weedcraft, Inc. puts you in a weed hempire mogul role, where you point-and-click your way to the top by producing, cultivating, and selling marijuana. You need to avoid hits to your profits by making deals with cops, cutting deals with politicians, and finding a way in on every angle for a few more bucks. It’s like a point-and-click business game that happens to feature weed.

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Weedcraft, Inc. having the “incorporated” at the end of its title is just so fitting and encapsulates the entire experience. This is just a weird business game that happens to include weed. It’s boring. It’s square. Resource management and profit margins make me want to take two kinds of blunt rotation to the head.

6. All of the stoner swag in Call of Duty

Whether you choose to spend money in the Call of Duty: Warzone cosmetic shop, there’s no denying that there’s a plethora of choices when it comes to customization. Activision Blizzard has created some memorable pieces of digital garb to wear as you slay across the warzone, from ‘80s workout gear to soccer uniforms, but it’s their weed gear that makes me cringe. I’m talking cringe weed references that look like the parts of a Spencer’s store that would make you and your mother uncomfortable. Tacky pot leaves, multi-colored smoke, and more can be added to your character, weapon, and avatar, which is almost all uniformly lame on top of being jarring imagery to see plastered all over the “kill-people-for-points” military imperialist gun game. I don’t know. Maybe I go for a different vibe than you guys when I smoke?

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Also, fuck Activision Blizzard for treating their employees like pieces of property, rather than the hard-working individuals and human beings that they are. Someone get Bobby Kotick’s whiny, union-busting ass a joint so he’ll find a person inside himself.

I’ll add a disclaimer for Snoop Dogg’s inclusion in Warzone. Snoop is the exception. Snoop is cool. Obviously. It’s Snoop Dogg.

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7. NARC, a lame-ass cop game

In the original 1989 NARC, not only do you play as a “Narcotics Opposition Officer” but you also gun down homeless people, drug dealers, and more with a machine gun. And yes, players are also equipped with missile launchers, allowing them to send bloody appendages flying all over the screen.

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I can’t imagine how many current cops played this game and thought, “I can’t wait to terrorize marginalized communities and unhoused people, all in the name of ending the war on drugs.”

The 2005 remake reimagined the original premise with new characters and features. In either the most accidentally based commentary on police of all time or just something someone thought would be cool, players can even make money by selling the drugs that they procure from those that they arrest. Yes, you can take the drugs from criminals, use them as power-ups for stopping people with drugs, and also sell them to use the profits to stop people that also have drugs. Just like you.

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It’s a little difficult to play either version now, because the ‘80s NARC has not been re-released or ported since Midway Arcade Treasures 2, which released in 2004 for the Xbox, Gamecube, and PS2—but it’s worth playing if you’re able to.

Or you can watch Game Informer’s 2011 Let’s Play where the team plays and reacts to this chaotic piece of gamer history. Helicopter explosions, missiles everywhere, and some of the zaniest antagonists that I’ve ever seen in a video game make for an accidentally enjoyable experience when stoned, despite its subject matter.

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