Sunday, May 21, 2006

Wait, which button makes a balloon animal out of the enemy's intestines?

God of War II made it's debut at E3 last week and the new videos are up at Gamespot.com - it's a great sign that to watch the video you need to enter your birthday.

I am all about hyper-violent video games that are built to grow with an aging gaming market.

Grand Theft Auto, God of War and Gun were all "adult" games that were designed to push the envelope in violence and language and it surprises me when kids have played any of these games. I realized I was part of the problem with our country's mixed up priorities when I'd played a few hours of GTA: San Andreas and thought that I'd never let my kid play that game, not because of the violence, but because the last thing I need is a kid in second grade dropping n-bombs and telling his teacher to go get more fucking apple juice for his ho's.

Trust me, my kid will have enough issues without that.

In any event, God of War was the best game that came out last year as far as storyline, animation and gameplay went. Based on Greek mythology, you play as Kratos who runs amok over an ancient backdrop - you kill everything in sight and then work on a few puzzles as you hose all the blood off the floors.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed this game.

Now, there's a second one on the way and I couldn't be happier. The fact that the market has expanded beyond sports games for older gamers is a step in the right direction. Prior to GTA, the games kind of held a middle ground where they weren't too bad for teens, but were lacking on the whole.

Now the market is flooded with titles like Hitman, The Godfather and Reservoir Dogs to supress our collective bloodlust. I can't wait to see how an exploding head looks on the XBox 360.

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