Calling all eunechs...

I love Penny Arcade. At some point, and I dug but didn't find it, they mentioned that a parents group (of course) had put out a list of video games too violent for children.

Somewhere in an alternate dimension a 16 year old me is drooling over this like a checklist... because that's what it is. I hear that somebody doesn't want me to play something, and I'll claw my way through reinforced concrete to touch the stuff. And I can't imagine children being much different now than they were then. Really.

One of them belongs to a favorite franchise, hitman. This is the franchise I go to when certain elements of my life make me want to scream. It used to be Doom but it lacks a certain finesse of which I'm fond.

The thing has a big "M" on the front, and it doesn't stand for "Mensch". Wal-mart won't sell it to kids, the rating hasn't dropped to "T" or anything, and it's not going to.

Most violent games make no bones about the nature of the content. Hitman is pretty sedate as far as covers go. The word "Hitman", with a picture of a guy with guns. You might think the game doesn't include blood. You'd be stupid, but that's not illegal. Read. The. Back. Words like "sin", "violence", "blood", et cetera should be strong indicators.

Other games are worse, blood dripping off swords while grinning corpses litter the landscape, maybe a charnel house for color, with heart-warming titles like: "Your @$$ is mine: Blood Vengeance 3". As cool as this game might seem to your average teen, it's got all the earmarks of not being a "kid's game". Keep it out of your kid's hands. Don't buy it! Don't let them buy it. Invade their privacy... whatever. You don't trust 'em, that's an issue for you and your family.

Don't take it out on everyone else.

Pax Nabisco, people.