When Gaming Affects Your Girly Shopping Habits

Popped into Myers today and they were having 30% off knitwear. 30%. Off. Knitwear.

*grins*

What doth this have to do with Technobabblement, you ask?

Well...

I saw this lovely long-sleeved, knee-length button knit- there was a choice of cream, charcoal or brown, but I went straight for the charcoal one (which also had hints of a dusky blue). Initially, I was devastated because the Size 10 was too big (Miss Shop have inconsistent sizing) but I managed to snag the last Size 6 which happened to be a perfect fit when I tried it on in the changing room.

And you know what?

It had a hood.

So I pulled it over my head to see what it looked like.

And oh. My. God.

It was an Altair hood.

This dude.

My thought process went as follows:

"This. Is. Way. Cool."

"Hey...it's also kind of like Luke's Jedi cowl in Episode VI except it's totally the wrong colour. Ooh, it's even got that funny pointy bit at the top."

"Hee hee...I look like the guy from Assassin's Creed...if you squint...and if you're drunk...and if you forget the fact that he's a highly trained male assassin and not a woman...tee hee hee."

"I am sooooo buying this."

And that was that.

Of course, if you saw it you'd be like, "Dude, it's a freakin' HOOD. People wear HOODIES, it's not like it's a big deal."

But I love it.

This knit shall now be known as the 'Altair' cardigan :D

Violence and the R 18+ Rating

Apparently, the Australian government is still mulling over the decision on whether to introduce an R 18+ rating for video games.

This means that all those gamers looking for an even greater level of violence to exceed GTA 4 (or Manhunt 2) will have to curb those bloodthirsty fingers on their trigger sticks for just a while longer.

Personally, I'm not too fussed either way. There's plenty of violence and gore out there already- how many times have we watched losers in Mortal Kombat fall screaming to their gory death on a bed of spikes?- so an R 18+ rating shouldn't really change things.

However, it did make me think of a family I sold an Xbox 360 to a couple of weeks ago- they were Asian, with a teenage son (a rather non-communicative little teenage son if I may say so myself.) One thing with Asian parents is that they believe that their teenage son is a little paragon of virtue who would never entertain the idea of virtually disembowelling someone, or teabagging a hapless n00b in an MMORPG, or viewing porn at a friend's house. Why, not my wonderful-little-boy-who-is-top-of-his-class-in-Maths-Methods.

Anyway...

...so the kid starts looking through the shelf of 360 games. Except his mother is standing over his shoulder overseeing what he's looking at. Which is never really a good idea.

The kid laconically informed me that yeah, he'd played Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War at friends' houses, but his mum wouldn't let him play anything violent.

Inwardly, I smirked.

His mother vetoed anything that looked remotely violent. In fact, I felt like falling on the floor and howling with laughter when she finally picked up one title and tried to convince the kid to get it.

Suffice to say, he was not impressed by his mother waggling Viva Pinata in front of his face and saying, "Look, this is a nice game!"

So she asks me for my opinion on a game for his new 360.

That isn't violent.

So I start pulling stuff from shelves.

Assassin's Creed. (Involves stabbing targets in public places and watching their blood billow out into fountains, then running away in kick-ass chase scenes).

Nope.

Crackdown. (Free rein to bash everything!!!)

Nope.

Saints' Row. (It's not like it sounds.)

Nope.

Call of Duty 4. (It has SOLDIERS on the front. Go figure.)

Nope, also out.

Gears of War (Note the use of the word "war". Also note the image of Marcus Fenix looking considerably grim and on some kind of steroid.)

Nups.

Mass Effect (This is currently set to eclipse KOTOR as my favouritest RPG, which is really saying something. However, it also features a suggested alien/human lesbian sex scene, many many drug references and mentions Krogan testicles. Man, I love that game so much.)

But yeah, that was out of the question too.

The kid finally settled on some kind of FIFA game. So that was nice and relatively non-violent, and I'm sure his mother must have been somewhat pacified by ther fact that her beloved Viva Pinata was packaged with the Xbox (along with Forza).

And this is why earning money and being over 18 is so much fun. You can buy your own Xbox 360 and get whatever you want.

Or you can get your parents to buy it for you, where the maximum level of violence in your games will be limited to hitting a cartoon pinata over the head with a shovel.

That said, I did reflect on the fact that there are very few family-friendly games for the 360, and that's just because of the demographic it's aimed at. It's not like you''ve got six year old girls wanting to play Bratz on 1080p, but after playing Scene It!, and looking at the popularity of the PS2's Singstar/Buzz games, maybe it's not such a bad market to tap into.

If you're under 18 and have a console, you're probably still living at home, in which case you probably can't play an R18+ game without getting grounded. So for all the other gamers out there, an R18+ rating won't really change things, it'll just open up more ground and more titles. The only thing I'm worried about is that eventually it might lead to a whole influx of gamer porn...like Playboy the Mansion for PC on crack.

But we'll see how this all pans out.

Christmas Gaming

For Christmas, my family gave me Bioshock.

My uncle gave me Assassin's Creed.

My sister gave me Test Drive Unlimited. And also Scene It!

Then I went and bought Mass Effect because I really couldn't wait any longer for what is possibly the most uber-awesome RPG to ever hit shelves.

And then I bought Dancing Stage Universe because I thought the Workout mode might compensate for my general lack of exercise (it hasn't).

And thus, friends, I am now banning myself from spending any more money on anything XBox 360 related, at least until The Force Unleashed comes out and you'll see the frightening combination of Star Wars fangirl and gamer come into fruition. I also think that with Mass Effect, I have a lot to get through, and I haven't even opened Bioshock yet (I know, I know) but I figured that the curious blend of FPS and art deco can wait until I've conquered Saren and ground him into bits of little Turian dust. (BTW, did anyone else think that Nihlus looked like the Turian equivalent of Gene Simmons? Or was it just me?)

Nihlus:




Gene Simmons:



See?!