December 14, 2006 at 1:30 am 
I can t fathom all of the brouhaha over the Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game.
To recap, this brilliant shoot- em-up lets you exterminate the unchosen people of the human race. Translation: everyone who doesn t believe Jesus Christ is the Grand Mastah Pimp of the Kingdom of God. Translation: most of the planet.
There s been lots of vomit spilled over how this thing is teaching kids to grab the nearest Hindu and splatter his brains against the wall. But all that bullshit aside, the real question is: is the game any good qua game? , and walked away with a giant shrug.
Technically, the game is crap; stylistically, it s not really a shoot- em-up - violence is a last resort, with conversion being your first option. No, really: the game sports a Convert button. If anything, this game s greatest crime is convincing Christian youngsters that turning your heart over to Christ is as easy as pressing the appropriate Power Move Combo on the joypad.
As for the message of the game who cares? Is there anything new here? Nope.
It s the same End Times message that evangelicals and certain other Christians propound every day from dusk till dawn. As AT writes:
I m not sure this game is worth that level of contention and argument; it s simply doing what a million made-for-TV movies and Christian concerts do: make Christianity more attractive to younger people via the media.
Read the Ars Technica review if you want more - particularly .
if you re one of those pretentious fucks who loves to impress people at parties with phrases like dispensational pre-millenialism (reporting for duty, ma am), then you ll dig the article.
As for me? I m preparing for the Rapture the only way I know how.
No need to turn your deeds over to me just yet; just give me your address, and I ll stop by your empty house shortly after the Great Tribulation begins assuming no one presses my Convert button first. November 3, 2006 at 7:41 am As I announced a couple of days ago, LucasArts and The Zero Boss have . Well, as it turns out, that s only one of three similar prizes I have to give away.
I still have two more prize packs to hand out to some lucky readers. Thrillville is a new game from LucasArts for the Playstation 2, Xbox, and PSP that lets you build and use your own virtual carnival, from the rides and games on up. (And yes, the rides can be ridden, and the games can be played.
) Your goal is to rehabilitate the dilapidated carnival and keep your guests happy, while fending off sabotage from the vicious corporate conglomerate Globo-Joy.
In other words, you re at war with Six Flags. How sweet of a game premise is that?
Thrillville is rated E for Everybody, making it suitable for kids of all ages. To win a copy for yourself or your family *, simply leave a comment describing either your favorite theme park, or a notable experience - comic or tragic - that you ve had at a theme park. (For me, this would be the camper story at Darien Lake in upstate New York: four people, three cramped rooms, and three days of diarrhea.
Joy.)
You have until Monday, November 6th at 6am US Pacific time to enter. I will pick the two best entries that evening, and announce the winners on Monday.
Good luck, all - and thanks! (* Sorry, no version for PC. If you don t have one of the eligible game systems enter anyway.
We ll think of something to send you in the game s steed.) August 11, 2006 at 4:10 am 
In other words, it s my childhood as I used to fantasize about it.
Amanda at Pandagon . I have to admit, now that I know it s not a training video for Sluggo and Rocko, I m growing fond of the thing myself.
The game s violence doesn t transcend Road Runner-level; bats break apart after a few hits, and no one gets mained or killed. Hell, no one even bleeds. (A shame, really.
I know quite a few folks from my high school days who deserved to exhale their own fluids out their nostrils.) In other words, you ll get more violence in the first three minutes of Halo than in an hour of Bully. Of course, that hasn t topped American municipalities from calling for the game to be shunned, on the grounds that exposing our youth s precious minds to its rigors will cause our kids to pack heat, dress up in women s clothing, and marry box turtles.
Here s an idea, America: How about taking concrete steps to prevent and punish bullying in the first place? Maybe then we ll raise a generation who doesn t see a video game like this and think, Oh, wow - cheap therapy! It s always easier to blame things on or video games than it is to solve real problems, isn t it?
August 1, 2006 at 8:14 am Y all know my take on this issue. I m barely playing video games these days, having a while back. But Jaxon is still something of a maniac.
It s nice to know that, should his jones last into adolescence, his buying decisions will be determined by the people who have raised him from age 0, and not by someone who thinks the Xbox is . Really, it ought to be a requirement that any legislator even considering video-game legislation play 100 hours of something released since Ms. Pac-Man.
(Update: Jaxon saw me posting a pic of the Halo guy , and started quizzing me again about when he can play Halo. When you re a teenager, bud. His response: Sweet.
)
September 6, 2005 at 8:12 am About five months ago, I was totally enveloped in the timesink that was Halo 2 on Xbox Live. I d whhile away hours on the weekends - usually with s husband Josh on another box a few miles down the road - eschewing all of the lessons in nonviolent communication and respecting others I d been trying to teach my kids. I developed a colorful new language lexicon, ranging from Booyizzah!
to Dieyoucheatingassholeshitbagmotherfucker!
But that was a long time ago. These days, I am Halo-free.
Not by choice, mind you. At one point, I became so busy between work and blogging that I barely had time to piss, let alone save the world. By the time I might have been ready to get back in the saddle, Chasmyn had gone off and had a baby and shit, so their household was otherwise occupied.
But even if the opportunity arose, I wouldn t go back. It was fun while it lasted, but after a while the game starts to suck the humanity out of you. It s not that it makes you a foaming sociopath - it just takes over your life so you re incapable of thinking about anything else.
That s the real danger of video games: they make you as entertaining as paint on a hot summer day.
Besides, I began to think about how much I had in common with the average Halo player. Answer?
Almost nothing. I hold down two jobs. I have children.
I get laid on a regular basis. I like to read. I m old enough to buy my own booze.
Who has time for games when you have a job to work and alcohol to drink? I have to accept that I m a tottering old fart now, and that Halo 2 is just a high-tech way of rolling a 20-sided die. April 26, 2005 at 8:12 am We have Xbox again!
The drought caused by is OVER!
No, hasn t ended. But you try explaining to a five-year-old that you re waiting on a stranger from the Internet to pony up $30 before you fix his sole source of joy and happiness.
After days of hectoring from Jaxon about when we d have a new drive, I went on to eBay and bought the damn thing from .
That was Thursday. The drive arrived last night.
Talk about service!
As soon as I told Jaxon that we had a new DVD drive, he jumped all over me in glee. THANK YOU!
You got it for ME?? You r ethe best daddy!
See, daddy, dreams really DO come true!
So how could I not crack open the Xbox on the spot and toss in the new drive? Fortunately, at this point I had dismantling the console down to a science; I had the drives swapped within ten minutes.
Do you think this will work, dad? I think it won t, said Jaxon, obviously bracing himself for a world of hurt.
We ll see, buddy, I told him, hedging my bets.
With my luck this drive would also be defective, and I didn t want him dropping to the floor and wailing if this scheme didn t work. We plugged the wires back in, loaded up a game, and
Voila. Digital perfection.
Jaxon and I once again have our licenses to kill.
Of course, there s a downside, at least where Kim is concerned. Jaxon proceeded to play half the night, and I found him with controller in hand when I woke up this morning.
And I sweet-talked my wife into letting me play out-of-band last night (my nights, you will recall, are Friday and Saturday), and I shot up my fellow gameplayers in Halo 2 for nearly two hours. I doubt she s thrilled that she s lost 2/3 of the male household population to this time sink again.
Mind you, Kim scored a half-hour foot massage out of the deal, so it was an equal trade.
I don t mind - it s the least I could do for the love of my life. Besides, all of that rubbing builds up hand strength and improves controller dexterity.
April 21, 2005 at 7:53 am Well, I did it.
I came, I saw, .
And yes, the interior of the Xbox DVD drive was a ghastly sight. There were at least five long human hairs circling the optical lens.
There was even a goddamn shiny craft snowflake floating around inside the drive case. (Click on the picture for the large version; you can see it in the upper left, sticking out from under the assembly.)
I cleaned everything out, cleaned the lens and the mirror, blew compressed air on all of the moving parts, and put the sucker back together.
And what do I get for all of my hard work?
An Exbox.
That s right - no dice.
My cleaning was in vain. The box runs like always, but my work did nothing to eliminate the disk read errors. This Xbox is no more.
It is pushing up daisies. It has ceased to read data, gone on permanent strike, refused to process polygons. It s a $200 device that can change my Xbox Live billing options, and do precious little else.
Am I pissed that my game system has shit the bed? Is the Pope Polish - er, I mean, German?
So we re in buy a new Xbox I can t afford territory, right?
Well, not exactly. Enter eBay, direct from the manufacturer (in my case, Thomson) for $25 a pop. This looks like a no-brainer - $30 to replace the drive versus $150 for a new system?
I ll buy that for a dollar. (Or 30.) Unfortunately, I ve already blown my weekly allowance on drinking charitable contributions to the needy, so the transplant will need to wait until next week.
In the meantime, we re not handling the lack of Xbox well. Okay, Jaxon and I aren t handling it well. I get the sense that the rest of the family is quite relieved they haven t heard either of us swear at the TV in weeks.
I m getting my occasional fix from hubby, who hauls over his box every Friday so we can rock the Halo. Still, I ve experienced partial withdrawal - the same kind of headachy jitters you get when switching from coffee to Coke. Many a night have I sat in front of the TV with a wireless controller that controls nothing and a Master Chief cutout pasted to the TV screen, pushing buttons and muttering, Double kill Triple kill!
Needless to say, the experience doesn t measure up.
Jaxon, however, has it far worse. My guy hasn t had Xbox in so long that he s well taken to other pursuits.
Like playing imaginatively with his toys. And interacting with his brother and sisters. And just the other day, I swore to God I caught him trying to read.
Poor little bastard. It breaks my heart to watch him like this.
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