I saw those.  I thought they were pretty funny.  I didn't expect the hoopla about this game to hit this board, though.  ;)

Did you just want to just share a funny, or open the floor for discussion of something?

as far as overly violent video games go...

i think the people who raise this as an issue still think the main demographic for all games is 8-14 yr olds.  video games are for kids, just like all animation is "cartoons" and thus also for kids.  horribly, horribly wrong in that.  more though, it is the job of parents to decide what their children should be exposed to; not the job of the federal or state government.  ratings are helpful, but they are industry based, not goverment based.  and just a guide.  still, who would actually think a game titled "Grand Theft Auto" is approriate for, say, a 10 year old? 

A guy that works for me, Luke, told me he had to stop playing GTA on his wife's orders. Seems little 2 year old Phillip liked sitting on dad's lap and watching the action. That must be how he picked up a new word. "Shit!"

48 years old, and I just bought a Playstation. (let's keep that our secret) Medal of Honor was my first choice of games. 1st person shooter. Running around 1942 France shooting at Germans, running around North Africa shooting at Germans, running around Russia shooting at Germans.

Every time I get killed, I say Phillip's new word.

Mr. Kettle, Mr. Pot is on line one and he has something to say.   ;)

Michael, that's a great story.  They all pick it up somewhere.  GTA isn't the only game to inspire bad language.  My daughters were helping me work on Mario Kart Wii this weekend for a review.  I'm in the kitchen and all of a sudden I hear Miranda's dulcet tones ring out of the living room, "You little pink B*TCH!"  She'd gotten blue shelled right before the finish line by Princess Peach.  I'm going to have to find a way to work that into my review. 

There was cursing in Final Fantasy VII.  Does that count?  He wasn't droppin' like 50 Cent, but Barrett had a definate potty mouth.  It wasn't spoken, so you had to have reading skills for it and I bet by then the kid's heard it somewhere else.

Twiffer, Offline 2player co-op RPG.  Have you played Eternal Sonata yet?  It has a mode that allows you to assign your characters to different controllers, so you can fight together.   The girls and I were playing it through again before this latest onslaught hit.  As far as The Force Unleashed, it looks like a fighter.  The gameplay video at http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/854/854132p1.html reminds me  a lot of Psi-Ops.  If they manage to implement the Force powers half as well as Psi-Ops plays then we're in for a good time.

If you thought that was awesome, you should probably pick up Psi-Ops then.  You get to telekinetically throw a gasoline tanker truck on one of your enemies and there are a great many other festive variations. 

You might want to play Final Fantasy X, just so you have some idea WTHeck is going on in FFX-2.  I'm just sayin'.  ;)  And you really need to pick up Final Fantasy XII - that's now the most current one and it is excellent.  As a coder, you're going to love the new Gambit system.  Remember how character just stand there stupid and die because they can't act for themselves?  Well, those days are gone.  You set up each character with a set of conditional default actions based on battle conditions. 

Eternal Sonata is chibi as all heck, but it has two things going for it.

1) That guy in the black frock coat is the real pianist/composer Chopin.  The game is supposedly a dream he had while he was ill/dying.  They keep the historical perspective as well as the fantastical one by cutting between the two and talking about his life.  Cuts the cute dramatically, but does raise the existential gibberish quotient to a near Chango/Demosthenes/Urqhart philosopical discussion level in spots.

2)  The combat system is a strange combo of turn based and real time that has a unique way of ramping up and some very interesting ways of making each battle environment-aware.  I think you'll find it intriguing.

Try playing it in Japanese - both options are available right there on the disk and you can switch between them on the fly as you play if you find you don't like it.  The voice acting is pretty good in both languages but the little boy and the little girl in the red dress have voices that are so high they can bend metal in English and after a while it just got hard for me to deal with.

That's a good word, and a good description of that scene.  I wasn't the only heck-yeah-fist-pump that happened in the audience at my showing.  ;)

I heard another good one the other day in reference to the movie "Tron".  Nostalgeurism:  A level of wallowing in retro glory that to the point that the brain asplode.

Dude, you have to at least unpack the PS2.  How can I enable you if you don't have the basic toolkit?

Tron 2.0 is a PC game:  http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/tron20/review.html It wasn't horrific. And they did a lot of what you suggest to the story.  Another cool thing they did with Tron was the addition of the Space Paranoids (Tron) level in Kingdom Hearts II. That was actually a lot more true to the base story, and Tron kicked a boatload of butt. 

As far as Oblivion/RPG controversy(?), to me it's a lot of people who seriously need to get out more.  Thing is, despite all the options built into the game you don't actually modify your character's role in the story that much.  No matter what you choose in appearance or anything else, your essential role is the same.  That's what I understand people's gripe is.  Personally I don't care if you call it Bob, it's still a great game.  Did I mention I think they should find something constructive to do? 

Of course, when you're talking about this topic that might be some sort of oxymoron. ;)

That's pretty much where they're coming from.  MMO's pass their muster sorta, and for some reason passing understanding a lot of them give a pass to Baldur's Gate and Diablo (which I also think is more than a bit hypocritical).

And then we hit the fan with discussing the differences between Western and Eastern RPG's (don't get me started on a couple of the ones I've got from Korea).