Video Games

Joining previous bans of pc games Carmagedon, Grand Theft Auto and Postal which all garnered 18+ “adults only” ratings in Brazil, now first-person shooter Counterstrike and MMORPG Everquest join the ban list. Since 01/17/2008 a federal judge in Goiás has begun confiscating copies of the games, enforcing a ban that was legislated last fall. Other provinces are not seizing the games.

Kotaku also reports that Counterstrike “in the vision of specialists, teaches war techniques” and that Everquest “takes the player to total nonsense and heavy psychological conflicts, because the quests he receives may be good or bad.”

More amusingly, Everquest is not even officially sold in Brazil, and the offensive Counterstrike content where “Rio de Janeiro drug dealers kidnap and take to a slum three UN representative s” and “the police invade the place and are welcomed with bullets” refers to a user created map, CS_rio. Lol, it’s ok Brazil, we have politicians like that too in America; they’re called Hillary Clinton.

Keith Bakker, the American director of the Smith & Jones clinic for gaming addicts in Amsterdam testifies that “the phone has been ringing constantly. Computer game addiction is obviously an even greater problem than we imagined.”  Mr. Bakker is a former drug addict himself, and in his mind a computer-gaming addiction is just as severe as any narcotic addiction because they share similar symptoms:

It is not a chemical dependency, but it’s got everything of an obsessive-compulsive disorder and all of the other stuff that comes with chemical dependency

One of their patients, a 21 year-old from Utrecht, said that he barely left his room during a 5 year gaming stint because he was so fixated with his electronic fantasy world.  Such cases are quite rare indeed, for most people who game do so in moderation.  Quite frankly, I think we should do away with these clinics.  Addiction to video-games is a harmless and voluntary occupation, and individuals should be able to do as they will with their lives.  Let Darwin do his work.

The folks over at BabysHere.com have recently caught my attention, offering ”high quality printed announcements at very reasonable prices”.  What kind of announcements?  Obviously ones about babies.  Think Shiloh Jolie Pitt.  Think Sean Preston Spears.  Think Suri Cruise. 

I’m not suggesting that these beautiful babies have been announced through the aforementioned site, but rather that they could benefit from the unbridled professionalism that BabysHere.com displays.  Furthermore, their prices and services are phenomenal:

Starting at $1.19 for cards on 80 pound card stock including printing and envelopes. We offer free shipping on orders of more than 70 cards. Our photo cards have large images to show off the new baby. Each card is typeset out by hand.

Silent Hill, the latest game-to-film adaptation, is getting terrible reviews.  Although I’m a moderate fan of the Silent Hill franchise, I don’t plan on seeing the movie the San Francisco Chronicle deems full of “bad acting, bad dialogue and a confusing plot — all of which become exponentially more painful when the movie goes on forever.”  A few more choice reviews consider Silent Hill to be “witless, soulless and joyless” and “dumber than a bag of coffin nails”, earning it the overall consensus of 29% recommendable at RottenTomatoes. 

Joystiq gives us the run-down of Silent Hill’s pros and cons:

What Works:

• The audio: … and by audio, we mean everything that was not dialogue. The music, while cheesy at parts, really fits the movie well. The sound effects are very creepy, and the filtering is effective when used (although we would have loved for the sound to be more disturbed).
• Pyramid Head: In what little time he was on screen, Pyramid Head really stole the show.
• The Setting: As we have seen
• The previews: Seeing glimpses of The DaVinci Code and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest made us giddy.

What Doesn’t Work:

• The dialogue: Laughable at best. We feel sorry for everyone with a speaking role — especially Sean Bean (but we will get to that in a second).
• The introduction: Instead of trying to actually explain the situation (or why we should care), the film begins with a melodramatic scene involving the main actress in scantily clad clothing. We could have used a 10-minute prologue showing what brought about this trip to a haunted town.
• Too Long: Even without an introduction, the film clocks in at 120 minutes — we can think of at least 112 minutes that one might have cut out.
• Needs more Boromir: Seriously, Sean Bean had no point in the movie at all. If they had given him a long sword and the Horn of Gondor, to ride into Silent Hill and behead all demons in heroic vigilance, it just might’ve saved the film.