I really don't want to limit my thoughts on this to GTA, but it is the best example of how videogames are actually preventing me from comitting real violence. You see, I am a hostile and aggressive person in real life. I swear, I rant, I yell, I swear some more. I suffer from extreme bouts of road rage. There are at least 3 times every day (usually more) when I feel the urge to physically shake, shove, punch, or throw the people around me. I often have clenched fists and a furrowed brow. Driving home from work it is all I can do not to run the people around me off the road.

But then, I get home, I change into comfy clothes, I avoid news programs at all cost (for fear of having an anuerism), I get a beer, I turn on the 360, and in my virtual world I get to run people off the road, mow them down in my hummer...er...Patriot, punch random stangers for no reason, kill at will. For a short time I am able to funnel all my aggression into an appropriate forum for such behavior. I am a big fan of FPS games, the more violent, the better. By the time my partner gets home I no longer want to crush, maim, and mutilate all of mankind. I no longer feel the need kill.

So I've been neglecting all my online communities for the past several weeks (as I mentioned might be the case) and the situation won't be improving any time soon. Unfortunately we are totally over-taxed at work and with GTAIV out, all my free time has been spent running people down in stolen virtual cars. I'm hoping things slow down over the summer and I get a chance to get back to regular posting and commenting on other people's blogs.

In the meantime, I'd like to comment on all the hate GTA is/will be getting. Once again the general public (and msm) seem completely unable to grasp the idea that a videogame could be made for and marketed to adults and not children. The level of rhetoric about training our children to be criminals is absurd. Of course videogames are not the first medium to get this kind of attention or criticism, merely the latest, but it still makes me bat guano when Jack (the complete nutbag) Thompson starts talking about bringing criminal charges against Take-Two. When oh when will we have sanity in public discourse?

No matter what the outcome of today's primary, the time has come for Hillary to let it go. At first I thought the long democratic primary was a good thing for the Dems, it would give them more exposure, no one was paying attention to McCain, ect... But now, the longer this goes on, and the longer Hillary and Barak attack each other, the worse it gets for the upcoming general election (which is the one that really matters). With debates around he said / she said instead of the real issues, the media circus surrounding who is in the lead (I'm talking to you Peter King with your map of make-believe results), and McCain getting to run unopposed, it's long past time for this thing to end.

As a Democrat, no matter who you support, Clinton or Obama, you've got to want one of them to win in November, and the longer this thing goes, the harder that is going to become.

So I went from having too many games to play down to having too few? I'm still plugging along (sobbing) on Lost Odyssey, shooting everything in sight in COD4, and enjoying shooting things with a good story in The Orange Box. I've also been playing a little FF Crisis Core while on the road and I've still got Devil May Cry to start (haha). Even with a decent number of games going, I am completely bored by my gaming choices. Guess it's a good thing GTAIV comes out next week.

I must apologize for my lack of blog posts of late. I have been completely swamped with work and on the road pretty much all week for the past several weeks. Unfortunately this situation is going to last for the next few months. I will be posting when I can, or when something is just too good not to comment on, but this blog may be even more quiet than usual for a while.

Okay so, as regular readers already know, I live in Rhode Island which is right next to (an atually broke away from) Massachusetts. You may have heard of Massachusetts, the "evil", "cheating" Patriots are from MA, as are the lovable losers who finally won so now everyone hates them too Red Sox. Massachusetts, you may also have heard, is also the latest in a string of states to be seduced by Jack Thompson and his game hating legislation.

Someone please tell me why this keeps happening? Court after court has declared Thompson's legislation unconstitutional. Even if they hadn't, the idea that M rated videogames are on par with pornography is so ludicrous, most of the rest of the game hating community knows it's a joke. Now, I understand the desire to have some kind of consequence for selling M rated games to underage gamers and I know it's an election year so the politicians are doing anything to get noticed, but this bill raises the debate to the level of hyperbole, which doesn't work very well in the public sphere.

It's time for the politicians to give it a rest already and let parents (remember them, the people responsible for raising the children) gee, I dunno, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for what their children are exposed to. Given the economic crisis we are slowly slipping into, doesn't the government have anything better to spend it's time on than preventing little Timmy from playing Gears of War 2?

So I just picked up GOW: Chains of Olympus last night on my way home from work. Less than 30 minutes into the game and the GOW sex minigame makes its appearance. Given the uproar created by the PG-13 scenes in Mass Effect (which at least had something to do with the storyline of the game even if only tangentially), I wonder how long it will take the mainstream media to blow a nutty over implied lesbianism, full breast shot (rather than MEs side-boob) and, gasp, player controlled sex (even if you can't see the action). Your thoughts?

So, I hail from a pretty small state. So small its nickname is Lil' Rhody. We have the smallest amount of land in the country, we are ranked 43rd in population, and (on to the topic of this blog) we have a measly 17 delegates. Let me say that again, we have 17 delegates. In the general election it's even worse, we only have 4 electors and we are a staunchly liberal state. What this mean is, in terms of national politics, we do not matter, at all, ever.

An yet, tomorrow, we might actually matter. I know the big media machine we all know and love is talking nonstop about Texas and Ohio because they are big and there are a lot of delegates up for grabs there, but the democratic field is still pretty much split right down the middle so every delegate, and therefore every vote, counts, include those in Lil' Rhody.

For the first time in a long time, campaign money is being spent in Rhode Island, in a primary! If you live some place big like California or New york, or someplace early like Iowa or New Hampshire you don't know what it means to matter since you always matter (it's like how the Yankees will never know how truly good it feels to win since they always win). But if you are from someplace small, where they never spend a dime, where the candidates never come for appearances, where your voice is never heard, then you know how it feels for your vote to potentially make a difference.

This year both Clinton and Obama made campaign appearances in Rhode Island. Both spent money running TV spots. Both have volunteers working tirelessly to get out the vote. This year, we matter.

Now, why am I bringing this up? Why does it matter to anyone not from Rhode Island? It matters because of what it says about this primary, and this election cycle, and these candidates. It matters because it affirms that every voice has the potential to matter in this country (and isn't that what is supposed to make us great). It matters because for the first time in a long time the field is close because (at least if you're a Democrat) both candidates are good rather than both being bad.

I know many of you do not care in the least. Perhaps you don't live in America (yes, I am aware there are other places besides America, for the past few years I have wanted to live in those places), perhaps you don't care about politics, perhaps you are a Republican and so your race is all but over, perhaps you have already voted or you live in a big state so the feeling just isn't there. But I just wanted to share my excitement that casting my ballot tomorrow might mean something and that this time around, for everyone, it the general election might be meaningful too, because when you get right down to it, isn't that what we are supposed to stand for?

I don't know whether anyone will care, but I thought I'd post an update on my "too many games" dilema. I did manage to finish Assassin's Creed and the campaign for Halo 3 (I know I know, I'm a little late to the party). I'm also fairly close to finishing up Mass Effect.

On the flip side, I went out and bought Devil May Cry and Lost Oddessy even though I still haven't even started COD4 and The Orange Box. Couple that with having only touched the surface of several other games and having 4 games on pre-order and I'm having the opposite problem of, it seems, everyone else who can't find something good to get their hands on.

Guess it's just the way I approach gaming that I will always be a few games behind the latest and greatest (ie. Halo 3, BioShock, COD4) and I will always have a miriad of games going at once (right now I think the number stands at 8 ).

Ultimately, if this is the biggest problem in my life, I'm doing a lot better than most people so I'll stop whining now and get back to blogging about real topics. Coming soon - What Our Ratings Systems Say About Us and my thoughts on System Wars.

Just a quick post to share my concerns about EAs proposed buy-out of TakeTwo.

While we still haven't seen what affect EA will have on BioWare, I'm still a little concerned about their apparent desire to buy everyone that makes profitable games. I'm not against big corporations just because they are big and corporations, but it's already hard enough to being unique games to market; further consolidation will just add additional hinderances to doing anything other than the most formulaic of games.

I know "innovation" was the buzz-word of 2007 and there has been a lot of debate on whether or not the games were really all that innnovative or just well executed versions of the same thing. Either way, there were some great games in 07 and many of them were unique even if they were following a tried and true formula (ie. BioShock). What happens to the ability to produce a unique game when the ultimate decision makers all sit on the same board?

Perhaps I am jumping the gun a bit seeing as how TakeTwo has rejected EAs offer. But the offer itself causes me concern. EA just finished bringing BioWare into the fold and they are already on to the next target, silly me, I though EA was a game developer, not a holding company.

What do you guys think?