The Aerie
Just got back from taking a walk. I spend most of my lunches at my desk, so I don't feel guilty about taking the occasional stroll. Sometimes you gotta get out of the office. Sometimes you gotta post blog entries from work. Anyway I was on my way back and jonesin' for java when I was brought up short by the Starbuck's the sign to the right.
It was something called "Chantico," and despite the appalling faux-Aztec faux-world-citizen marketing angle, I had to try it. Maybe it would be a glorified cup of hot chocolate, maybe it would be something else, but where chocolate is concerned I'm a risk-taker, baby!
Three dollars later I emerged from Starbucks with a styrofoam cup about the right size to bring back to the doctor with a sample. I tried it.
As far as I could tell, it was a melted cup of chocolate frosting. This isn't entirely a bad thing. But for three dollars I could melt two entire containers of chocolate frosting...
Anyway...
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| Ouch! That kick sets my teeth on edge! |
I'm not entirely happy with the fact that my kids play these games, but I'm one of those parents who has come to the conclusion that there are some things you can't avoid. And one of those is kids playing video games. Oh, I know there are some tight-sphinctered parents out there who don't let their kids play these games. Many of these also cover the living room in plastic and dust their house daily. Anyone whose seen our place knows we don't live that way...
It's not as if I totally gave in. The kids STILL don't have a video game attached to the TV, and they won't have one until they decide to buy one of their own. No, I make them work for their computer games - they have to figure out how to run them on the old, crusty PC's around the house. I console myself by pretending that this forces them to learn about things like system maintenance, memory and disk storage, and PC interfaces.
In this game while you can play a variety of male and female characters of different races, colors and species, all the females have to wear heels. As unlikely as her outfit was, at least Xena wore boots. I think LucasArts should let players design crossdressing characters. Imagine the shrieks from the people with the plastic-wrapped living rooms when Luke Skywalker shows up in a bustier and heels. "Of course the game is based on mass murder - but you can't let them put dresses on men!"
Anyway I played Dark Forces II, but I really really didn't like the slaughter. You're supposed to be this Good Guy, yet you're running around with a blazing hot fluorescent light, murdering and maiming military conscripts under a brutal dictatorship. It was really unpleasant to wander back to base after slaughtering hundreds of people and have Luke Skywalker tell me what a good job I was doing being a good guy.
One of the unusual things about these games is that you can select skills and abilities from either the Dark Side or the Light Side. And depending on the choices you make within the game, you will become either a Jedi or a Sith.
So I'm playing this game now, and I'm trying to set an example for the boys: I'm trying to play the game without killing anybody.
It's tricky, and in some cases impossible. At the end of one mission, for example, I was being chased around a sand crawler by all these sand people. There was this droid that I had rescued, and it was supposed to follow me back to the starting point, but it wasn't doing so. It had rolled 30 yards from the trawler and simply stopped. I ran all the way back to the beginning of the game, and returned, and nothing changed. So I experimented by killing all the sandpeople (kind of like Anakin Skywalker), and as soon as I killed the last one the segment ended. The mission leader showed up, walked over to the droid, and said, "Good job."
They should really design these games so that you can win them without killing anybody at all.
But the last mission I was able to finish the level and escape without killing anyone. I used the Force to trick half the bad guys into being my allies, and they would open fire on anyone who shot at me, but what's a Jedi to do?
I called the boys downstairs to see the results screen. Enemies killed: 0, use of Mind Trick: 97.
The "not killing" thing defintely doesn't hold true with robots, but it does hold true with wild animals. In the next level I went to great lengths to avoid killing the Ice Monster, but unleased pent up mayhem on the Imperial Probe Droid. Hey, I work with computers.
Will my example make a difference? If I make my way through the entire game without killing (almost) anything, will my boys learn the value of digital life? I don't know, and maybe I won't get all the way through the game - after a while these little puzzles lose their ability to hold my interest. But maybe it will make them think twice about the mass slaughter in this game. Well, at least my oldest boy. My youngest, uh, no, I'll have to wait for time and karma to do their slow work on him...
Posted by Albatross at January 20, 2005 4:04 PM