fuzzix

For those of you who’ve had their heads under a rock for the past several years or are just too young/old, the Grand Theft Auto series of games are some classic cartoon crime capers where you play various villains in various backdrops trying to attain wealth and power. In its latest incarnation, GTA:San Andreas, you play a gangsta rap style crim who rolls with his homies, performs the occasional drive-by, eats fast food, wears garments of a certain colour and so on.

Recently a mod (modificaton) appeared on the interbleh which allowed you to perform a sex scene with your virtual girlfriend. This has caused a bit of a stir in the good ol’ US of A where puritannical views are the norm and what you do in the bedroom is subject to the closest scrutiny just in case you’re pissing off some God character from a song their kids are forced to sing every morning – or at least that’s my understanding of it. I’ve been known to miss the point when it comes to this sort of thing. Even Hilary Clinton’s got her oar in, although the idea of extramarital sexual activity being uncomfortable to her might be understandable.

It took me a while to get this situation straight in my head… This is a game where you can, if the mood takes you, go on a cop-killing rampage, beating up a few prostitutes and old ladies along the way just for the fuck of it… You learn to beat people up more efficiently at the gym with different combos of button bashing. You can pick up a few gang members, steal a car and go on drive by shooting sprees in random neighbourhoods but, correct me if I’m wrong here, the game becomes too extreme when the protagonist makes love to his girlfriend? Is this the gist of what’s going on here?

Well now, that doesn’t make a lick of sense. Could this just be the convenient scapegoat the censorship fanatics have been looking for over the past decade or so? Ever since DooM (you remember, that low res, comedy, gore ‘em up where you blasted holes in pink/purple/red, squishy looking demons with physics defying weapons) became a training camp for everyone with a heavy metal CD the logic deprived have been chomping at the bit to exercise some control over the whole video game thing. It’s nothing new – they’ve been doing the same with music for a long time (although that’s calmed down a lot since they gained control of that whole thing anyway, adding it to their catalogue of other Hollywood monstrosities like movies and television. I still remember these guys getting Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest records and playing them backwards to hear what Satan had to say and no amount of The Darkness, Blink 182 or whatever else passes for rock music these days is going to make me forget. I like my theatrics and posturing with a little edge).

Well, they got their wish. It’s effectively no longer on the shelves in the Land of the Free until a new version is mastered where you’ll just have to blow the heads of twice as many cops in a futile attempt to relieve that sexual tension.

*edit – 25 July* Oh, it gets better. Well known kook Jack Thompson has launched an attack on The Sims 2 (you know, that tame life-em-up for those with no lives?), railing against its full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia, and pubic hair. I think Mr. Thompson has some serious problems that I’m not going to even begin to speculate on.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2005 at 14:11 and is filed under Grinds My Gears!, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.