The Glade 4.0

And with kids as young as 9 playing such games, the experts FoxNews.com spoke with were nearly universally worried that video game violence may be reaching a fever pitch.

Carol Lieberman, a psychologist and book author, told FoxNews.com that sexual situations and acts in video games -- highlighted so well in Bulletstorm -- have led to real-world sexual violence.
“The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,” she said.

“The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,” she said.

The number of rapes per capita in the United States has plunged by more than 85 percent since the 1970s, and reported rape fell last year even while other violent offenses increased, according to federal crime data.

This seemingly stunning reduction in sexual violence has been so consistent over the past two decades that some experts say they have started to believe it is accurate, even if they cannot fully explain why it is occurring.

The rate of forcible rape in the past 15 years has declined 30 percent nationwide, according to Bob Dyer in a recent column on Ohio.com.

I think this is totally going to overshadow Duke Nukem, btw. The demo shows promise, and I'm cautiously optimistic.

Kind of leads you to wonder, what's next?

Timely Article:
http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/218238/5-things-society-vilified-before-video-games/

According to it, the 5 things are:
1) The Bikini
2) The Bicycle
3) Comics
4) Role Playing Games
5) Music

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Hey, Roland. Want to make out? Just two gruff, hardened military dudes sitting in an arena of death, snuggling out their woes in a totally hetero way.

The first time I tried Bulletstorm's "Anarchy Mode," what they're calling its approach to wave-based cooperative multiplayer, it was with Gabriel before I'd even played the game proper. I had what I knew from the demo, which I had played repeatedly; but those scenarios are fairly constrained and success or failure can be gauged in a number of ways. You can play the leaderboard, you can try to hit a particular star rating, whatever you like. If you want more levels, you have to succeed in earlier ones - but if you aren't succeeding in earlier ones anyway, maybe you don't really care.

In trying to explain the flow of the game to Brenna, I kept returning to the idea that you as a player (or players) are inhabiting a pinball machine. This is true of the single player, but it's even more true in multiplayer, or in any case it's more obvious: you inhabit purpose-built spaces explicitly designed to expose the game's thesis. But yes, put yourself there for a moment: you play a bumper, and your enemies are an army of chrome spheres which must be used in concert with the environment to succeed. And just like in pinball, it's fun to pound on the buttons and make the ball do crazy **** and to create a tremendous din. But you can also play it purposefully, mindfully, and when you do this it makes the hairs of your neck stand up.

You aren't going to crack waves eighteen through twenty of this thing just sliding around and kicking the occasional mutant. The score threshold that accompanies each round (and gates your passage) makes sure of that. The only way to progress is wring out each opponent for score, and the only way to do that is to communicate with other players. The earliest levels posit fairly workaday challenges, and you'll shred them with little difficulty. I think the challenge could stand to start earlier, because the hard work of meeting them is so satisfying. I think they should replace the existing demo with one for Anarchy mode - and maybe just start there for the upcoming PC demo. People would be surprised to see how this "dumb" shooter, which is at the core of so much hand-wringing and garment-rending, can become something bracing and undeniable.

Oh, and speaking of penises, the game has worse dick jokes than a pediatric urologist. When you bring it home, your five-year-old will ask if you bought any games that are more mature. But aside from Bulletstorm's dialog being plagiarized from a bar urinal, it celebrates all that is good about mayhem.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/blog/if-violent- ... z1FY88lXxN