Thus I Doth Prevail ...

I did it. I finally did it. I made it over the barrier of Coagulation [in Halo 2]. And, I also made it over the small-barrier near the sand dunes near the rocket-launcher spawn point in Burial Mounds. I feel great. God, and the space beyond Coagulation is so wonderful. You can go out there, get a nice view of the canyon, snipe people, and, if you see a rocket soming towards you, just move down the cliff away from the ocket and it'll miss and either (a) hit the rim, or, (b) soar overhead. Either way you win.

Burial Mounds isn't as expanse, praetell, but I still found it interesting. Ah, but something caught my eye yesterday after I turned off my XBOX and turned on Channel 75, G4 Tech TV. I read an e-mail set onto one of the various shows that was talking about videogame violence, which read: "If violent games cause violent behavior, do sports games cause athletic behavior?" I wouldn't know, because I don't play many sports game as I do shooters. =P

Don't get me wrong, I fairly-like the sports genre, but prefer others over them. Which brings me to the topic of violent videogames, focused on Mature ratings, here. In MY opinion, in which this case I believe is the ... case ... very strongly, it's the parent's faults for anythng going on here. Videogames are entertainment. If your son / daughter runs out and buys an M-rated game, plays it, and decides to shoot up a mall GTA-style the next day, then you should've paid more attention to them or, if you were the one to buy the game for them, see if your child is mature enough to play with the themes that warranted the M-rating, be grisly violence, sexual themes, et cetera.

For example, I play Metal Gear Solid. Do I want to go on a tanker and shoot it up? No. I play Grand Theft Auto. Do I want to jack a car and run pedestrians over in real life? No. I play Halo. Does that make me want to go out and steal a spaceship from NASA? No! Why not? Because I'm stable-minded and was raised in a nice neighborhood. If I were raised in the slums with parents that abused me, of course I'd have low self-esteem and run out to my school and shoot up my school. I wouldn't be well-adjusted.

So, please: don't blame the games. THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT, COURTESY OF THE GRIM REAPER.

-- "Grim Reaper"