Just so you know, Zidane's tail is NOT fake. I won't say more because it is a huge plot point and I don't want to spoil it for anyone. (You find out about his tail some 30-35 hours into the game.) I'm not joking, either. I just finished up Final Fantasy 9. It has a fantastic story. And admittedly, Garnet does look like a mini-Rinoa. Their personalities are different, though, so don't worry.

Drew, you are funny bastard. I hope death spares you, unlike the rest of us mortals, but continues to age you until your a withered pile of man hashings, all wrinkled up and dry unable to speak or move, but still able to feel the breeze agonizingly brush against your mangled skin whilst smelling the putrid decay that pours forth from your bedraggled flesh.

-Kandrin on ice.

Off the bat, I might as well tell you that I'm 14. Moving on, I went to the movies yesterday, to X-men. We have this really nice Marcus theatre by us, besides for one thing.. The manager and two of the workers there look like the guy at Krusty Burger from Simpsons. This isn't normally a problem, I see the movies with some of my older friends/my brother, but I was going alone today. I step up to the booth and ask for a ticket to theatre 13 4:15 show of X-men. He responds with, "I don't think you look old enough to see this movie." ...... This is PG-13, mind you. And that's SUGGESTED, not a solid rule. And anyways, I'm 14..! I give him a well drawn out arguement about why I should see this movie, and I ask to see the manager, I get refused and somone from security "escorts" me out (Grabs me by the back of the shirt and more or less drags me out). I email the manager of the theatre, complaining about this, something like 900 words long, I forgot exactly. And instead of an appology, or atleast a well-written response, I get this, an exact copy from the letter. " Thank you for your e-mail. We welcome all opinions of our theatre." ....

Now if that wasn't bad enough, it's apparent that the same guy that kicked me out of Marcus theatre, I went to Software Etc. yesterday, and I was asking to buy Age of Empires II. The guy refused to sell it to me because of how I spoke to him at Marcus. Luckily some of my EB friends whos buisness of mine keeps them open (I spend usually $50 a week there. And if you're wondering how I'm so rich, I'm a paperboy and Caddy.) They go back and talk with him, I end up buying the game anyways...

-Kyle

Hey Drew, If you're scratching your head over that Rock and Roll McDonalds thing, check out WesleyWillis.com. Wesley Willis a 300 lb, 6'5", schitzophrinic musician. All of his songs pretty much sound the same: a Casio keyboard with the preprogrammed beat "Country Rock 8", with a few variations here and there in each song, each song's chorus is the title of the song repeated four times, and he ends each song with "Rock over London! Rock on Chicago!" and then inserts a pop-culture catch phrase at the tail end of the song. There's actually a Wesley Willis lyric generator available at: http://sexsexworld.com/jxl/rolroj.html. Here's what I came up with for your name, Drew:

I love the way you tell the stupid son of a bitches to fuck off
It whupped a horse's ass
The grunge rock show was over at last
This venue is called Electric Lounge

Drew Cosner
Drew Cosner
Drew Cosner
Drew Cosner

You are the president of American Recordings The classic rock jam session was a joyride I like you a lot like flash in the pan The jam session was a success

Drew Cosner
Drew Cosner
Drew Cosner
Drew Cosner

Rap harder like a Magikist Both of you are on my side You can really rap your ass off You are a rich millionaire

Drew Cosner
Drew Cosner
Drew Cosner
Drew Cosner

I like you a lot in the long run
You are my buddy to the max
I love you like a chuck wagon
I love it here when I play a rock show with my band

Rock over London, rock on Chicago
The heartbeat of America - that's today's Chevrolet

That would just be a beautiful song,

-Sak

Hey, agent Drew!

I have to say that I have nothing but respect for Joseph Lieberman. He knows that some games are inappropriate for younger gamers, and he also knows that their ratings impose no restrictions their sales. Unlike movies. Kids can't get into R-rated movies, but they can slice and dice innocent people on their Playstations all they want.

I, being a lowly clerk at an EB instead of a vice-presidential running mate, will willingly sell a copy of Perfect Dark or Soldier of Fortune to an adult, but I have trouble letting parents buy these games for their kids. Though I personally don't believe seeing these games will cause a kid to pull a Columbine on their school, I think that most kids shouldn't see people getting torn apart.

As for the possibility that Lieberman's ideas will undermine the artistry and human truth in games, consider that films are treated in a similar manner. Many films deal with sex, drugs, violence, trauma ... but kids CAN'T see them and we can. Adult moviegoers are not robbed of a humanistic cinematic experience, and kid moviegoers see their Disney films and are not cavalier about death and pain. Games should be treated in a similar manner. We can have our Resident Evil, they can have their Pikachu.

-Kate, who is being much too serious today

Hey Drew, The comparison between movies and videogames is somehow apt (noticed how cinematic videogames have become? Not that it's an inherently wrong thing...). It should be noted, then, that while we do sometimes get to see jems that open a dialogue on "some of the more powerful and and less attractive realities of human existence", the majority of US movies we are served up aren't that type of movie: rather, they're entertainment devoid of content and requiring preposterous leaps of faith in order to be watchable. Sounds like quite a few games to me..

Yet, affirming that movie ratings are somehow better at filtering for age than game ratings solely because they have been enforced as of late is somehow... simplistic. Sure, it may be that theatre owners do pay more lip service to enforcing the MPAA ratings, but said ratings are in and of themselves far from perfect. For one thing, it's easy for studios to get movie ratings lowered solely by removing anything that is perceived as too sexual in nature, while leaving any violent scenes virtually untouched; I mean, I'm not going to go on a limb and declare myself a fan of either excess, but it seems that one is being favored over the other, and that's just unbalanced...

Then again, considering this country was first settled by people who thought that almost any physical contact was sinful in nature, but had no problem putting people in stockades for the above reason, creating one of the most austere prison systems ever, and driving the natives of this land as far from them as possible by any means necessary (once said natives figured out that these settlers had different ideas on what living on land means, and figured out they better stop playing nice)...It's not that surprising.

I'm not denying that videogame ratings are a tad more arbitrary; that's due to the fact that they have been in place for a shorter time than their cinematic counterpart. And yet, that's not why loosely framed ratings for videogames are a more acceptable target than movie ratings...

Videogames are being targeted as sources of entertainment that promote violence, while criticism on unfettered violence in movies has been toned down somewhat, for a very simple reason: most bigwigs in the movie industry make for generous campaign contributors (of course, this is truer for the Democrats), and usually very good publicity at fundraisers. Videogames would be picked on a lot less if larger videogame companies budgeted for political contributions...

You would think it was all about keeping kids happy and safe, but it's really about those soft, fat checks... Sorry, but the welfare of American youth has never been less of a political priority than it is nowadays (case in point: the percentage of kids living in poverty in the US has never been higher...but that's being blamed on single motherhood...no, nothing to do with having a shitty record in social programs...)

Princess Jemmy, whose grammatical compulsion flared up, and it's driving her to point out that you mispelled the word 'weasel', among other things...

P.S.: Zidane must have been given a tail because wings have really been overdone recently, which must have put the game designers in a bind of sorts (at least he wasn't given wiskers or other overly cutesy

On this serious and political subject I would point out this. The Democratic National Convention this time is in L.A. I wonder since the entertainment industry gives huge amounts of money to the Democratic Party will Sen. Lieberman tone down the critisism of the entertainment industry? If he does that it would be worse because that shows that our politicians views change because of lobbyist's money which would make me sick. So it all reminds me of Punching Puppet Ghaleon where contributers control what a politician says and does. But we should be critical and be upset if game companies use so-called "mature" content just to hide the fact that the game really sucks because that has happened before.

-ImperialMog

Oh, damn. It's you again....

-Sunn, on his way to RPGamer

Drew-

As is everything I say, in my opinion, the games as art (or as cinema) movement is one of the more ludicrous events to occur in the industry in a while. Simply because of the history of video games, I don't think that anybody but the most obsessive of fanboys could begin to comprehend games as art, or see a deeper meaning that hasn't been reiterated a million times before and a million times more eloquently in a book.

The industry that esentially began with a computerized version of table tennis, to the casual fan, could never be considered to have as serious a nature as cinema. Even we, the alleged 'hardcore' fans, don't usually look to the artistic merit of a game to be one of the key factors in purchase. One of the remaining differences between games like the latest Sakaguchi (well...FF9 excluded I suppose) or Kojima epics as opposed to movies are interactivity. As long as gameplay exists in games, they will never be able to successfully adress higher level issues or morals without simply coming off looking foolish. (erhm....Xenogears) The essential statement is that by their very nature, video games are not meant to have true meaning, in the sense that works of literature, art, and select works of cinema do.

This said, it really should come as no surprise that I feel the best developers today are those who are the master of the...dare I say... 'old school' ethic of game as a game. Releases from developers like Capcom, Treasure, NCL, or SNK (rip) certainly don't even attempt to be on the level of Tolstoy. However, staying true to their innate nature is what makes their games so enjoyable.

Sure, sometimes games like Metal Gear Solid can get the fusion of higher level story and excellent gameplay together, but couldn't the gameplay exist seperately from the story and be considered good on its own? And what, apart from a few trite plot twists, separates the story of MGS from a movie like Chuck Norris's 'Delta Force'? Until some genius finds a way to completely unify storyline with gameplay, games cannot and should not try to evolve to be as deep as movies, art, or literature.

-ReigunRed