Up late talking games & writing? You're...

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Kids: This is sort of a games thing, but it's also a family thing… anyway, the wife is playing Tomb Raider: Underworld right now (not linear enough!) and my son was watching her pilot Lara through some ruins for a bit. He really enjoys watching it, and since the bulk of the action is Lara climbing up walls and jumping chasms, we think it's fine to let him take a short peek once in a while.
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So anyway, my son and I were at the airport the other day walking down one of the concourses when he suddenly grabs onto my leg and starts pointing at a wall.
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“Dad, look over there!”
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I looked in the direction he was gesturing, but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I asked him what it was he was talking about.
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“Right there on the wall, it's a life pack just like in Tomb Raider!”
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Mounted near the bathrooms was a portable defibrillator in a red box, and I have to say, the package inside looked a lot like a life pack. As a dad who plays games as much as I do, that was definitely a pretty cool moment, and I couldn't help but crack a big smile.
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We didn't run over and collect it, though.
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Games: Now for something totally not family-appropriate, I just sent back Prince of Persia having been thoroughly disgusted with it, and with nothing else to do, I went to my “to-play” pile to find something to chew on for a while. I was planning on starting up The Bard’s Tale for PS2, when Manhunt (also PS2) caught my eye instead.
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I played a bit of Manhunt when it first came out, but I absolutely hated it. The thing I remember most was that the camera controls were completely squirrelly, and that it was really hard to get a decent working view of my surroundings. I didn't make it very far that first time around, but I held onto it figuring that I would get back to it at some point in the future when I was just that bored.
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A ton of time has passed since then and I've seen the “Piggsy” sequence referenced by enough people that I figured I should probably play through the thing in its entirety, so I started yesterday and at this point I'm at the beginning of the zoo. (For anybody who can remember that far back.)
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The thing that strikes me the most initially is that A> the camera controls are still completely squirrelly, and B> although it’s still bloody and violent, I think plenty of things significantly more bloody and violent have come down the pike since then, with not even a fraction of the controversy that Manhunt generated. Perhaps it was the snuff film setting that set most people off, and of course it was pushing boundaries back then that we have long surpassed, but I just found it curious that the red-tinged range of acts committed by James Earl Cash in Carcer City seem to have been completely overshadowed by what I think most people would call “normal” games these days.
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Something to think about.
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