Have Yourself a Scary Little Christmas
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It’s too bad Time, the senators, and even the Entertainment Software Ratings Board don’t bother distinguishing between games featuring complex strategies, made and marketed for adults, and games that require no more than twitching your trigger finger. Still, it can’t be denied that hellish violence is as integral to these games as dice are to craps. Here are a few of ’98’s most egregious new games. To ensure a peaceful holiday, cross ’em off your holiday gift list for camouflage-wearing sons and nephews.
After your own death, you see yourself for the first time. At least you’re better dressed than your opponents.
First person shoot ’em up, set in a clandestine government lab experimenting with bioengineered life forms where mutant zombies now run amok. Your task? Rescue the staff. Kill the undead hordes.
Sanitarium inhabitants are gross stereotypes, and the main character is no Dr. Joyce Brothers. When he passes a patient banging his head against a stone wall, the main character quips, “Diagnosis: crazy.” Seeing a female figure doing an awkward shuffling movement over and over again in the same place, he notes, “That’s something you don’t see every day.” Then there are the impaled bodies, the deformed children, and the statue of an angel coming to life with blood streaming from her eye sockets.