Think of the Children for March 12

Written by Randy Kalista on 3/12/2009 for DS   PC   PS3   PSP   Wii   360  

The ESRB is keeping up the pace with another near-three-dozen titles rated. And boy, do I hope they love Nintendo games. As usual, the big N shovels out over two-thirds of the games that fly across the ESRB’s ratings board. And while the occasional MadWorld comes along for Mature ratings’ sake, the lot of this week’s games from Nintendo can be tossed with nary a second glance into the E for Everyone pile. The Xbox 360 makes a poor showing with only one game rated--Raiden Fighters Aces--while the PlayStation 3 puts forth a similarly weak effort with Wheel of Fortune. Excuse me while I feign excitement.

The cross-platform award goes to Up, an upcoming Pixar film about an old man and a young boy traversing wilderness and sky. Up (the game) will get a lift on the PC, PS2, PSP, Mac and the separately-rated Nintendo DS (though all came home safely enough with an E rating). Movie-game tie-in jinxes be damned, this is based on a Pixar film, folks. Hopefully THQ, the developers of the Up game, can put to rest all these haphazard notions of so many games looking “like a Pixar film.” And hey, it wasn’t made by Dreamworks, so there’s a possibility that there won’t be the obligatory fart and kick-in-the-crotch jokes for the cheap kiddie laughs.

The Intriguing Title of the Week goes to…Drama Queens? Now, hear me out. I’m not intrigued just because you can “secretly make out with your friend’s boyfriend,” or because you can “find your boyfriend in the hot tub with your BFF,” or simply because you may find that your boyfriend may want to “take the relationship to the next level.” But, in fact, I find it intriguing for all of those reasons. So often in Mature-rated games we get all excited if there’s a God of War quick-time event with a couple ladies on a mattress; or we fawn over touching moments in The Darkness when Jackie Estacado and his girlfriend, Jenny, get a little snuggle time in front of the TV; or, when Mass Effect came out, 95% of us made a bee-line for a few titillating moments with a certain lithe, blue alien. But, aside from the obvious conversational choices that would let you bed that last asexual Asari, “Mature” games don’t often explore relationships with any complexity.

I’m just saying. How much would it spice things up if Ares had to hold an orgy secretly without his best friend’s knowledge? What if Jackie Estacado’s girlfriend was willing to “take the relationship to the next level” before she was murdered? (Oops, spoiler). What if Commander Shepard found his/her love interest…in a hot tub with another crew member? So yeah, Drama Queens is a Teen-rated board game for the DS, but I think Mature-rated games should step up their game and branch out of linear relationship outcomes and really bring the drama.


Here’s the final tally on who, what and where everything was rated for last week. There were 35 rated titles on 9 platforms (counting plug-and-play for Big Buck Hunter Pro - TV Games): 360 (1), DS (16), Mac (1), PC (4), PS2 (2), PS3 (1), PSP (3), Wii (9), and plug-and-play (1). There were 28 of the 35 titles rated Everyone 10+ or lower, 5 rated Teen, and 2 titles (Dark Sector and Men of War) with Mature labels. As expected, there are no Adults Only games in sight.

The running tally of game ratings in 2009 is as follows:


Got a comment on the article or a rated game? Put it in the comments section or send me an e-mail. Until next week, make sure you know what your kids are playing…

*The weekly Intriguing Title of the Week (and any game that is tossed in that paragraph) is identified based on a game on the list that catches the eye of the author for any number of reasons. Good, bad or otherwise, feel free to agree, disagree or add some constructive input to the discussion.