Rate
This!
By Charles Anderson |
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 So
my nephew Jimmy was playing his latest video game, blasting the brains
out of a freakishly realistic looking zombie in real time 3D ray-cast
rendering with a weapon from the year four thousand. I asked him what
the game was about, and he told me it was mostly about trolls and breakfast
cereal. As confusion and frustration set in, I looked at the rating
for this so called game.
 E
for everyone. E for freakin' everyone?!?! Last I checked, I was
a part of "everyone" and I didn't like this game much at all.
Let's face it folks,
video games are just about the most popular thing right now and they aren't
getting any less as the days roll by. Such games are usually full of morbid,
graphic violence and gore galore. Some new ratings are on their way into
the gaming community to help parents and game company patrons alike better
understand what they're paying staggering amounts of money for. As a service
to human kind, being the great humanitarian I am, here's an extensive
list of new ratings for your consumer knowledge!
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B
for Boring
This
rating is pretty self explanitory. The game is just bloody boring.
Some consumers enjoy it when the merchandise they acquire is dull,
tedious, and leaves them upset with buying it in the first place.
Other consumers hate that. This rating can help you identify games
that fit these qualifications quickly and easily.
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C
for Colorful
Are
you colorblind? A game with this rating is one programmed specially
to include countless new colors, including three new primary colors
that didn't exist before 1994. For those of you who are colorblind,
you'd be paying extra for a game such as this, due to the abundance
of hue. Don't waste your money on what you won't be able to see!
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N
for Not A Game
This
rating is usually found on CD's that aren't games, such as audio
CD's or DVD's. However, due to the shockingly low average consumer
intelligence of game going public, industries have begun putting
this rating on all sorts of merchandise, such as toy cars, dolls,
and cookware. Over time expect to see this rating in the garment
and food industries as well, always there to prevent some idiot
from shoving a hamburger into his console.
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?
(Pronounced ?) for Pointless
Not
surprisingly, this rating has appeared on every game manufactured
since the rating itself was devised. Apparently the committee responsible
for rating games as they debut sees all video games as pointless
and says children should "read more" just like in the
"good old days" where they walked fifty "miles"
just to get to "school." Feh. Committees! What do they
know?
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$
for Freakishly Expensive
Don't
be fooled, as all video games to come out since the Atari days of
yore are considered by industry standards to be expensive.
Only now, however, can games attain the level of being freakishly
expensive, in which the game sells for no more than two thousand
times the price it cost to produce it. Basically, if a game you
wish to buy is similar in price to a semester at NYU, it should
have this rating.
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(Picture
of a Spider) for Contains Spiders
Arachnophobics
(those afraid of arachnophs) constitute nearly 4% of the gaming
industry. That may not sound impressive, but thinking the gaming
industry's department of statistics' sole purpose is to impress
you is to be very self absorbed, you egomaniacal pig. Due to that
somewhat high percentage, games that contain spiders of any sort
are clearly marked with this rating on the shelf. Protecting arachnophobics
from their potential purchases is okay in theory, but what spiders
have to do with arachnophs is beyond me.
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 So,
there you have it! With these ratings in place, critics and those who
enjoy predicting the future for fun and profit expect an increase in the
number of games that shift focus from the gruesome and the filthy to feature
happier topics such as toys and glee. It is still doubtful whether such
"happy" games will have any sway in the gaming industry, as
such games would be both stupid and nauseating (forgive my editorial).
Regardless, new ratings will continue to pop up to further the blatant
unnecessary categorization of everything on the planet.
Charles
Anderson
Roving Reporter, Reality Syndicate
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