Since majority of the video game players of the world are over 18, putting in some sex or just random nudity shouldn't be a problem. Don't we have a fully robust ESRB system where games are clearly marked as Mature or Adult only? I can see people just coming out of the woodworks to complain that there is nudity...but again isn't that why games are rated? What other purpose do the small letters in the corner of games boxes serve?

How great would it have been if in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, the counter terrorist units storm a strip club? Just picture yourself peeking around a corner and having a huge pair of breasts running your way!

Or walking into the club and putting your thermal goggles on and seeing a guy catching a BJ in the back room while searching for terrorists.

My guess as to why there's not more nudity in games, aside from the negative aspects of a potential controversy, is that rendered nudity still doesn't look all the attractive.

Lack of Nudity in Video Games [Loot Ninja via N4G][image]

...you could look at the transition of RTS from PC to console as "dumbing down" of the genre, but really that's completely inaccurate. The evolution of RTS from PC to console is all about re-discovering the core fun of the genre while stripping away the redundancy, over-complication, and bloat that has been attaching itself to RTS games over the years.

If anything, I'm glad that console is becoming dominant for gaming because it's going to force some evolution on a genre that has been fairly static for quite some time. We need to grow the RTS market and bring in new players, not isolate it further into eventual niche obscurity.

Which is exactly why we all need Halo Wars to be really, really good.

"Universe at War: Earth Assault" Post Mortem Q&A [TheArmchairEmpire]

The review continues to point out flaws that other reviewers made nearly no mention of, writing that Super Mario Galaxy is "evidence of how bad the Wii is for third person action games", pointing to The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess as further evidence of that claim.

Additional complaints include poor use of the Wii's motion controls and "one of the worst two-player experiences ever seen in a videogame."

Personally, I tend to disagree with Mr. Fritz's opinion of Super Mario Galaxy, as our opinions on each one of these matters are at opposite ends of the spectrum. From my experience with the game, Nintendo nailed not only the perfect balance between Wii remote usage and traditional Mario-style platforming, but also added a two-player mode that suits the Wii audience quite well. I'm also quite glad that people are entitled to their opinions, so I'm not going to work myself into a froth over it.

But I hear some pitchforks being sharpened somewhere...

Super Mario Galaxy [Variety]

Dear Brian,

In response to this post, or any of the other recent posts where you have referred to the PS3 as the "PLAYSTATION 3."

You know I love you. When everyone made fun of you for buying a pink DS Lite, raising startling and frankly obvious questions about your supposed heterosexuality and consequently sending your marriage teetering precipitously over an infinitely deep chasm that would have ended with you eating cold Beefaroni in the bachelor squalor of your sad divorcee apartment? I cradled your head in my lap and stroked your crunchy, Beckham-like hair until your cried yourself to sleep.

But you've got to stop this PLAYSTATION shit. Yes, I know that's what Sony wants you to call their new Victorian waffle iron console. I know they've trademarked it. And I know you've been living in Japan a long time, where game developers stand Titan-like upon the horizon, coldly commanding mere mortals to look upon their works and despair. Heck, I don't even know if they have capital letters in Japanese. But on the off-chance that they don't, and you've forgotten how they work in English, here's a primer.

"Playstation" is a proper noun. In English, you do not capitalize every letter of a a proper noun. Nor do you capitalize random letters in the middle of the word, ie: "PlayStation." The only situation in which a word that is a proper noun has every letter capitalized is when you are either screaming it at the top of your lungs, or (in modern English usage) when the proper noun is also an acronym. Check your wallet. See that NAMBLA card? That's properly capitalized (although not punctuated). But PLAYSTATION is not an acronym.

For the love of god, please stop subscribing to Sony's totally arbitrary, moon-man capitalization protocol. And everyone else on the Internet too. We need to nip this crap in the bud. Florian Eckhardt