Wired's Clive Thompson called me up a few weeks back to talk to me about how I deal with Tristan playing video games. My 5-year-old son, for those of you who don't know, has written game reviews, play tested hardware and jammed with me on Guitar Hero.

I treat video games like I do television and movies, I restrict how much and what kind of games he can play.

As you'd expect, I found that joystick-wielding parents are much better than Hillary Clinton at parsing the nuances in various types of combat games. Brian Crecente, the editor of game blog Kotaku, takes an approach that most gamer parents described to me: They treat games as they would movies. If they're too adult in content for his 5-year-old son, he won't let his child even watch them being played.

"Everybody knows, as an adult, that the world is not always a nice place," Crecente told me. "But I don't want him to know that yet. I want him to have a childhood." So he disallows games with "realistic" combat, like World War II titles, or Resistance: Fall of Man, but permits highly cartoony shooting, like Starfox on the Nintendo DS — since he regards it as essentially as abstract as playing cops and robbers with your fingers as guns.

Thompson's boss Chris Anderson uses the Lego Rule, the same rule that the company uses to make their games.

The Lego Company, it seems, has a policy of not producing toys that replicate 20th century weapons. "You can have swords, and you can have laser guns in space, but no actual 20th century guns," Anderson says. So his four children can play games like Halo, since it contains only futuristic, fantasy war, where you're killing only green- or blue-blooded aliens. The same goes for Roman swordplay titles. "But it clearly walls off Grand Theft Auto."

Thompson said he plans to use a mix of my policy and Anderson's for his own child. What's your take on child rearing and games? Brian Crecente

You Grew Up Playing Shoot'em-Up Games. Why Can't Your Kids? [Wired]

My son Tristan and have been playing Guitar Hero 2 on and off since the game came out.

Shortly after the game's release The Ant Commandos sent me one of their Shredder guitars for my son, who is 5-years old, to test out.

The idea, was that the guitar was supposed to be easier to play for a child because it was smaller. I had heard that the it was really just a design flaw that they turned into a specialized product and wanted to figure out which was true.

It turns out, according to my son, that it's a little bit of each.

While he found the Shredder easier to strap around his shoulder and hold onto, the buttons still posed a problem.
Despite that he was still able to, after just a little bit of practice, nail enough of the Shout out the Devil Bass line to make it through the game with me.

And there is something so very cool about playing through Shout at the Devil with your 5-year-old, whether or not he's playing a real guitar.

A little post song interview confirmed that Tristan is a big fan of the strummer, which he insists is easier to use than on the regular-sized guitar, the smaller body and the shorter neck.

The one thing he wasn't a fan of was the buttons, which weren't changed at all for this smaller guitar. He found them both too small and too big. On the one hand he said he thought if the buttons were bigger he would have an easier time pushing them, but on the other hand if they were smaller it would be easier to switch from one button to the next with his tiny fingers.

Personally, I think if the buttons were a tad narrower he would have less trouble switching between them during a song.

Overall Tristan gave the Shredder four out of five stars, pointing out that while he loved the guitar, it had some controller issues.

As a parent, I'd say that it's worth getting the smaller guitar for your younger children if you're really into Guitar Hero and they like the game too.

My son loved Guitar Hero well before he received the Shredder, he just could never play it.

The smaller guitar certainly won't remove all of the hurdles for a child who wants to get his shred on, but it will remove some of them.

I've posted videos of my son playing race games using the Wii Remote and the Sixaxis so I thought it was only fair to post one of him playing Project Gotham Racing 3 using the Xbox 360 Wireless Wheel. Tristan says this is his favorite controller. Of course he said the other two were his favorites too at the time. Brian Crecente

And rightfully so, the game is meant for children and my son is addicted. I think this is one of the first games that actually had my extraordinarily jaded son talking about it after he finished a play session.

I caught him, yesterday afternoon, sitting at the table during lunch, muttering to himself about SpongeBob and his missing driver's license.

I did give the game a whirl right before I let my son take over. The graphics are actually quite interesting, some parts of it seem to be that bloated, soulless CGI crap that does a fine job of illustrating the character but still manages to miss the concept. While other parts are these chunks of really interesting almost Ren-esque illustrations of horribly contorted versions of SpongeBob and friends.

The plot seems fine, perhaps a little light for my taste and not exactly packed with the hidden adult humor that has me giggling during the television show, but still quirky enough to maintain my son's interest.

But the controls, man I just suck at the controls. The funny thing is, my son doesn't.

In fact, he totally rocks at the game. And I tried several times and several different parts of the game, but I just couldn't wing it.

The driving, I found very unresponsive, but my son zipped SpongeBob around corners with little trouble. Heck, Tristan was even able to jump around in the platform portions of the game without plummeting to his death every few seconds, something he's never been able to do before.

And the winch, the damn winch. So there are these winches, these little wheels that you have to turn to open gates. The ideas very easy. You just hold the remote up in the air and twirl it around like you're in a old Western preparing to rope a phantom doggie.

But no matter how many times I tried, and I tried a whole bunch, I just couldn't do it. I tried going slow. I tried going fast. I tried sitting. I tried standing.

Finally, after like five minutes of my waving the Wiimote around above my head like some deranged imbecile, I finally gave up. Dropping to the couch in exasperation only to have my son plod over, pluck the controller from my hand and whip the damn gate in like five seconds of twirling.

The next time he came to the game I snatched the controller from him and gave it another whirl. No go.

It was like the Wii could sense I was trying to play my son's game.

If you plan to buy this game, a word of warning, don't play it around your son, he'll never let you forget it. Brian Crecente

My son's first experience with the Playstation 3 Sixaxis was interesting. He had never used motion control before and I just handed him the controller and told him to steer the car. The first 30 seconds or so he hated it and actually said he wasn't playing anymore. Then he watched me playing with it and said he wanted to try it again. That's what this video showed. He seemed to really enjoy himself, though I think he's still a fan of the thumbsticks as well.