16th November 2009

Apologies for the delay, but I've been out, pounding the mean streets of the city doing odd jobs for mobsters - punishing drug pushers, driving people around - and occasionally taking a bit of "me time" by stealing cars, driving very badly, and beating people round the head with a baseball bat and running off with their money. Last night, with a practically infinite arsenal at my disposal, I climbed up onto the roof of a warehouse down by the docks, and stood there lobbing grenades into the car park and blowing the limbs off scantily-clad streetwalkers with a high-powered rifle. The police weren't at all happy with me, especially when I started dropping Molotov cocktails on them and blowing their helicopters out of the sky with a bazooka.

Of course, I wasn't really. Firstly because I don't live within sixty miles of any docks, and secondly because I'm not actually the sort of person who's going to open fire on pedestrians with a machine gun (despite what you might think). I'd just gone out and bought myself a computer game.

It's been all over the news recently that a new gaming title has come out this week which has got a few of the worthies in a lather. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 apparently contains an early level where you go undercover with some Russian maniacs and gun down about a thousand civilians at an airport. Blood, screaming, piles of corpses, kill as many innocent people as you can in astonishingly photorealistic detail. There's a video of this bit online and frankly it's horrible just watching it. (Presumably there's a reason contained within the game why you don't just shoot the villains in the back of the head - I'm guessing that you'd be killed as well but it's still a better outcome all round, especially for all those families queueing for their flight to Minsk.)

Labour MP Keith Vaz has been going on about violent video games on and off for the last five years or so, and actually asked the House: "...what steps do the Government propose to take to ensure that such violent games do not fall into the hands of children and young people? This is not about censorship - it is about protecting our children." The answer, it transpires, is none: it's an 18 certificate and clearly marked as such. (Though according to the BBFC it would have been acceptable at 15 were it not for the airport bit.)

You might well ask, as so many did 25 years ago, about Government policy to stop children getting hold of violent movies. In that instance it was a case of rounding up the usual suspects under the OPA and then bringing in more specifically tailored legislation. Before that it was rock music and the ghoulish EC comics. It's always been tobacco and alcohol. Now it's games. The fact is that there's only one guaranteed, surefire, foolproof way to stop children getting hold of Modern Warfare 2, and that's to stop everyone getting hold of it. And that's the only guaranteed way to stop kids getting hold of a sixpack of Stella or a Hellraiser boxset, a tube of Bostik or a steak knife. It's Evian and The Sound Of Music, sellotape and chopsticks all round. Oh joy.

I didn't buy Modern Warfare 2. For one thing I'm not going to spend £45 on a computer game - Grant Theft Auto III cost me just under five English Pounds. For another, I seriously doubt my PC is up to the challenge - even something as simple as the CD player seizes up on my from time to time. GTA3 came out seven years ago so my 18-month-old machine's specs are more than adequate. And I don't really think I'm up to the challenge either: I haven't played any of the others in the Call Of Duty series and am not about to start now.

And for another: I'm kind of bored with it now. You'd think that the obvious thrills of slaughtering police officers with a flamethrower would never wear off, but curiously enough, they do, and it didn't take very long. Okay, on the first night I'd been glanced at my watch and realised it was nearly three in the morning. But now I can dip in and out and probably won't touch it till the weekend. And then, it's only if I've not got anything else to do, like sleep. Certainly I've had my money's worth out if it; it's been fun. But given the ease with which I can walk away, I'm now wondering if these things are even as addictive as some people make them out to be. I guess I just don't have that much bloodlust.

Until the next time.

Richard.

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