Lyris Lite :: Hilarious Daily Mail article about violent video games

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Hilarious Daily Mail article about violent video games

I love it when stodgy British tabloid newspapers write scathing reports about things they don't seem to fully understand. The text is funny enough on its own, but the token image of the brave citizen who "discovered" the indecency that is creeping into our nation's homesteads, posing with the DVDs/games in question, is the icing on the cake (especially when it's been really badly Photoshopped).

The Daily Mail asked Anne Diamond, a relatively unknown TV personality, to buy and report on "a series of the most popular games". Here are some choice quotes from this thorough research:

The violence seems hackneyed in comparison with the more modern games. But it's disturbing that so many teenagers presumably have access to this mindless garbage over and over again.

The game seems to specialise in building up suspense - my character was wandering around a dark corridor when something ghoulish leaped out and frightened me witless.

[Halo 3]: It is violent, but there's hardly any blood and not too much bad language (--Wait'll they discover Xbox Live)

These two are my favourites:

[Call of Duty 4]: Perhaps it might be OK for older teenage boys

[Resident Evil 4]: THIS game shouldn't be allowed to be sold, even to adults. [...] This kind of violence can only be bad for you.

You heard the Daily Mail! Don't you feel like a worse person for enjoying Resident Evil 4 on the Wii so much? No, me neither.

The Daily Mail would be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that an alarming number of people seem to base their world view on the sanctimonious drivel its editors pretend constitutes journalism. I love how one of the games on their list is Dead or Alive 4.

Whiggles
March 29, 2008 8:53 PM

Oh, and who the hell is Anne Diamond anyway? What is it about her that makes her able to withstand these games' powers of corruption when the rest of us are at such great risk?

Whiggles
March 29, 2008 8:54 PM

Do you remember TV-AM during the 1980s? It get turned into GMTV in the early 1990s after it utterly collapsed. Anyway, Anne Diamond was a presenter on the programme, and has done not much of note since.

Presumably, since she is Middle Britain Personified, she can withstand the corrupting effects of video games. And as she hasn't played them before, even if there was some corruption it wouldn't be much.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've just rewatched Tenebrae. I have to go and beat random strangers up because my soul has turned black.

Baron Scarpia
March 30, 2008 9:53 AM

I wrote a very nice reply countering everything they wrote and mentioning censorship in a free society is wrong - I somehow don't think it will get printed.

I don't want a return to the bad old days which existed under James Ferman and his cohorts.

malcolm mcdonald
April 1, 2008 5:59 PM

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