With some games, ESRB ratings can be either too damning, or not restrictive enough. How many parents buy their children copies of games like Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV, regardless of the warnings on the box, pamphlets shoved into their hands by concerned Best Buy employees, or simple common sense? On the hand, there are plenty of other games that the ESRB just rates poorly. Mass Effect gets an M rating for fictional alien violence, but Call of Duty (which is based on actual military events) doesn't? What's wrong with this picture?
Fear not, for the Slobs of Gaming are ready with a solution (as always). If the ESRB wants to properly police video games in the future, we have a batch of NEW ratings that should be implemented immediately. These ESRB ratings don't exist yet... but they should.
These games are ones that you typically wouldn't play unless your judgement was severely impaired. SingStar is no Rock Band, and any karaoke game just looks painful without the accompaniment of a full band. The Obnoxious Drunk rating will let you know that if you buy this game, you'd better be in a party setting with at least five people drunker than you are watching you slur and stumble your way through the Foo Fighters and MC Hammer.
Let's all be honest here -- would the hype around games like Dead or Alive disappear if jiggle physics weren't an ample factor? The Pervert rating should be a warning to the general public that if you're yearning for a round of Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, sweating with the anticipation of private spank parties from behind locked doors, something's up. Way up. To be fair, games like Soul Calibur IV at least try to slip a good game underneath the heaving, succulent breasts of their female fighters. Rumble Roses XX does no such thing.
To paraphrase the Onion Newspaper's A.V. Club, the Bratz series is why terrorists hate America. It completely baffles me as a gamer why FOX News will go on a witch hunt over a little side-boob in Mass Effect when games like Bratz: The Movie are teaching underage girls how to look like Vegas strippers. Of course, I'd also like to provide an honorable mention for any game starring a 1990's era teen-female-pop-star-turned-tabloid-harlot.
Halo was a fine series before Xbox Live and drunken fraternity spawn from Greek Row infiltrated the internet, ruining the multiplayer experience for everyone. Even the first Guitar Hero was a welcome change for the video game world, since gamers could finally have fun being guitar gods. But when the hype train pulled into Guitar Hero II's station, gamers' doors were suddenly being beaten down by the minions of Brohemian Rhapsody, their TVs and gaming system taken over by the unwashed masses of Kappa Kappa Phi.
Let me tell you a story. While sifting through the shelves of my local GameStop retail store, a parent walks up to the counter. Running around this mother's high heels is a child not more than the age of 13, screaming "Gears of War, Gears of War, Gears of War!" The mother, looking weary and jaded after the years she's spent dealing with this rugrat, hands the store attendant a wad of money. The attendant asks her three times if she's aware that 1) Gears of War is rated M for mature games and 2) that the child with her is obviously not of the right age to be playing this game. Guess what the mother did -- you guessed it; she bought the game anyway, handing it directly to her small child. The SP rating for stupid parents could cure all this.
The Japanophile rating is a more honest way to classify the overwhelming wave of lackluster, uninspired, and disappointing anime-related video games that clutter video game shelves -- only to line that bargain bin sales dump months later. Being a bit of an anime fan myself, the J rating would easily help me to skip over crap like DBZ Budokai 3 and pick up more worth titles like The World Ends With You. Please, save people like me from making bad choices and label all generic anime-video game crap with the proper rating.
It's crushing when I lose a good friend to an MMORPG. Almost as worse as alcoholism, drug addiction, or other substance-related conditions, not seeing someone for days, weeks, and even months on end because of their unquenchable lust for gold, loot, and the lure of epic raids is hard on people in the real world. The NL rating should be used to warn gamers that if they pick up that copy of Neverwinter Nights, they're at risk of going down a path that their friends and families won't be able to follow.
Is there anything looks sillier than jumping up down in front of your TV, blithely waving a Wiimote in spastic patterns? No matter how fun the activity may be, when you take a step back and actually watch someone try to jog through a virtual park with their Wii cords flapping around haphazardly... it looks pretty damn dumb. At the very least, the Giant Dork rating will let you know that games like Wii Cheer run the very high risk of making you look stupid.
As if 50 Cent: Bulletproof wasn't embarrassing to gamers and rap fanatics in general, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand stars the unlikable MC in his own adventure. According to the plot, 50 goes on a terrorist hunt in a nondescript Middle Eastern country to recover his stolen diamond-encrusted "skull bling". We can't imagine who on Earth would buy a game starring 50 Cent in the Middle East with a rocket launcher. Actually, we're assuming that Mr. Cent helps produce these games solely for his own enjoyment, in some bizarre effort to prove how "baller" he is compared to other rappers. If you see the 50C rating, you'll know that the game in question literally isn't for you.
And that rounds out the list we've put together. Let us know, if you were working on the Entertainment Software Rating Board, what ratings would you be enforcing on present and past titles? Tell us your rating in the comments section, or voice your opinions on the current system at large!
