Hi Tom.
Yes, your right about sarah, particularly with it's harry potter
connections, though i do wonder about the action content since one thing
that often grabs kids interest is fast action sequences, by which i don't
mean violence, just things to overcome in a game.
Monkey business might work too, though i do confess I am not keen on that
game due to the navaid and lack of precision in the audio, and would worry
that kids could become frustrated given that kids don't generaly have as
much patience as adults.
As to violence, i agree that there's nothing wrong with zapping robots or
ghosts just as mega man and castlevania did, however one issue I do have
with games like gta is that of morality more than violence.
In mortal kombat, (a game slammed for it's violence though actually pretty
cartoony), you at base line were in a martial arts tournament to decide the
fate of the world, and though some characters like cano had less than viable
motives, the main heroes of the game like Liukang and sonia were essentially
out to be heroic.
A game like gta is heavily based on actually committing crimes, breaking the
law, engaging in theft, prostitution, gang war etc, and it's that! sort of
aspect more than the violence which really would be the reason i'd suggest
kids not play it.
It's rather like the current thinking on showing graphic violence in films.
I find it quite disturbing that an enemy leader can zap someone to death, or
still worse, torture someone to the point they become broken and completely
helpless even in a kid's cartoon, just so long as there is no red stuff.
What scared me as a child wasn't so much blood and guts, heck, i watched
nightmare on elmstreet when I was 9 and the alien films when i was ten, but
seeing someone in actual painreally bothered me, indeed I'd often find
scenes in cartoons and films such as the action force (gi jo as it is in
america), film when cobra commander is hit with mutation spaws.
indeed, there was a really fascinating and terrifying doctor who audio on
this point called the cannibalists which i wrote a review of, in which all
the principle characters are robots, but where some really! nasty things
happen to some of them, so you don't even get audio violence, but still! get
a lot of pain and suffering, which to me at least was just as bad.
So, to bring this back to games, it's not the gore in a game like shades
that I'd be concerned a child would be bothered buy, so much as the painfull
character deaths, dark atmosphere etc. indeed, I'd probably guess a game
like hunter, which features grusome but fairly quick death sounds would be
less traumatic, at least I'd have likely found it so as a child.
Beware the grue!
dark.
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