Jack Thompson Sucks

After the recent success of Jack Thompson and other advocates forcing an “Adults Only” rating on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas due to a highly controversial “Hot Coffee” modification, Jack Thompson has decided to set his crosshairs on a new title, The Sims 2 from Electronic Arts. Jack Thompson is attempting to get EA to pull The Sims 2 off store shelves due to what he believes is even worse than the “Hot Coffee” mod for GTA: San Andreas.

While EA has gone to great lengths to insure that The Sims 2 is safe for teenagers to play, including “blurring out” the nudity on naked Sims and by choosing to not show alcohol and similar items in its recent University expansion, Jack Thompson insists that EA is "cooperating, gleefully, with the mod community to turn Sims 2 into a porn offering." This attack is the result of mods which can be readily downloaded from various websites which will remove the blurring on nude Sims.

EA’s has countered this recent controversy by saying, "This is nonsense. We've reviewed 100 percent of the content. There is no content inappropriate for a teen audience. Players never see a nude sim. If someone with an extreme amount of expertise and time were to remove the pixels, they would see that the sims have no genitals. They appear like Ken and Barbie." Indeed, once the blurring has been removed, all that can be found underneath are mannequin like models which contain no unwanted body parts whatsoever.

This, however, is not enough for Jack Thompson who plans on moving further with his case against The Sims 2. In reference to the blurring, he has stated, “"Electronic Arts has done nothing about (the blurring removing modification)." Stay tuned for more developments on Jack Thompson’s cases against gamers everywhere.

God of War

The recent craze of game-to-movie transitions has spurred the decision of turning God of War, the epic game which takes players deep into Greek mythology to battle creatures and ultimately the god of war, into a blockbuster film. God of War will join the ranks of BloodRayne, Metroid, Halo, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Doom, Spy Hunter, and countless other video games that are taking the plunge into the film industry.

Vice president of Universal (the company who is overseeing the release of the Doom film as well), Jeff Kirschenbaum, will be overseeing the God of War film release. Brought on to produce the film are Charles Roven and Alex Gartner of Mosiac Media. Roven has a now proven track record after producing the amazing Batman Begins film. No other cast or director announcements have been made.

One thing that can be said about God of War is that it’s premise is perfect for a feature film movie, but then again the premise of video games in general always seems to be fitting for the silver screen. Yet, for some strange reason, the transition can almost never go through without some kind of hitch. Whether it be some change of the storyline that completely throws off the original fan base or terrible casting or directing that makes it unbearable to watch, video game based movies are almost destined to fail in the box office.

Will God of War be a rare piece? Will it be one of the few games that can make the difficult transition into a feature film? That all remains to be seen, and needless to say now is the time to cross those fingers.