Classic gaming over modern gaming? What's you're stance? Video included.....

[Little Miss Gloom]

The new Tomb Raider is so realistic looking and the hardware so capable that the designers went out of their way to create unique and extremely graphic death sequences for Lara Croft. Do I enjoy watching women get impaled through the neck by a tree branch? Not particularly. I think it's sick actually. So for a consumer like myself, a particularly exciting gaming experience is ruined by over the top violence.

I know this isn't a problem for everyone, but for me and surely some others, this is a major issue as to why modern gaming isn't as appealing.

You make a really awesome point here. I don't want to shove the Book of Feminism down any body's throat, but -as- a woman, I don't particularly want to watch another woman (albeit made of polygons) be viciously killed in a varying number of ways. To me it feels totally backwards, like fifty steps in the opposite direction, of what modern society has been able to accomplish in regards to spreading awareness and action against abuse of women.

I realize a woman was a lead writer for the Tomb Raider script, and in all honesty, that kind of makes it worse in my eyes. (On the other hand, I know of friends who are rape victims, who have said the tone of Tomb Raider really helped them feel empowered for once...which I guess is a good thing?)

I feel this way about abuse to men as well, and I do think video games these days are seriously taking the violence way too over the top. There is always going to be violence in video games, but there is something to be said about how it is presented, and how it is addressed. I've come to expect exploding heads from a Mortal Kombat game. Because that's the point of a Mortal Kombat game. But when developers feel they need to "up the ante" on shock value, because they feel or think it somehow boosts sales for a (mostly) MALE DEMOGRAPHIC, what does that say about the strength of the actual game's content?

It's like shadowing over how shitty a movie is by filming it in 3D in hopes to distract or trick an audience from being disappointed by a shoddy script or casting choices.

And when men are starting to come out and say the violence is just way too much...I think it's time to step back and have a serious, mature, adult, conversation about how necessary it is to have gore, versus solid game mechanics -- especially since many of us who grew up with Atari 2600s and Nintendo NESs are now married with children of our own.