Softcore porn

Just watched a trailer video for Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2 and I've got some opinions (yes, I'm an opinionated ass).

Ever heard of Dead or Alive? It's this series of fighter games that famous for their well-endowed fighting beauties. And, while fighting has been emphasized to a fair extent, most people will agree that the games' main features are the female characters. Somewhere, there was a full department dedicated to coding breast physics. Seriously! In fact, in this new game, each breast has its own physics.

Now, I'm the last person to say that games should be sterile entities made of bright colored blocks chasing other bright colored blocks in a blue maze. In fact, I'm fully supportive of laws to restrict Mature (not to be confused with Adult Only) game sales to underage, unsupervised idiots for the sole reason that it will allow developers to cram more "offensive" content into the games. But some of what Team Ninja (the makers of the series) is doing is just too much. I played the demo of Dead or Alive 4 and I gotta say that while the femmes fatales are breathtaking and not lacking in any department, the game is a brilliant fighter and would have captured my attention just the same if all the characters were your usual stock males from the Mortal Kombat fame. But, from what I've seen of the 8 minute trailer, Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2 is softcore porn with the pretense of being a video game. The whole trailer is nothing but nearly-naked CG characters running around on the beach, playing on a blow-up Orca and tossing crabs back into the ocean (where did that one come from, really?).

If you're making a video game and sexual or violent content makes sense to be present there, go nuts. When you're making a game about inner-city gang warfare, I expect to see plenty of violence. I also would like some sort of indication that these people aren't asexual worms.

History is repeating itself, actually. It just shifted mediums: from TV to video games.

I think the kind of censorship that existed in American television in the 1950's is offensive to common sense and logic: a married couple had to be shown to sleep in separate beds and the toilet was as hard to find on screen as WMD's in Iraq. Are the networks working under the assumption that their target audience consists of people who are unaware of intimacy and have never had to use the bathroom? I hear "I Love Lucy" is really popular with the hour-old-infants crowd. You can't just ignore something because it might offend a few people. In this case, you can't just ignore something because you got it into your head that showing something that everyone has seen and knows about is, for whatever reason, an immoral and obscene act. And who the hell is offended when people even talk about going to the bathroom? You do it. You know that everyone else does. Everyone on the planet, with the exception of single-celled organisms (correct me if I'm wrong on this one, Taty) and Bonsai Kittens goes to the bathroom.

How about this: instead of making reality TV, trying making TV that feels real. Toss away the "reality" shows where a dozen pissed off, unusually beautiful and very confrontational people compete for an idiotic prize. Try something that shows real life, with all of its imperfections and flaws. I'm sick and tired of Armani-clad civil servants solving murder cases by interpolating grain-sized evidence to paint the crystal-clear picture of the crime scene. I'm bored of watching a top-notch government unit battle terrorists for 24 non-stop hours while never needing to use the bathroom and always staying within the PG-rated swearing rules of "damn it, we're running out of time!" How about "Shit, Tony, I gotta go take a piss before we hit the bad guys. You know how a full bladder can spoil an entire operation." Yes, I expect reality out of a show that jumped the shark a few seasons ago. But you gotta start somewhere. Why is it that violence is perfectly acceptable (thankfully) but a bad word, the kind that daddy says after pounding away four shots, is completely and utterly out of order? Sorry, I shouldn't try to draw this already-drawn-out post into the entirely too-easy bash-post about American culture.

If you want to take a look at the game, here's an 18+ (surprised?) trailer. It doesn't actually have any nudity in it or anything, but... Anyhow, watch it, if only to ask yourself "how can these people, with an entire department dedicated to breast physics, still manage to screw it up so bad?" And they do.

BTW, this is not the 8 minute, 400 MB trailer that I got from the XBOX Marketplace. This trailer shows more games and is quite shorter, clocking in at only 2 minutes. Though it still manages to clearly pass along the basic idea of the game. If you can, download or view the high-def version. Really, you ought to.