Gamer as Cannibal
In GP's worldview, there's certainly room to debate game content and the effectiveness of ESRB rating system. However, the silliest video game criticism ever may be charges of cannibalism leveled amidst all of yesterday's hurly-burly.
While GP admits to not having played F.E.A.R.
, one of the games mentioned as a flesh-eater, I have wasted hours and hours with the other "cannibal" title, Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse
.
This is perhaps the funniest video game ever, full of dead-on humor. If you haven't had the pleasure, Stubbs is a comic send-up of the 1950's zombie film genre. Yes, your zombie character eats brains. Yes, it's silly and morbidly funny. But... isn't that what zombies do in films like the George Romero classic, Night of the Living Dead
?
This ridiculous cannibalism charge unfortunately has the potential to spread virally in the mainstream media because it makes for a short, scary, memorable headline. GP will paste in articles that pick up the cannibalism theme after the jump. So far, we've counted THIRTY-SIX mainstream outlets that covered the cannibalism angle; most made it their headline or covered it in the first paragraph... Looks like the Associated Press put the cannibalism story on the wire, so expect it to show up everywhere over the next several days.
We counted mainstream media ONLY. This list does not include blogs or the video game press:
CBS News
All Headline News
South Florida Sun-Sentintel
NY Daily News
Herald News Daily (North Dakota)
MSNBC
WCBS-TV (New York)
Philadelphia Daily News
San Jose Mercury-News
WRAL-TV (North Carolina)
AOL
ABC News
WFMY News-2 (North Carolina)
Los Angeles Daily News
Houston Chronicle
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
NY Newsday
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Washington Post
Brandon Sun (Western Canada)
News 1130-AM (Vancouver)
Frankfort Times (Indiana)
Chicago Tribune
Bristol Press (Connecticut)
Buffalo News
Fox News
United Press International
St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
KSTP-5 News Minneapolis-St. Paul
Hollywood Reporter
Wired News
Canadian Broadcast Corporation
KHON TV-2 Hawaii
Yahoo! News
Orlando Sentinel
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette