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National Institute on Media and Family issues 2007 Video Game Report Card

Dec. 10 6:20 PM by Lynxara

So the National Institute on Media and the Family have issued their 2007 Video Game Report Card Parent Shopping Guide, in delightfully unfriendly .pdf format. This is basically a list of 10 games you shouldn't let your kids play under any circumstances, and then 10 games recommended as gift purchases for your kids. Both lists are kind of, uh, questionable for reasons I'm going to get into behind the cut.

Anyway, here's the quick skinny on Nintendo's showing on the two lists.

Parent Alert! Games to Avoid For Your Children and Teens:

• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• Manhunt 2
• Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles

Recommended Games for Children and Teens:

• FIFA Soccer 08
• Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
• Hannah Montana Spotlight World Tour
• Madden NFL 08
• Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games
• Need for Speed ProStreet
• The Sims 2: Castaway
• Super Mario Bros. 3
• Super Mario Galaxy

Click away for analysis and livid ranting.

So I wonder how many parents are going to refuse to let their kids play any version of Call of Duty 4 while also sticking rah-rah Support Our Troops decals on their bumper stickers. You can only really object to Call of Duty 4 in any significant way if you're supporting an across-the-board objection to organized state-sponsored violence, and guess what? Most Americans don't. Culturally speaking, we kind of can't. Refusing to let your kids play a game that depicts what the troops they're supposed to honor and respect are actually doing is somewhat disingenuous at best, and rank hypocrisy at worst.

The only Nintendo-related objection on the entire list I can really agree with at all is the warning against Manhunt 2. Not that you need to warn people against it, because the game blows and everybody knows it. If a teen of mine wanted Manhunt 2, I would be more appalled by the apparent lapse of their critical faculties than the prospect that they might virtually kill crazy people with a Wii remote. What's kind of sad about Manhunt 2 is that if not for parents' groups freaking out about it like this, that title would've sunk into the depths where bad Wii games go to die, with little more said about it than the negative reviews from the poor bastards who got paid to play it.

Putting Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles on the list baffles me to a great degree. The game's graphics are very basic and as a result, nothing depicted in it is really scary or disturbing. The zombies aren't detailed, gore is very mild, and most of your bosses are just generic video game beasties. It's definitely nothing compared to the type of gore and violence most teenagers see in your average R-rated horror movie, and with precious little realism. As many reviewers have pointed out, Umbrella Chronicles is really just a knock-off of Sega's House of the Dead arcade games, which were tame enough to sit around in movie theater lobbies. The characters you play as are generally good and admirable people who only shoot at (already dead) enemies in self-defense and purvey the very wise moral that institutions can't necessarily be trusted to have society's best interests at heart. While it's true you can play as series bad guy Wesker, you only get to after you've played the heroic side of various missions. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that if you don't let your teens play Umbrella Chronicles, you're just being a jerk.

More vexing than the negative list from the Institute is the recommended list, which seems to commit the unforgivable parental fallacy of considering only how innocuous the content is, rather than... well, whether or not it's any good. Look, let's say you can hand your kids a copy of Dracula, or a copy of an R.L. Stein Goosebumps novel. Sure, the Goosebumps novel is easier to digest, but it's also sure to be vacuous crap. Reading the original Dracula, on the other hand, is both a little challenging and quite rewarding. It's an experience likely to stick with you and make you more appreciative of other novels you read, and makes you understand a little more of all the jokes and references to the concept you've seen elsewhere.

I like to think this principle applies to gameplay. A kid can benefit a lot from playing a genuinely good game-- it can teach reading comprehension, problem solving, hand-eye coordination, all kinds of good stuff. Better yet, it teaches the appreciation of quality, and encourages deeper thought about entertainment and the rest of the things that saturate a kid's world these days. If you learn how to reject garbage as a waste of time when you're young, then you don't grow up to be the sort of person who pays money to see Norbit, and the nation as a whole gets a little less stupid.

The MediaWise list does recommend some quality games. Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Bros. 3 are excellent games that are going to make young gamers think about how to get through the obstacle courses presented in the game's levels. Guitar Hero III's quality song selection is a fine primer for appreciation of rock music and the quick reactions required to excel at rhythm games. FIFA and Madden are fine and interesting simulations of their respective sports. The Sims 2: Castaway is a pretty good "paper dolls" type game that girl players in particular are likely to enjoy. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games is a shallow but decent party game that can amuse a large household.

But there are a few recommendations that are outright offensive. Need For Speed ProStreet is an awful racing title, one of the worst you could hand to a kid or a teen. It's nothing but a vehicle for ads, ads, ads, to a far worse degree than even the shoddiest of 80's cartoons. Even Excite Truck at least offers some originality. There are scads of better racers available on the Wii alone, and why in god's name would you give ProStreet to a 360 owner over something far superior and more finely-crafted, like Forza 2 or Project Gotham Racing 4?

Probably the most galling of the MediaWise recommendations is Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour. If you want to know why most girls get turned off to gaming at a young age, it's because their parents thought they'd want to play slop like this. This is a brain-dead rhythm title that's both insultingly easy and frustrating thanks to the poor controls. The music selection is grossly limited, and since they're all Hannah Montana songs, there's no variety to selections whatsoever. Round it out with asinine mini-games and a pitifully limited amount of ways to customize your ugly in-game Hannah Montana with clothes and shoes, and you have a game that's a total stinker and a terrible, horrible thing to offer any girl. Parents, do your daughters a favor and buy them some half-decent rhythm games like DDR Hottest Party, something with a variety of music and gameplay that's actually interesting. It'll encourage your bright little girl to stay bright and inquisitive.

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