Bad Dad
Last Friday I came home in a foul mood. After putting the tot to bed I wanted to veg out, maybe with a video game. But nothing in my library grabbed my goat.
I was a little sick of "Doom 3", especially those damn skeletons with their exasperating shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.
I've been stuck on a "Far Cry" boss level for ages, and I didn't want to play that a dozen times to get past it.
Football season is over, so "ESPN 2K4" didn't do it for me. It's baseball season, but I've been waiting for a friend to free up one of these evenings so we can go head to head on "MVP 2004".
Then I saw "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City". I'd picked it up along with "Grand Theft Auto 3" as part of the Xbox double-pack about a year ago.
Initially my goal was to play all the way through "GTA 3" but I've been stuck on a mission about 70 percent of the way through the game. At the rate I work through these things, I'd get to "Vice City" about the time of the 2008 presidential elections.
So I fired it up, quickly jacked a car, and started cruising through this 1980s Miami recreation. My mood was still foul though.
And then I hit someone on a motorcycle, sending them screaming through the air, and broke out into an involuntary smile.
Ah the cathartic effects of criminal adventure games.
I have to say, however, that "Vice City" cranks the violence up a notch from "GTA3".
In one of the earliest missions, you are sent to kill someone.
With a chainsaw.
Over the weekend, I popped it in real quick while the kid was taking a bath. He came out early and saw me playing -- just driving around as it turned out, but he of course wanted to drive.
He's played driving games before so I figure I'd let him roam around and just keep quiet about the fact that you can run down little old ladies.
In fact, I turned "Vice City" into a unique tool for teaching proper social behavior. I instructed him not to hit any other cars, and that it was a big no no to hit other people. He was doing real well, a regular model citizen.
Then the phone rang.
I was on the horn for maybe 30 seconds, max, and when I turn my attention back to the kid, he's run over several people, has crashed the car, gotten out, and is repeatedly kicking a prone person lying in a pool of bright red blood.
"I crashed, Daddy!" he said.
Jeebus Crispus, yes, you have. Now gimme that controller.
Why yes, this does in fact make me the worst father on the planet.
I would like to reassure all mothers and social workers reading this that "Vice City" will be staying up on the high shelf while the kid is awake from now on.
I was a little sick of "Doom 3", especially those damn skeletons with their exasperating shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.
I've been stuck on a "Far Cry" boss level for ages, and I didn't want to play that a dozen times to get past it.
Football season is over, so "ESPN 2K4" didn't do it for me. It's baseball season, but I've been waiting for a friend to free up one of these evenings so we can go head to head on "MVP 2004".
Then I saw "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City". I'd picked it up along with "Grand Theft Auto 3" as part of the Xbox double-pack about a year ago.
Initially my goal was to play all the way through "GTA 3" but I've been stuck on a mission about 70 percent of the way through the game. At the rate I work through these things, I'd get to "Vice City" about the time of the 2008 presidential elections.
So I fired it up, quickly jacked a car, and started cruising through this 1980s Miami recreation. My mood was still foul though.
And then I hit someone on a motorcycle, sending them screaming through the air, and broke out into an involuntary smile.
Ah the cathartic effects of criminal adventure games.
I have to say, however, that "Vice City" cranks the violence up a notch from "GTA3".
In one of the earliest missions, you are sent to kill someone.
With a chainsaw.
Over the weekend, I popped it in real quick while the kid was taking a bath. He came out early and saw me playing -- just driving around as it turned out, but he of course wanted to drive.
He's played driving games before so I figure I'd let him roam around and just keep quiet about the fact that you can run down little old ladies.
In fact, I turned "Vice City" into a unique tool for teaching proper social behavior. I instructed him not to hit any other cars, and that it was a big no no to hit other people. He was doing real well, a regular model citizen.
Then the phone rang.
I was on the horn for maybe 30 seconds, max, and when I turn my attention back to the kid, he's run over several people, has crashed the car, gotten out, and is repeatedly kicking a prone person lying in a pool of bright red blood.
"I crashed, Daddy!" he said.
Jeebus Crispus, yes, you have. Now gimme that controller.
Why yes, this does in fact make me the worst father on the planet.
I would like to reassure all mothers and social workers reading this that "Vice City" will be staying up on the high shelf while the kid is awake from now on.
<< Home