For the 17% of you Canadian men who game in the nude, PLEASE MAKE SURE THE DRAPES ARE CLOSED!

Kotaku brings us news from a Microsoft survey in which the results show that gaming in the nude, while not commonplace, is at least happening!  Now I’ve played my DS in the car, at the doctors, etc but never buck naked.  I’m curious to find out what kind of games they are playing.  I wonder if it’s a paticular genre that is best played in your birthday suit?

Pic from dbking’s Photostream, licensed under Creative Commons.

This weekend we celebrated my son’s fifth birthday and he and I spent some father-son bonding time with Mario Kart: Double Dash. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, this is a Gamecube title that has been available for a few years. If you have a Wii and you’ve been having trouble tracking down Mario Kart Wii, this could give you a great option for half the price!

Having said that, it plays beautifully on the Wii as well as the original Gamecube and, like many of the Gamecube games, it is capable of displaying at 480p if you have your console connected to an HD television via component cables. Honestly, it looks beautiful and the control is spot on. Yet, what makes this title a real family winner is the two-player options.

My son’s first exposure to this title was at a kiosk while we were at a local GameStop. As with most Mario games, he was drawn to the colorful graphics and humorous sound effects. However, as much as he seemed to enjoy the visuals, he wasn’t quite understanding the racing mechanic itself and when he finally crossed the finish line in eighth place, he seemed discouraged to see that his characters looked sad.

Rather than race head-to-head with him, I chose the 2-player option that allows him to control the second character on my kart. We were able to race as a team against the other characters and while I controlled the vehicle itself, he was in charge of the power-ups. This meant that when we’d pick up a speed boost, he’d ask me when it would help and then press the button. And when we’d pick up a banana peel or other trap/attack device, we’d coordinate on where to use it.

I found this experience far more enjoyable than playing the game against him and I felt that it instilled a sense of cooperation within him while providing a sense of accomplishment when we won the tournament.

Keep in mind that you can play up to four players with this title (4-player split screen or two 2-player teams) on a single machine and it has support for network play using the broadband adapter on the Gamecube. This has some great potential for a family or a small group of kids playing together. I don’t have a problem with competition, but in this case, we enjoyed cooperation and competition together.

I heartily recommend it and as an adult I can say that it’s as much fun for me as it is for my son!

According The Onion Liberty City’s crime problem is attributed to the lax policing of the LCPD.

“Many blame the LCPD directly for the increase in criminal activity, citing the department’s lax procedure for arresting criminals, which involves taking 10 percent of the suspect’s money, confiscating his weapons, and simply releasing him from custody later that day. Outraged citizens say this is not enough, especially in a city where assault rifles can be found on factory roofs and grenade caches are located under the globe at the old World’s Fair site.”

This is a travesty and concerns me for other large metroploitian cities such as Los Santos and Vice City.  This article doesn’t even mention the fact that there are no young people in Liberty City.  WHERE ARE ALL THE CHILDREN?  I smell a conspiracy.

Kotaku has a great clip of Craig Ferguson’s (of Late Late Show and Drew Carey fame) having a very intelligent monologue discussing some of the various topics surrounding the GTA ’scandal’  Well worth sharing and very funny.  Like all good comedians, he makes us realize the absurdity in the common.

Today is unofficially Grand Theft Auto 4 Day here in the states. And as you know you’re going to be hearing a lot of hub-bub over this game. It’s going to destroy the world and corrupt children. (That was sarcasm in case it didn’t translate well.)

I just read over on Wil Weaton’s site a great post that summarized the absurdity of the whole ‘video games are too violent’ debacle.

“Yeah, it’s always about protecting The Children, which leads me to wonder where The Parents are, and if these people are so serious about making the world better for The Children, why they don’t invest the same amount of energy and resources into securing quality healthcare and world-class education for them as they spend wringing their hands over video games that aren’t even supposed to be played by The Children in the first place.”

I encourage you not only to read his post, but to be active in what your children are watching; and playing. Keep involved and know what it is that you’re providing them with will lead to your children having a successful understanding of all forms of adult media, video games included.

This week the ESRB has announced a new campaign (press release). They are partnering with the Parent Teacher Association to help parents within the community to recognize and utilize the rating system in order to identify appropriate game content for children. The initiative includes a booklet (view the electronic version) that will be distributed throughout the 26,000 PTAs nationwide.

We at Game Apparent always encourage families to look for the ESRB ratings on games before purchasing them. It’s a simple way to help parents filter media for which their children aren’t prepared. It’s good to see the ESRB engaging in proactive initiatives like this and the Game Search Widget (see the yellow box in the upper left corner of our main page).