I have no doubt that a number of people at Microsoft thought it was a terrific idea to hold a preview at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, for their newest video game, Gears which is apparently so violent that even its maker calls it 'horrific'. I think both the preview and the game sounds appalling.
"Gears," which puts you in the role of a grizzled soldier fighting off alien invaders, has tantalized gamers with graphically realistic faces, explosions and blood.
The game carries an "M" rating, meaning it is for "mature" gamers aged 17 years and older.
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Attendees at a "Gears" preview party held at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery last week were eager to try the game.
"It's gorgeous, isn't it?" one gamer remarked as another pumped bullets into a dead body dangling from a chain.
"Gears" doesn't so much incorporate violence as revel in it.
A chainsaw mounted on your rifle quickly fillets enemies amid fountains of gore, and when an enemy goes down in a hail of hot lead, you can finish him off with a gruesome move the designers gleefully call the "curb stomp."
"It's pretty graphic because it's not just visually that you understand a head is being stepped on and squashed like a watermelon, you also hear it as well," said Dan Hsu, editor-in-chief of "Electronic Gaming Monthly."