Xbox 360 Fanboy

This proudly immature Saints Row footage should be enough to get Monica Lewinsky excited, if not Hillary Clinton. Warning: Not safe for work, clueless government regulators, or uptight post nannies.

[Blame Drew]

The left half of the above pic is a nipple-licious stripper skin from the European PC version of Tomb Raider: Legend that Xboxic (post not entirely safe from work) speculates might be responsible for possibly delaying the April 11 U.S. release of the game. The right half is the same skin after applying an areola-erasing patch. Eidos denies that the  U.S game has been delayed, but our fellow bloggers have provided pretty solid proof that Legend was indeed smuggling raisins overseas.

Is Eidos performing a last minute emergency nipplectomy on the U.S. PC and 360 versions to spare American kids the horror of seeing something  they used to suck on everyday—narrowly avoiding the next Hot Coffee scandal? Will Senator Cankles and her Fundie bedfellows be able to sleep at night knowing they missed an opportunity to further demagogue games as pixelated pornography? Only Lara knows for sure, and she's keeping her shirt on.

(I swear this is the last breast-related post for a while.)

Those who waited with baited breath only to learn that the new 360-exclusive game from industry badboy Rockstar is based on Forrest Gump's favorite sport reacted with mixture of why and wtf? The basic gameplay action of table tennis (or Ping Pang Qiu as it's known in China) has a long and storied history in the video game world. Nevertheless, I get the feeling that gamers expected more grit from the creative minds that made running over hookers a national pastime.

Rockstar has taken enormous heat the past few years, as evidenced by this recent petition signed by Wailing Mothers Against Playground Cruelty. One has to wonder if  the accumulated bad press, not to mention the disaster brewed by a certain incident involving overly-warm Folgers, played a role in the company's sudden enthusiasm for competitive table tennis. Maybe Rockstar is eager  to prove that they don't need mature content to capture our imagination. Or maybe they're just relieved that Hillary Clinton can't make Pong 360 an election year issue.

Far too many of us have praised the joys of classic arcade gameplay (and complained about the idiocy of  edgy-for-edgy's-sake fare like True Crime: NYC) to prematurely bitch about a game that could turn out to be the King of Ping. That said,  I would hate to see Rockstar trade in its bloody chainsaw for a pong paddle just to appease a few grandstanding pols and clueless parents. Somebody has to carry the torch for embedded sex and violence.

You can't help but think that Rockstar is a little less Billy Idol these days and a little more Drew Lachey.