A guilty pleasure.

In a typical day as a freshman in college, I would spend about 4 hours in class, 1 hour studying, 1 hour eating, and around 5 hours playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

It was (and still is) nothing to brag about to mom or the girlfriend.

What intrigues me about the "GTA" game series is the wide contrast of reviews that it gets. People hate it and people love it. Its controversial, yes, I'll admit that my pastor would probably disapprove of my playing it.

I both love and hate it.

I've been video-game-free for about 2 years now. I went cold-turkey when I moved out of the dorms. Nowadays, my PS2 gets to play the Deadwood series from HBO.

Farhaad Manjoo's article about the new "GTA IV" illustrates the point very well. The GTA games are very well designed and produced, and therefore people will play them without a guilty conscience. They don't play them because they are violent or controversial, they play them because they look cool, and because they are simply fun to play. If somebody made a really cool video game about anything that looked cool and was really fun to play, I would probably play it.

Rockstar pushes the limits with these games for attention, not to simply be obnoxious and offensive. It is up to the gamers to decide what is right and what is wrong in the real world, where it really matters.

Thanks for reading.