Mentioning Midnight Club in the last post reminded me to go and find out when the next edition of the franchise is due. Midnight Club: Los Angeles is due out on March 28th (it’s also available for the PS3).

Due a month after that is Grand Theft Auto IV (again, also available for PS3, or in Special Edition packaging).

Both are products of Rockstar Games, a company not known for its socially responsible game play. One of the great joys of Midnight Club is causing mayhem and destruction amongst the humdrum commuters who get in your way. The gangster’s rise storylines of the GTA franchise are wonderfuly immoral as well. State of Emergency for the PS2, a ‘riot sim’ as one reviewer puts it, was an entertaining exercise in destruction and multiple on screen characters, but incredibly shallow for long term gameplay compared to its big brother. I had a few hours fun smashing and burning and ‘sploding until someone went and traded it in. Manhunt 2 went so far over the top that it was banned in this country until recently and I atill can’t find a listing for it on Amazon.

All of which pedigree makes it a little odd to find- nestled between the violence, gunplay and speed of the Rockstar oeuvre- Table Tennis (also available for the Wii). It just seems wrong, like finding a Hello Kitty doll in a box of hand grenades.