Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 142

l-l fVp rMM sw' cs Plug Srihtur Cruising the Entertainment Highway jrnnamw'wns Hot Dogs In Battletanx and SXtreme sell for about $50 and rent for about $5 for three nights While playing a video game may be as mindless a diversion as watching TV or movies an active participant and the outcome depends on your reflexes But in the context of real- -world violence war with Yugoslavia and kids killing fellow students the glut of violent escapist video games and due this summer presents a troubling spectacle They give renewed meaning to media guru Neil book Ourselves to 1 In his trenchant critique of contemporary culture Postman argued that Aldous New had turned out to be a more accurate vision of the future than George The developed nations are enslaved said Postman by the insidious intellectual and moral subversion of the pleasure principle rather than by the overt tyranny of a Big Brother adrenaline-rusli experience: 3Xtreme lor the PlayStation lets you stretch your virtual leg Real-life daredevils were motion-captured lor the game SO raced Italian aporta cars Formula 1 and stock cars and are looking for a different mode of vicarious locomotion You could try stretching virtual leg muscles riding a skateboard in-line skates and freestyle bike in motorless races Or you could climb into a tank and fight your way past outlaw gangs in a journey across post-apocalypse America Sony has been spending millions of dollars on a marketing blitz for SXtlSBiS the new foot-powered racing game for the PlayStation from its 989 Studios The on-screen virtual puppets are adolescents but the game is designed for all ages and is rated for everyone Though relatively benign it encourages you to punch out opponents Alternately using a -skateboard bike or blades you choose to play as one of 13 characters and race -against five artificial intelligence-operated figures or compete split-screen with a friend on 27 three- dimensional tracks laid out in a variety of terrains Though not traveling as fast as you would be in a car hurtling downhill around hairpin turns or clattering down steep stone stairways while wearing only a crash helmet is an adrenaline-rush experience The figures move realistically Pro skateboarder Andy MacDonald and other daredevils were motion-captured and their racing styles were incorporated Players earn points by how well they perform various trick moves during a race When they accumulate sufficient points they can upgrade their equipment (choosing from 70 real BMX bikes skateboards and in-line skates) Becoming a champ requires mastering some challenging feats such as on skates on bikes and 360-degree on the skateboard The only annoying limit I encountered was a control issue In wide turns my on-screen persona routinely smashed into tbs concrete foundations of overpasses Unlike the best auto racing games which allow you to brake slightly to take sharp turns at full speed it was harder impossible actually during the day I spent playing 3Xtreme to steer out of a crash Very frustrating In atttetaax on the other hand smashing into walls and knocking them down is designed to be fun The 3DO game for the Nintendo 64 rated Teen An muscles The Hero Needs A Job (Gasp!) In An Action Game By Aaron Curtiss puts the player in an armored vehicle and lets him rumble around blasting enemies and blowing up buildings in the process One to four gamers can play fighting their way through 17 levels of ferocious action Game play includes and modes The narrative setting for Battletanx is pretty bizarre even by video game standards A virus wipes out 99 percent of the female population in 2001 Governments quarantine the remaining females Atomic war ensues In the bleak aftermath rogue gangs in tanks control the roads and compete for the surviving women a member of a squadron of good guys led by a battle-scarred veteran obsessed with crossing the United States and being reunited with his wife The hyperactive game play leaves you breathless The explosions are spectacular The action is nonstop While you race to complete each objectives enemy tanks keep ambushing you and catching you in their crossfire 1 Battletanx is one of those games you play without thinking about the ethical implications of virtual warfare and the graphic destruction of cities The standard justification for creating such artfully violent games is that they allow players to blow off the stress and relax Yet the action is so intense so addictive that you keep playing much longer than you intended to still twitching when you finally quit And you dream about firing rounds into buildings behind which enemy HE PROBLEM WITH really good role-playing games is that the worlds they create often are far more engrossing than the everyday realms many of us inhabit a reason no one plays games called Ultimate Office Politics or Quest for the Corner Office Far more inviting for the majority of players is the prospect of slaying digital dragons and rescuing virtual vixens So inviting in feet that players run a real risk of ending up in front of the computer screen swigging Diet Coke as they scramble for just a few more experience points before midnight That was me over a recent vacation that alternated between stretches of Evcrqasst and bouts of Baldurs Bats Both games drop players into fantasy worlds so full and rich easy to forget they are just games Gate for instance stretches across five CD-ROMs Everquest an online game forces players to interact with characters both five and digital in a world that changes minute to minute (forages 13 and older) because of its animated violence tanks are lying in wait for you 4.