So you want a new console. The government economic stimulus check sits forlornly in your checking account, waiting to be spent, and you’ve been eyeing that XBOX 360 at Best Buy for the past six weeks, feverishly anticipating it sitting next to your TV. Naturally, because you don’t want to fall prey to the inevitable XBOX crash that just about everyone you know has had, necessitating a lengthy servicing out of your hands, you want to pick up an XBOX Elite. Oh, and because you assume that you’re not just going to be playing by your lonesome (forever), you’d like to pick up another matching wireless controller and charging pack.

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This week, there’s one game licking at the edges of every player’s conversation, flying off the shelves and dominating entertainment news as a source of infinite controversy. Grand Theft Auto IV, the newest in the family of Rockstar’s questionable line-up arrived on shelves this past Tuesday much to the glee of fervently waiting gamers. GTA is well known to many, including non-gamers, for the flak GTA III drew for ultra-violence against the police and innocents, strong language, nudity, drug & alcohol use and adult situations (that often included prostitutes or strip clubs).

Despite the game already being rated M for “Mature”, conservative groups all over the country continue to demonize the franchise for capitalizing off of filth and allegedly encouraging deviant, delinquent behavior in children. While gamers expected to hear the predictable off-kilter spin from the ever-splenic Jack Thompson (who, naturally, has been demanding that lawmakers indict Take-Two for “providing pornographic material to minors” and planting “viruses” in this country’s youth), the generally well-respected group MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) has also come down hard on GTAIV. After formally requesting Rockstar halt distribution, it became clear that their issue stems from the fact that drunk driving is allowable in game. It is pertinent, however, to note that the player can choose to decide whether or not the character will drive home, hail a cab or walk it off. That right there is what makes the game interesting to me—choice.

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There’s a certain sense of inevitability waiting at the end of the corridor. The young man’s parade boots echo sternly on the grated floor as he strides purposefully toward the blast doors. After a theatrical pause, the blast doors fly open and the snap-hiss of a lightsaber ignites the air with a sharp tang of ozone. With a nod, the TIE fighters in the hangar swerve into motion and systematically crush the scrambling stormtroopers clinging to each other for dear life. I’ve dreamed of this before.

Since early childhood I’ve been compelled by the darting lasers of interstellar battle juxtaposed with the serene mysticism of the Force–and I’m certainly not the only one. LucasArts has created a veritable empire, no pun intended, from the interest garnered from a simple desert farm boy’s destiny. Obviously the screaming TIE fighters, Mandalorian armor, wookiees, wry robots and promise of planetary destruction helped too, but since the spawn of Star Wars in the late seventies, we’ve seen three more (admittedly lukewarm) movies, PEZ dispensers, action figures, bed sheets, lunch boxes, over a hundred books, Legos and, more pertinent to this discussion, over seventy five video game titles.

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