I installed Shadow of Mordor yesterday and then played it while my kids watched me. I quickly remembered why I always uninstall it. The game is great. The combat is loads of fun. In fact, I think this game and its successor, has one of the best melee combat implementations in video games. Think older Assassin Creed games with the easy one button counter, but set in Middle Earth. The problem is... it's too violent to play around my kids.

At one point, I was perched on the roof of a building and jumped down to kill a Goblin guard. My character stabbed him in the back and then slit his throat. I kinda flinched at that animation when I realized my kids were watching it as it happened. There's also a variety of execution animations when fighting enemies. There's one where, with the enemy prone on the ground, my character grabbed his leg to twist him around, then stabbed him multiple times in the chest. There's one where the enemy gets stabbed on his side, then on his neck. There's lots of these brutal killing animations in the game.

To be fair, this is all fun to me, an adult. I feel like older teenagers will feel the same way. I feel like such a badass taking down Goblins and Orcs this way. But again, this is not exactly kid friendly content. And since my kids usually watch me play, I end up stopping to pick another game to play. Eventually, the game gets uninstalled to make way for other games that I could play around my kids.

I wonder how other parents who play videogames, handle this kind of scenario. Do you simply play that specific game when the kids are asleep? Or do you just accept the fact that your kids will be exposed to violence and gore eventually, and try to explain it ahead of time?

Tags: #Reflection #Journal