#8 Pornography

In MGS 1-3, there were sometimes poster girls or girlie magazines incorporated into the games. That was alright, especially because they were generic magazines, and not necessarily of the "nudie" variety.

In MGS4, there is a full endorsement of Playboy Magazine. Playboy features fully nude women, and by promoting it, MGS encourages players to buy and support pornography. Especially considering that may of the players are going to be younger, this is very inapproprite.

Pornography often exploits women, and women do it as a means of making money when all else fails. I realize that Playboy often features women who aren't exactly "trailer trash," but it certainly encourages men to think of women as sex objects, to be valued for their T & A instead of their inner assets.

After playing MGS4, I noticed that I had a compulsion to look at internet pornography, and only after hours and hours of binging on hardcore, exploitive porn did I realize that it was because of the not-so-subliminal messages I received while playing the game.

#3 Violence

Though this was an issue in the previous MGS games, it's especially bad in MGS4. This is partly because with the better graphical capabilities of the PS3, the violence looks more real. When you shoot someone in the head, or a mech rips a soldier apart, it looks like you're watching it on the 10 o'clock news rather than playing a cartoony game.

Moreover, because players can often get away with shooting their way through to reach their objectives, they're encouraged to wreak a lot more carnage than in the previous games. Now what happens when little Johnny finishes the game and joins his friends? That's right: He starts snapping necks and shooting people in the crotch. It's a well-known fact that simulated violence is linked with aggression in the real world. Next time you hear of violence in the work place or in the school yard, there's a good chance that those involved were playing MGS4.