With the holiday season approaching, the onslaught of video games has begun.

The release of Electronic Arts’ Need For Speed Underground 2 caught a lot of attention, but Halo 2 for the Xbox is now the new darling of the video game world.

Some players agree that while the game has a solid single-player adventure and good storyline, the prime attraction is definitely the online multiplayer action.

James Ball, assistant manager of EB Games, 2389 Sycamore Road, said he spent three hours creating a level for online play. “You can create some very deep matches,” he said, referring to a capture-the-flag match in which a player turns invisible once he or she has snagged the flag.

Sycamore’s EB Games held a midnight madness the night of Halo 2’s Nov. 9 release, and about 200 people showed up to be the first to own the game. GameStop, 2564 Sycamore Road, reported a similar amount of people for its midnight madness.

Halo 2 has been an incredible success, but all is not necessarily well. The game’s arrival brings to question the use of violence in games that is becoming increasingly more prevalent.

“Violence at a young age warps. Granted video games aren’t real life, but the fact that [children] are exposed to it isn’t good,” Ball said. For this reason, he said, EB Games employees strictly enforce age restrictions on buying games.

One video game user disagreed, blaming childrens’ actions on their raising.

“I see no correlation between video games and what people do,” said Kevin Lorenc, a junior computer science major. “It’s a lame excuse for irresponsible parents.”

Jon Matheson, GameStop’s assistant manager, said his business also enforces the rating system, asking for identification just as a movie ticketer would for an R-rated movie.

Both managers question how violence is defined.

In Pokemon, for example, the main characters are fuzzy, little creatures that punch each other. They asked if its violence was dangerous or not.

Matheson said there is a difference between games that pit humans against humans and humans against aliens, as Halo 2 does.

The newest addition to the Grand Theft Auto series, San Andreas, features a character who is able to do nearly anything, from hijacking someone’s car to paying for prostitutes to killing anyone walking in the streets.

The game is rated ‘M’ for mature content, but Ball and Matheson find it bizarre how parents will condemn the game.

Parents often will ask them about the content of the game and will have no hesitation about buying it until they hear about the prostitutes.

Ball finds it bizarre, “Blowing off little old ladies’ heads is OK, but not [thinking] about giving money for sex.” He tells parents the game does not show actual sex scenes, but the thought alone is often enough to break the deal.

“It’s almost as if they have given up [on censoring violence] and drawn the line at sexual themes,” Matheson said. A game like San Andreas concerns him because unlike a movie a person sees only once, a player controls his or her character’s actions many times over.

“It depends on the violence and gore – how realistic,” said Brian Kohler, a Genoa resident and parent. “A 12-year-old doesn’t need to be paying for hookers on a video game.” He said he will not let his own child watch an R-rated movie, nor does he think it is permissible to play a game with the same content.