by Matt Bird

Created on: June 24, 2009   Last Updated: December 21, 2011

Video games used to be nice, button-down little things that appealed to everybody. Sure, you had the occasional outcast like Custer's Revenge smearing their names, but for the most part games were designed for kids.

Now that those kids have grown up, however, games continued to be geared towards them as adults, and those games are correspondingly more mature. Thanks, too, to the increasing realism of video games, there's now a large stock of titles that really aren't appropriate for most kids out there.

This is a little list of some of the more noteworthy games which shouldn't find their ways into the hands of tykes. At the very least any child should at least be in their teens before they jump on the bandwagon with any of these titles.

• Grand Theft Auto. The mother of controversy in the gaming world, the Grand Theft Auto series encourages beating up harmless pedestrians and stealing their cars, among other small-time criminal activities. Given the sheer brutality of some of the things you can do in these games, not to mention overt sexual references, parents should steer their children away from Grand Theft Auto.

• Resident Evil. Zombies, zombies, zombies. There's blood and frightening imagery aplenty in Resident Evil, regardless of which title you're playing.

• Silent Hill. If you thought Resident Evil was bad, get a load of these psychological brain twisters. They're much more frightening than resident Evil, and likely to give your children nightmares for weeks.

• God of War. Hero Kratos kills just about everything he comes across in massive blood orgies. Great game, but for kids? Nope.

• Metal Gear Solid. You sneak around as a covert operative and can, if you wish, slit people's throats. Great lessons in that for impressionable minds.

• Legacy of Kain. Any of these games fall into this category since we're talking about vampires killing one another. Next!

• Devil May Cry. You play a happy-go-lucky demon hunter who's actually the son of a demon lord, and who spends his days killing all sorts of creepy-crawlies spawned from the depths of Hell. Sounds like fun to me.

• F.E.A.R. You're part of a team of high-tech supernatural investigators called to deal with a little girl who's at the middle of it all. A little like The Ring with lots of guns, and if you didn't let your kids watch The Ring you won't want them playing F.E.A.R., which is much, much scarier.

You get the point. If a title as MA on the front, it's not likely to be something you want to buy for your children. And while I do acknowledge that game ratings sometimes go overboard, it's better safe than sorry - especially since the child in question will be able to buy the game EVENTUALLY.

Learn more about this author, Matt Bird.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.