Now that we’ve all had a chance to get used to the ESRB ratings, they’ve become about as meaningless as the MPAA ratings on movies, haven’t they. “M”, for example, covers a pretty wide range of material, and if it weren’t for the additional explanations on the back cover you’d never know for sure what you were getting.

So I thought I’d propose a few new tweaks on the ESRB system–ratings that would be much more descriptive, and perhaps even useful!

Numbing – This rating is given to those games where they throw in too much eye-candy, too many explosions, too many swarming aliens, too many spell effects, or whatever it is, for your brain to process. You’re just button-mashing, because you can’t even see what’s going on anymore. You could close your eyes and do about as well.

Repeat – Didn’t I just play this game a few months ago? Oh, wait, that was something else. This is just a blatant rip-off of that. Same plot, same basic character types, similar graphics, just a slightly different layout to the levels. Either the publisher got lazy, or a different publisher got jealous and had to try and steal the audience.

Hyped! – You’ve heard so much for so long about this game that by the time it actually comes out you feel like you’ve already played it. I mean really, don’t we get a little tired of “This’ll be the bestest game ever! Really! Trust us!”? The “+” signs are a additional, escalating rating to indicate the amount of over-hype. Three is “you’re tempted to not even buy their darn game!”

Tie-In – Not that we should be able to spot it a mile away, but we’ve all seen the games that are based on and released with movie releases. In too many cases we suspect the game is crap, but they release it anyway just to help build buzz for the movie. But since sometimes the games are actually pretty good, we’ve added a “+/-” qualifier to indicate whether or not it’s a good tie-in or a bad tie-in.

Beta – And speaking of games rushed into production to coincide with movies, this rating goes for all games that got released before they should have. It’s like they ran out of money for good testing, so they decided to let you be the tester! You get to pay for the privilege of finding all their bugs for them, and then pay again if you want the patch.

Waste – This rating is reserved for games that for whatever reason you would just be better off avoiding. You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re new releases this week, and in the bargain bin the next week. If only someone had warned you before you’d blown $60 on it. But then again, would you believe the rating if you saw it?

Zombie – This game contains zombies. That’s all some of us need to know! Forget about the fancy covers, forget about the plot or creating suspense, forget about explaining why they became zombies in the first place. Just lets us get to splattering zombies already! Just make sure it has cool weapons, okay? Like a combo chainsaw-grenade-launcher with electrified chain!

Cash Cow – This is more about truth in advertising, really. We all know the publishers view that series as a god-given right to our money. We’d just like to hear them admit it. Because we all know that regardless of whether the last release was good or bad, we’ll still be in line at the midnight release party to pick up the next one. Because it’s the latest Grand Theft of Rock Hero Mario Zelda’s Halo Duty Fantasy, and we gotta have it!

What ratings would YOU like to see? Drop us a comment!

Disclaimer for the hard of humor: These are not real ratings, nor are we really proposing they ever be. This is a parody, not a theft or criticism of the ESRB’s ratings. Nor is this a dis on your favorite game, game system, or publisher. We love it/them too. Now go away or we will taunt you a second time!

Tags: ESRB, humor, parody