Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

The screenshot to the left is from a game called Spanish for Everyone. It is about a boy that has his Nintendo DS stolen from him by his friend. His friend’s dad is part of the Mexican mafia and leaves with the cops on his tail. So what does the boy do? He hooks up with his aunt, who seems to act like a pedophile and he goes to Mexico to get his DS back. Along the way, he meets with hookers, the Mexican mafia, meets and greets with tons of strangers and finally has to become a coke mule to get back to the US after getting his DS back. By the way, the game got an E rating.

found on IGN

How the hell does this game, which is suppose to teach you Spanish, get an E rating with all the adult themes in the game. And according to IGN, the game’s Spanish tutorials are so difficult, that you need to know Spanish to get past them. Not much of a Spanish learning game, if you already have to know Spanish to get past the drills. But the fact of the matter is that this game gets an E rating, while Manhunt 2 can’t see the light of day in Britain and had to be toned down to get an M rating.

This is why the ESRB needs to be a little more objective and a lot less subjective. I do think that Manhunt 2 really pushed the boundaries of acceptable violence, but it deserves to be banished, while a game of this crudeness gets to live as an E rated game. It just does not make sense. And yes, I understand that the game is suppose to be a joke, but does any parent really want their kid playing this game? I know that I can find far better Spanish learning tools that are far less offensive than this game, and they will actually learn something from those tools.

As a parent myself, I have always watched and monitored what my son plays on the 360 or on the PC. I also make sure to play my M rated games when he is not up. I also know that I would have possibly bought this game seeing the E rating thinking it was all cool, because the ESRB said so. I hope they can explain the reasoning for this, because I certainly cannot.