You thought we were going to stop bringing up topics of rampant, unapologetic, dumb, and brutish violence after this morning’s post, didn’t you? Nope. Brutish violence is, like it or not, a deep fount of inspiration for media of all types. Just look at the Greek epics, the work of Francois Rabelais, all five acts of Titus Andronicus, all ten billion variations on CSI/Law & Order, and 30 Minute Meals with Rachel Ray. Videogames are obviously no exception. While I haven’t worked out the math perfectly yet – 61 Frames Per Second will have the exclusive once I’ve completed the equation – my calculations seem to indicate that some 99.9% of videogames involve destroying stuff. Shooting, stomping, cutting, nudging repeatedly. Even the most seemingly innocuous interactive pursuit finds catharsis in decimation. How does one beat Tetris? You make the blocks disappear. Unadulterated violence is good fun in games, as illustrated by this week’s Zero Punctuation over at The Escapist. Yahtzee’s subject is the four-year-old first-person shooter Painkiller and man does the guy like that game. But he’s right, how do you argue with a gun that shoots both lightning and shuriken?