Nothing like a fictional story being blown out of proportion. It seems like it’s what we do best here in America.

Title: “The Warriors”
System: PS2 and Xbox
Price: $49.99
ESRB: Mature

After 26 years of waiting, the warriors have finally come back out to play. But they have gained some new boppers along the way.

They found a soul mate for their deviant behavior in every child’s favorite and every conservative’s nightmare: Rockstar Games — whose new offspring is Rockstar Toronto.

“The Warriors,” a 1979 film cult classic, makes a triumphant return to our lives after we all saw the movie back in the day on TBS, TNT or one of those T networks on cable.

The game plays like much of Rockstar’s former games. Your mission is to run around New York City and cause as much mayhem and chaos as possible. What a player is doing here is building up the warriors’ rep plain and simple, pushing the warriors to be the baddest boppers in town.

And how does one make the warriors into the baddest boppers around? Simple: grab a variety of street gang weapons such as knives, scraps of wood and beer bottles. Then take your weapons and repeatedly smash innocents and other gang members over the head with them, then kick ’em while they are down.

Controls for the game are simple and take little time to get used to. Plus there is always the first mission, which shows a player how all the controls work regardless if they know them already or not. But you also learn how to break into cars and mug innocent pedestrians in the mission, so it is not a total waste.

Besides the linear story mode, Rockstar, as always, has created numerous side missions and a free-roam Coney Island mode. Both modes unlock new characters and power-ups for players.

The characters aren’t for the story mode though; they are for the game’s Rumble Mode.

Rumble mode is best described as a crossbreeding of a fighting game and a first-person shooter multiplayer mode. You can go against a friend or the computer in a variety of challenges, like one on one, War Party (five team members each) and Survival (bop as many rockers as possible). There are also non-traditional fighting modes like Have Mercy, which is described as “like capture the flag with a chick.”

Now we are getting to where everyone wants me to go. As many congressmen feared, this game is teaching young people exactly what the movie taught them in 1979 — how to be a real disruptive force in society.

If you get sprayed in the face with spray paint, it will leave you open to being kicked in the groin. If you kick a man enough times in the stomach, he will eventually puke. And if you throw a knife into someone’s back, they will pull it out and only lose half their life force.

If I punch a parking meter twice, it will break and give me a dollar. Wait, that doesn’t happen in real life.

I’ve been lied to. Rockstar, how dare you not tell me the truth about violence, in your ultra real game about ’70s street gangs in New York? Nothing like a fictional story being blown out of proportion. It seems like it’s what we do best here in America.

Yes, the game is offensive to some, but there are a lot of games that could be considered more offensive. Like how “Pokemon” teaches animal cruelty and “Pikmon” teaches the benefits of slavery.

But wait, why doesn’t every kid act out these lessons? Well, they have something most people think that video game-addicted little junkies don’t have — a brain. Yes, they still know the difference between right and wrong because it is pretend, just like “Sesame Street.”

So should you play this game? Yes. Should your 14-year-old brother or sister play also? Yes. Should your 5-year-old nephew or niece get a chance? How should I know, are they mature enough to handle it?

So go my little boppers, go out and spread the word of “The Warriors.” If you go out into the real world and try to fulfill your Warrior dreams, then you deserve what you get.

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