Yes.

: might have been on to something because, years
: later, when I was playing the Mombassa Streets part of ODST - I would scan
: the 'radar' looking for a red blips that signified enemies and I would run
: to fight them - I was so het up that I wanted to bite them to death with
: my teeth. "Die COVIES! That's for Reach."

Do videogames desensitize us to violence? Oh yeah.

I recently played Bioschock for the first time, and... the first level. It was a nightmare. An abandoned medical wing governed by a madman, a plastic surgeon who tried to apply cubist ideals to his... 'artwork'. His canvas was the faces of women who had come to him to tweak their noses or hide their scars. He scrawled in blood throughout the medical wing that Adam denied everyone the 'right' to look ugly.
The whole level... playing through it left me with a feeling like acid burning my head. But I got used to it. Remember the point where Sander Cohen sics a horde of splicers on you and plays "Waltz of the Flowers" while you fight? I was laughing too hard to aim straight.

And then there was the napalm. The chemical thrower wasn't exactly a good weapon, but I found myself using it just so I could pick up all the canisters of napalm and liquid nitrogen I found.

Finally, there was a point where I became determined to put Rapture out of its misery. I kept revisiting places, fabricating trap bolts and buying proximity mines to turn the levels into deathtraps.

My only regret was that Big Daddies kept getting killed. I loved those guys.

: I think that playing games has changed me ;-)

I seem to recall that the SS exterminated over a thousand 'u