She's sexy, but she's dead ... is that wrong?

A bizarre ad for the video game Hitman is currently appearing in the April issue of PC Gamer magazine. Featuring a beautiful, scantily-clad woman who appears to be dead lying on a gold bedspread with a bullet in her head, the tag line reads: "Beautifully Executed."

I'm not sure how people are supposed to respond to this. Is a murder/necrophilia fantasy supposed to make anyone want to buy the game? Is it appropriate to push this ad at teenagers? Adrants magazine says: "People read way too much into this stuff." Maybe so, but I suspect a lot of parents will disagree. Edgy video games are nothing new (think Grand Theft Auto), and to be fair, the Hitman series doesn't contain nearly the kind of gratuitous gore featured in some of the splatter-fest shooter games of the mid-90's. Still, this strikes me as some pretty strange marketing.

I guess I have now officially become Too Old.