Just In Case Grandma Has An Xbox . . .

CBS has announced it's signed a deal to turn some of its shows into video games, including CSI, Survivor, Ghost Whisperer and, apparently unaware that most video games are played by people under the age of 80, Dick Van Dyke's Diagnosis: Murder.

The CSI games make sense, since gamers love anything involving gruesome murders (although most games usually involve causing murders, not solving them). And The Amazing Race and Survivor could be interesting as adventure games, but Diagnosis Murder? In which an elderly doctor, working in a bizarre hospital where patients are victims of murder instead of malpractice, solves not-so-grisly homicides of the Murder She Wrote variety? Just picture the looks of disappointment and disgust when kids find that thing sitting under the tree on Christmas morning.

Still, it sounds like an action-packed thrill-ride compared to the Ghost Whisperer game, in which players "embark on the adventure of helping the recently departed move on to the afterlife and providing closure to loved ones left behind."

Unless "helping the recently departed" somehow involves blowing them to bits with an M-16 and "providing closure" is code for "decapitating with a shovel," I think Ghost Whisperer has the potential to be the most unsuccessful video game of all time.