In a terrific roundup, Winda Benedetti, MSNBC's Citizen Gamer, surveys some of the more controversial independent game offerings and asks whether such games are an appropriate medium for sensitive topics.

Among other titles, Benedetti looks at Danny Ledonne's Super Columbine Massacre RPG (left), The Torture Game 2, Wafaa Bilal's Virtual Jihadi, Operation Pedopriest, and Harpooned. There are, of course, critics:

"You don’t gain appreciation for the [Columbine] tragedy by repeating it and participating in a recreation yourself and taking the role of murderers,” says Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, in an interview for a documentary film Ledonne recently completed about his experiences making the game, and the aftermath.

“This is totally immoral and should be banned to everyone, especially younger teenagers,” wrote a reader calling herself Ms. Johnson in response to my recent column about “The Torture Game 2,”  a controversial Web game that allows players to torture a man-like person tied up with ropes.

David Kociemba, an art prof at Emerson College who appears in Ledonne's film, says:

The controversy should be that there aren’t more games like ‘Super Columbine Massacre RPG!’ that are as demanding and as artistically innovative... Why is it permitted for Michael Moore in 2002, to make ‘Bowling For Columbine’ — a film essay on this subject — and to use far more graphic footage than Danny Ledonne does three years later in a primitive low-res video game? Are we really going to say that video game designers are the one set of artists that do not have the right to engage in contemporary political issues?

This video uses the music from Bright Eyes' When The President Talks to God to parody anti-game activist Jack Thompson.

The new lyrics were penned by Super Columbine Massacre RPG creator Danny Ledonne and singer/guitarist Cory Antiel, who performs the song.