One of the strangest (and strangely disturbing) things to ever come from a respected (?) news source has to be MSNBC’s Flash game NewsBreaker. The online game, which plays just like the classic game Breakout, can be found on the news channel’s Web site.

The concept is simple: move your paddle left and right to keep the bouncing ball in play, knocking colored bricks away for points and the occasional power-up. What is so odd is every so often a current news story pulled directly from the MSNBC feeds falls from one of the destroyed blocks. Collect it and it appears on your sidebar, ready to link you to the topic whenever you finish the game.

As I was trying it out, about 30 seconds in, the stories “33 people dead in Virginia Tech shootings” and “An unadulterated look at adultery” came cascading down for me to catch. This made me feel dirty and weird so I immediately closed my browser. Something is just not right about playing a fun game and trying to nab a story about a terrible massacre for bonuses (no joke, 25 stories gets you an extra life -- ugh).

It was pretty obvious to me that some old people got together and thought this would be an easy to way to trick the young, “hip” generation into getting their news. Kind of like The Daily Show, but without the reverence.

[Thanks, Disrupto]