Within the past few weeks, EA has come under fire for its up-and-coming reboot of the Medal of Honor series. England, Canada, and New Zealand defense secretaries have called for a ban on the game entirely, and even the US Army has banned the purchasing of the game from any stores that reside on a base. Soldiers can still go and purchase the game off-site and play it to their heart's content, they just can't buy it from any stores subsidized by the military.

The problem? You can play as the Taliban in multiplayer.

And that's it. It isn't the violent nature of the game, it isn't the ESRB rating, the foul language, or anything to do with the single-player campaign. It's because you can use a character modeled after the terrorist organization that is currently entrenched in war.

War games have come and gone. We've killed Germans, Russians, Chinese, innocent civilians at an airport, and even seen America itself overrun and nuked in a crazy "what-if" scenario that isn't historically or presently accurate. We've gone through both of the World Wars and every other major conflict in title after title for years. We've seen most countries attacked or even destroyed. None of these games have portrayed their conflict of choice as fun; They've shown deaths in the millions, innocent lives lost, and the true struggle that soldiers go through and experience while fighting for a cause.




But, because you can play as a member of a terrorist organization and shoot other people (not innocents, by the way, all of the character models are soldiers of one nation or another) these three countries and even our own military don't want it around.

This wouldn't be such an odd move if they had also attempted to ban all of the Call of Duty and previous Medal of Honor games (as well as the 2,000+ clones and copies of them) that let you play as Nazis or "generic terrorist". Can you not play Counter Strike: Source in those countries or pick up a copy from the local Gamestop on the base?

Death and war are inevitable parts of life and taking offense towards showing them in a realistic manner is insane -- when things die they don't "faint" and you can't always battle unicorns -- terrorism is real and its a real threat. Yes, it's a 3D model of a terrorist -- do people think that if they are given "a day in the life of the Taliban" that they'll want to jump ship and start shooting allied soldiers?



When a soldier signs up, whether it's by force or willingly, he signs up with the notion that he might die in a war; it's a terrible and ultimate finality but certainly is part of their job description. Even taken as an art-form (we won't get into that discussion) these games are great ways to show the struggles that every nation and its fighting men and women have gone through -- they do it in movies and books all the time -- and EA's president of games, Frank Gibeau, pretty much thinks games should get the same treatment as those other forms of media:

"At EA we passionately believe games are an artform, and I don't know why films and books set in Afghanistan don't get flack, yet [games] do. Whether it's Red Badge of Courage or The Hurt Locker, the media of its time can be a platform for the people who wish to tell their stories"



For now the game isn't officially banned in any of the countries (but the US army base ban will certainly be in effect, sorry soldiers -- I guess you can take real war but not fake war) and the team behind the game has been sincere in both explanation and apology, offering that they are only doing it to keep the game as accurate and realistic as possible and won't be changing it.

Regardless, the game will be out next month in most stores and around the world. But what do you think? Should games like these be banned?

i really hate this game to it just like playing battlefield