Reader/Listener Anatoly N. writes the following note regarding the banning of this game in Russia:
John, please watch this and tell me this game should be available in Russia. Bear in mind that in Russia we don’t have age differentiated rating for games & movies it’s our fault, i know.Also picture that game’s action is taking place in “US airport named after Osama Bin Laden”. But at 1:27 in the clip it says “Zakhaev International Airport, Moscow, Russia”. There is no such airport. It’s obviously named after Akhmed Zakayev the Chechen ex Prime Minister accused by Russia of terrorism. And even if we don’t care about this crap, this scene should not be in the game anyway. It’s too cruel.
This scene is ridiculously sick, I agree. But if you can actually watch it, it makes you cringe because there are too many airports that are crawling with lots of machine-gun toting security forces. Kind of creepy to think about what would happen if one went berserk.
It’s not banned in Russia:
http://quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=56010
Just sad…
But nothing new.
When my nephew played the first Syphon Filter
game for the PSone, you reach a place in the
game where the only way to proceed is to shoot
an unarmed scientist on his knees , begging
for mercy , in the back of the head.
Then when his son played GTA Vice City , one
level is running through a shopping mall,
seeing if you can shoot 20 ‘gang members’
within the time limit.
I felt like the scene highlighted serious flaws in the games mechanics, and really wasn’t necessary to move the story along.
from my review:
Modern Warfare 2′s plot is over the top referencing Red Dawn quite a bit, in stark contrast the fourth mission is one of the most un-easying and emotional moments that most people playing the game will have experienced in a video game. When you first boot MW2, the game will ask you if you would like to be warned when an extremely graphic mission when you get to it. The game puts you in the shoes of a CIA operative that has infiltrated a Russian terrorist cell, the mission opens with you walking out of a freight elevator on to the concourse holding a LMG a long side 3 other individuals. One individual says “no russian”, and then they open fire. The first-half of the mission plays out like an interactive cut scene while hundreds of civilians are mowed down in front of you, if you pause the game gives you an option to skip the mission. You can walk through the concourse not firing a single bullet, yet if you shoot the terrorists your mission fails and is reset, admittedly killing the terrorists would have likely changed the entire plot going forward. However it highlights a serious flaw in the series linear game play, not being able to play out the mission as your instincts guide you, cheapened the experience for me. The mission is in a grey-area having the mission in the game opens it up to flak from the outside media, yet the liner game play extremely limits my experience and alongside the ability the skip the mission almost feels like a cop-out, failing to move the industry forward in storytelling. The whole game feels conflicted between serious and over the top, for example the mission preceding the airport level ends with a driving sequence on a snow mobile shooting your glock GTA style at enemies on snow mobiles.
I found this scene quite fun and play it over and over again. I especially enjoy shooting the preppy folks in the Starbucks. It was worth pirating the game just for this scene.
And another couple of arguments for those who think that Russia+censorship automatically means Evil:
-Install any MS Flight Simulator published after 9/11 and try to fly a plane into a skyscraper.
The game won’t allow you to do this.
Censorship? Evil?
-In Russia we didn’t have a controversy with slavery, therefore we didn’t have to invent politically correct terms for black folks. So there are movies with black guys (even born in Russia) being called negro or “Ethiopian”. And this doesn’t consider as racial. Those movies are not being censored or anything.
So tell me, wouldn’t this movie be censored or even baned in US?
#45 Anatoly Nechaev said,
Probably not. -however you can bank on the media/politicians using it as a sensational scape goat to make sure we remain divided-on everything no matter how invalid.
I think it is pretty ironic that we are becoming more like some corrupt, warped version of the former Soviet Union and Russia is becoming more like what America once stood for..
One of your fellow countrymen has an excellent blog that illustrates this
(and other events in the world) with simple clarity and common sense on a daily basis.
http://mat-rodina.blogspot.com/
-s
# 46 soundwash
>> I think it is pretty ironic that we are becoming more like some corrupt, warped version of the former Soviet Union
It’s funny that degrading periods in history of both our countries will have almost same name. Remember Perestroika? It means rebuilding, restructuring. “Change” is new “Perestroika”.
In fact a lot of people here comparing Obama to Gorbachev.
>> and Russia is becoming more like what America once stood for..
I wouldn’t say that. We’re still VERY corrupt. Things like recovery.gov fake tender is child’s play here.
You know how much does 1 kilometer (0.62 mile) of new road between Moscow and St. Petersburg cost?
400 million dollars!!!
And we producing same amount of roads in a year as China in 10 days.
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=ru&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zr.ru%2Fnews%2F163819&sl=auto&tl=en
Our industry was literally killed in early 90s. Our budget consists mostly of hydrocarbons export.
Corrupted functionaries are strangling small and medium businesses.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not extremely bad. I don’t feel like i should flee from here. But there are a lot of things we should work over.
PS: Is there a way to format my comments, or is it moderators-only privilege?
Interesting.
Let’s turn on the 2nd Amendment and re-run the simulation.
Nothing new here. Most American military games have missions that regularly break Geneva Conventions, but hey, America rules!