  First-person shooters. We've all heard of them, and I'll admit to playing some. However, I am beginning to question the ethics behind some. World War 2 shooters I don't really enjoy, because I know that however badly it recreates the real thing, it's making a game out of a conflict that cost fifty-five MILLION lives.
I'm not against the history, I think we should learn from our past mistakes, but some recent events have made me decide that the game corporations should either have tighter restrictions or be a little more concious of what they do. A little while ago, "Operation Desert Storm 2" came out. It basically portrayed all Iraqis as gun-wielding, child-snatching, woman-raping lunatics. To add insult to injury, it was marketed in Iraq . I think this is a gross insult to the iraqi people.
It was out before the war had even started! I have mixed feelings about "Operation Flashpoint". On the one hand, it's not a real war, and it does give a fairly accurate account of a soldier in battle - less the "Medal of honour-esque" mass slaughters, where to make the game interesting, enemy soldiers are killed in vast quantities, impossible for any soldier without a lack of conscience, and more a sort of panic-driven sense of urgency. Flashpoint also shows a more poingiant side to war - I remember a particular clip from it, where after a battle, the camera sweeps over a makeshift cemetry, little mounds of pixellated dirt and crosses. What makes it more effective is as the camera gets closer, we can see dog-tags around the necks of the crosses.
However, even Flashpoint has it's less desirable points - first and formost, the portrayel of the Russians as vicious, bloodthirsty invaders (they are, indeed, invaders in the game), and the Americans as Righteous saviours. There is a major problem here - the Russians are likely to be just as bloodthirsty and vicious as the Americans, and both groups are actually invading in the game. It's based around the island of Everon, a fictional landmass in an undefined area of the world. Personally, I love the game - As mentioned earlier, most war-based FPSs just throw vast quantites of enemies about - you kill anwhere between 30 and 100 per level, an almost impossible task.
In Flashpoint, you'll rarely see an enemy soldier, much less shoot one - More likely you'll hear the bullets whizzing about you, watch your friends get shot to pieces, and look on in terror as a T-72 tank rolls out onto the road ahead of you.
Every now and then, you'll snap off a couple of shots into the undergrowth, just to make yourself feel safe, and once in a while, you'll see an enemy break cover, and fire at him, watch him fall with a small puff of blood, and the have to crawl past him to your next objective. Other features are the fact that your character's heartbeat steadily increases as you run, crawl quickly, or as the combat gets heavier. Another thing Flashpoint included to a greater extent than other games was fear - You actually find yourself afraid you'll get shot.
It's quite alarming, being hit - there's a whizzing sound, puffs of dirt walk towards you, and suddenly - Crack! Arg! the screen goes red, and the music takes on a tragic tone, accompanied by a quote by some great figure on the subject of war. Personally, with a few tweaks, I think war based FPSs should be more like Flashpoint, or entirely fictional, like Unreal Tournament. Too much disrespect is implied with 'realistic' games. 
