EA Games recently released Medal of Honor, a re-boot of its classic World War II shooter franchise.

Except this time, we’re far from the beaches of Normandy: we are in modern day Afghanistan.

The game takes place in 2002 during Operation Enduring Freedom shortly after 9/11.

Telling a story that happened during a real armed conflict is nothing new; just look at all the different World War II and Vietnam shooters that have flooded the market over the years. The difference in Medal of Honor is that the war is still going on, so controversy is bound to follow the game.

The game’s single player story does not shy away from addressing the Taliban and Al Qaeda by name, which is necessary if they plan to tell a more authentic tale than Activisions’s Modern Warfare series.

In those games, your Middle Eastern foes are clearly derived from Al-Qaeda, but they go out of their way to not even show which Middle Eastern country you invade in the original Modern Warfare.

The controversy is not simply that the Taliban is in the game, but rather it started when people learned you actually play as the Taliban in the multi-player portion. As the Taliban, you face off against U.S. Army Rangers and the entire point is to kill them.

I can understand why EA was worried; no mother wants to walk in on their child gunning down U.S. soldiers and then seeing the words “Taliban wins!”

Of course, the game is rated for mature audiences only, meaning nobody under the age of 17 should be playing it to begin with.

Instead, EA chose to change the name of the Taliban to Op For (standing for opposing force.) This only changes the multi-player portion of the game, and you’re still killing American soldiers, so what’s the difference?

Are we not a mature enough society to handle this?

This is not the first time somebody has set out to develop a war game based on an ongoing conflict.

Six Days in Fallujah was in development by Atomic Games and being published by Konami. The game promised to accurately represent what soldiers fighting in Iraq really went through and was even developed with help from soldiers who were actually there.

The game was met with outrage from the media and Konami dropped out of its publishing deal.

Though Atomic Games claims Six Days in Fallujah will still be released, the fact that Atomic Games has been forced to lay off most of its staff makes this very unlikely.

I can understand why some people can get offended by this sort of thing; however canceling and censoring games is not the answer.

The reason we have the First Amendment is so this sort of thing will not get censored.

People may get offended, but in the long run our freedom of expression is definitely more important.

Jonathon Posch can be reached at 581-7942

or [email protected].