The game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare , the latest installment of the Call of Duty series, has drawn strong criticism from several Internet users and some Russian media, who claim that the game is trying to rewrite the story and be an anti-Russian propaganda vehicle, according to BBC News.
Call of Duty is one of the most popular video game series of all time in the category of first-person shooters.
Each new release is likely to raise the passions of fans and detractors of the series on the sites of critics. Most of the time, we celebrate or destroy a new episode based on its graphics, its playability or its originality compared to previous games.
According to reports BBC News, the 16 th installment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, has sparked a wave of negative reviews, especially on Metacritic, an American site that collects the scores for different entertainment products. These critics focused on the game’s scenario, which according to its publisher, Activision Blizzard, deals with the “stakes and challenges of war in modern times”.
Urkistan, a fictional country not far from reality
The controversy surrounding the game stems essentially from a campaign mode mission called Highway of Death.
In this segment, the player must shoot Russian snipers along a ruined highway in the imaginary country of Urkistan.
However, several critics speaking in Russian on Metacritic have noted similarities between the imaginary highway and a real artery that connects the Iraqi city of Basra to Kuwait.
This road took the name of “highway of death” at the end of the Gulf War in 1990. It was here that units of the Iraqi army that retreated were attacked and destroyed by American planes in the night of February 26 to 27, 1991, then by land forces on March 2, 1991, which resulted in hundreds of deaths.
A “demonization” of Russia
According to BBC News, one of the critics on Metacritic said that the game “demonized Russia”, while another said it opposed “bad Russians” to “good Americans”. A third user said: “The game has good graphics. But the scenario is disgusting propaganda. “
The Metacritic site gives two ratings for the works listed there, a score that averages scores given by print media and one that averages those given by users.
All of the “mainstream” media critics gave the game a rating of 85 out of 100, according to Metacritic.
However, hundreds of zero scores pulled down the rating of players and players, for a total score of 3.2 out of 10 for the game on the PlayStation 4 platform.
In total, among the people who played Call of Duty on PC, PS4 and XBOX, there are more than 4000 negative reviews for only 1500 positives.
Repercussions in Russia
Russian media also criticized the latest game in the Call of Duty series, according to BBC News. Maria Kornienko of BBC Monitoring said state television Rossiya 24 had published a four-minute report criticizing the game.
Even a popular Russian vlogger, Ilya Maddyson, called on his compatriots to “boycott the game and demonstrate a little self-respect.”
Still according to BBC News, a spokesperson for Activision Blizzard declined to comment on the criticism of Internet users, but the company says the scenario is fictitious.
In a recent blog post , the company says that the game does not represent real world events.
