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Call of Duty 4 in the Middle East
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Full Spectrum Warrior in Zekistan
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50 Cent in the Middle East where “the gangsters rule”
In the last couple of months, I’ve been utilizing my Gamefly subscription to the fullest. I’ll talk about that in another post (sneak peek: I heartily recommend it). It’s allowed me to play games I otherwise wouldn’t have done, including Call of Duty 4 and 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.
Both games take place in a fictional Middle Eastern country, whereby “fictional” we can replace “Iraq, but we didn’t want to say that.” This is a trend that began with Full Spectrum Warrior, a game released only half a year after Saddam Hussein’s capture, which was set in “Zekistan”. This isn’t all that far off Team America’s “Durkadurkastan.”
I’m not using Durkadurkastan as a means of being flippant (I have plenty of other ways of doing that!), but to highlight the attempted fictionalizing, and thus dehumanizing, effect that Trey Stone and Matt Parker may have tried to convey. In all three games, you saunter around a deliabitated Middle Eastern city, “Oorah”ing as you go, marvelling at how much more firepower you have and how much more disciplined your soldiers are. Men in turbans show up, shoot at you with AK-47s or RPGs, perhaps yelling something unintelligable and you shoot them until they fall over. Rinse, repeat.
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