The most popular game of the year has been banned in Russia because one of its main premises is that the country is not that nice and wants to invade the world.

Russian politicians are apparently fuming over one of the scenes in the game in which the Russian Federation is being ruled by extreme nationalists. The controversial ‘No Russian’ level in the game, depicts the player and a few Russian terrorists opening fire on civilians in an airport.

Russian gamers at the website GotPS3 slammed the storyline, which they criticized as catering to a primarily American audience with total disregard towards other cultures, especially the Russians, whom the game depicts as terrorists. However the Russians have had little sympathy from anyone else. If the terrorists were Nazis or Muslim fundamentalists the game would be OK.

However in this case they are like the kid in school who always wants to play the cowboy and never the indian. British have been used to playing bad guys in American films for nearly a century. It was never seen as bad for us to have all the Empire being British while the Rebel Alliance were Yanks. The objection here is about being seen as terrorists as the assumption is that no Russian would ever be a terrorist.

However anybody who pays attention to MW2's plot will understand why Russia is at war with the US, and know that the Russians aren’t being depicted solely as bad guys. Apparently the game writers are changing the plot slightly so that the terrorists are not Russians but something that no-one can object to persecuting – fat people.