We’ve all heard the debate about whether video games affect our thoughts and behaviour. Personally, I have no problem with indiscriminate violence in games. Some senseless murders in Grand Theft Auto 4 can be highly cathartic, diminishing rather than exacerbating those murderous urges we all get (eh? anyone?). But there’s a worrying trend of videogame violence becoming discriminating, and senselessly so.

Case in point – Mercenaries 2, released this week. As far as I can tell from its wikipedia entry and various trailers, the game is set in Venezuela, in the year 2010. Megalomaniac ‘Ramón Solano’ has just seized power and become dictator. He takes control of the nation’s vast oil reserves and declares “It is time the Venezuelan people stop paying for the greed of foreign interests, we will make them pay dearly for our oil. From this day forward everybody pays”. And so you, the maverick mercenary, have to overthrow the Venezuelan government. (Apparently, because ‘Solano’ didn’t pay you for a previous job. Of course…)

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