Video Game Troopers Talk Abu Ghraib

Blacksite boasts the usual nasties, but this first-person shooter has them US-trained and -armed—making it “one of the few genuinely subversive games,” says Wired’s Clive Thompson. Most shoot-'em-ups make you "a warrior for the American dream," but Blacksite’s “corrupt authority” is clearly on Pennsylvania Avenue. “If you disagree with the game's political point of view, you'll probably hate it,” Thompson concedes.

Blacksite's characters even talk Abu Ghraib, torture ethics, and White House cover-ups; names are nixed, but episodes like “Stay the course” and “Misunderestimated” fill in the blanks. How is the game otherwise? "It's all so rote and derivative that I could almost squint and imagine I was playing Halo, Half-Life or even Quake," Thompson writes. (More video games stories.)