Honestly, it's difficult to keep politics out of games. Even with players calling for objectivity and a lack of bias in both the titles they play and the writing that surrounds them, games are pushing the political into every nook and cranny, whether it's the jingoistic military support offered up by the Call Of Duty titles or the non-too-subtle exploration of America's racist colonial past in BioShock Infinite. There doesn't tend to be a whole lot of nuance when politics comes under fire in video games, with stuff like the Clintons appearing in Ready 2 Rumble being something of a nadir when it comes to virtual simulations of how Capitol Hill works - or, at least, it was until EA decided to commemorate the 2012 US elections in Mercenaries 2: World In Flames. The Mercenaries games were pretty fun, if low-key, action titles developed by Pandemic Studios, otherwise known for the likes of Star Wars: Battlefront and Destroy All Humans! (at least, until EA shut them down). What they weren't was particularly subtle, as the player took control of a titular mercenary and caused as much mayhem as was conceivably possible, including a favoured trick of climbing up the front of tanks, tearing the door open, kicking the protesting pilot back into the vehicle and then tossing a grenade down the hatch, Indiana Jones-style. Now imagine doing that same action not as an identikit action hero, but as either Barrack Obama or Sarah Palin. Inspired by that year's presidential race Pandemic released the "Blow It Up Again" downloadable content pack which, amongst other things, included the ability to play as either Obama or Palin in the four extra missions that also came as part of the bundle. So, yep, you can do all the same crazy stuff as the main game, only as either the POTUS or that lady who thought she could see Russia from her Alaskan home. Presumably including Biden would have just been too weird, even for EA...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
