First off, no, it's not based on the Steven Seagal film of the same name. Sorry to disappoint. Under Siege is the sequel to Under Ash, a Palestinian game developed by the company Afkar Media. And in both games you play as a "freedom fighter" who really, really doesn't like Israelis because the world is sometimes a messy, complicated and terrible place. Under Siege actually incorporates a lot of real-world events to justify its nature as explicit propaganda, including an opening level based on the massacre of a group of praying Muslims by Baruch Goldstein in which you can only duck and find cover. But eventually Goldstein is taken out and our protagonist picks up the fallen assassin's gun which leads him down a fiery warpath of vengeance. If you're not familiar with the history here, picture if you were handed a game in which you use a weapon built from the remains of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center to blow up Al-Qaeda. It's not exactly subtle, is our point here. But the series also goes out of its way to direct its rage specifically at the people that Akfar Media believe to be "tyrants". If you kill a civilian at any point, for example, then you lose the game. And its hero is a reluctant one, pressed into violence as a last recourse by extreme situations. And let's not pretend that this is the only patriotic war game out there either. There are even government-bankrolled military sims like America's Army or China's Glorious Mission. But of course that didn't stop the Jerusalem Post from dismissing Under Siege as being a propagation of terrorism. And maybe, depending on your perspective, it is. Or maybe you don't feel like dwelling on the politics of your potentially inflammatory, interactive mass-murdering, in which case there's a whole different set of games just for you...
Eric Day co-hosts the Murderville Podcast at www.welcometomurderville.com
Give it a listen. Five minutes. Maybe you'll dig it. Maybe you'll hate it. But at least you'll have tried something new.
