SPOILERS! If you haven’t found a few hours to finish MW2’s campaign yet, you may want to go do that before ingesting the following words.

It’s impressive that we were able to not only find seven, but actually choose the top seven most controversial and divisive aspects of Infinity Ward’s landmark shooter. They managed to bait everyone, from Fox News to PC gamers to the entire country of Russia, with both justified and balls-out moronic decisions.

Story-wise, Modern Warfare 2’s themes are a bit schizophrenic. The game sometimes takes a neutral stance on war and corrupt politics, sometimes implies criticism, and occasionally forgets about everything except the fact that explosions are neat and OMG headshot! It’s always been tough for games to make poignant, topical observations and remain fun, but the effect can be a soupy mess of entertainment, relevance, irrelevance, and pretention. Drop in multiple technical and PR failures, and the concoction is a shoo-in for gaming’s “most controversial” list (though still well under GTA and Carmageddon).

7. Incompetent Afghan recruits

The lack of trained soldiers in Afghanistan is common knowledge - the country has never had a well-formed national army, or even a stable government. Here’s a fun fact: The United States supported anti-Soviet rebels known as Mujahideen during the Cold War. The Soviets eventually withdrew, and a Mujahideen splinter, the Taliban, took control of the country until the United States and NATO enacted Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001. Oh international politics, you’re such a cluster shart.

Above: Because you can train a group of soldiers with about two minutes of demonstration 

Modern Warfare 2 begins with a tutorial disguised as a US military training session for Afghan soldiers, who are incapable of aiming down sights or not throwing grenades up hills. There’s nothing necessarily controversial about this moment - it’s merely a topical way for the game to introduce the controls. But it is ballsier than most games, which would prefer not to address real international tensions.

A developer with less balls would have…
Set the opening in Hackysakistan.

6. Field torture of Rojas’s right-hand man

The “War on Terror” (which we’re pretty sure the AP suggests always be in quotes), and subsequent treatment of prisoners in US custody, has ignited the torture debate like an oil well. The unsupervised actions of US personnel overseas has been sometimes appalling - a stiff reminder of what psychologist Stanley Milgram taught us about human behavior, that it can be corrupted with more ease than you’d like to believe.

Above: A couple of guys just doing what has to be done… with a car battery 

This scene from Modern Warfare 2 depicts two soldiers preparing to torture a captured combatant. Whether or not torture is ethical, the message here is that, in the act of catching the bad guys and preventing wars, soldiers do whatever is necessary. The game, as it usually does, doesn’t judge this activity positively or negatively, but even pointing it out and acknowledging the issue is gutsier than most games.

A developer with less balls would have…
Utilized a lot of firm slapping, stern looks, and sunglasses-putting-on to extract information.

5. Dead astronaut

We didn’t even realize we were in control when this scene occurred, we just assumed it was a cut scene. Of course it wasn’t, this is Infinity Ward. While they may have gone overboard with killing playable characters (it was pretty effective in CoD 4, so let’s do it all the time!), this instance was particularly memorable.

Above: Houston just told us that we may have a problem, didn’t it? Sigh…

Firstly, we discover the nature of the missile - an EMP. And secondly… we die. And presumably so does everyone on the ISS. Burn.

Above: The appropriate response would actually have been “shitballs!”

Above: We only wish Infinity Ward would have let us drift through space indefinitely, it was kind of fun

A developer with less balls would have…
Probably not killed everyone on the ISS.