Product placement in games is basically the best thing ever. If Mr. Pizza Hut or Johnny Nike weren’t telling us to buy their latest stuffed crust pepperoni pie or stylish sneakers, how the hell would we know what to spunk our moolah on? Games clearly have a service to shift this shi... eh, totally essential stuff on us. That's why we've thrown together the most blatant bits of cynically placed licensed tat to ever sully our medium.
Big Boss shifts Mountain Dew
We'll kick off with the most recent example of shameful advertising that sees our beloved Big Boss sporting a Mountain Dew t-shirt. Yeah, that's just the sort of undectable ammo we want to don when we need to infiltrate highly guarded military facilites. Look, we're not going to drink this crap, so why the hell would we want to force our favourite characters to become branded by it?
Bond pwns ass with licensed bike
Trying to sell us stuff in: Everything or Nothing
Mr. Bond! How could you? And here we were thinking the legendary M16 agent could never be corrupted by the lure of shiny licensed stuff... oh. At least the product placement in this suprisingly decent 007 game is useful, coming in the form of a friggin' awesome Triumph Daytona 600 motorbike. Though admittedly, riding it while offing loads of terrorists might not be the ideal way to advertise it to a middle aged men suffering a midlife crisis.
Snake gets musical courtesy of Apple
Trying to sell us stuff in: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Snakey boy, we thought better of you. Hasn't your old man already tried to peddle enough rubbish on us? Seriously, if it wasn't for that epic facial fur you're rocking, we'd so be willingly to cut you off. Ah well, at least Guns of the Patriots' Ipod is pretty useful. Acting as a personal med pack (provided you find hidden songs to listen to on it), we can even tune into Konami podcasts on the little device. And everyone knows there's no better compliment to lots of homicidal acts than having developers chatting in our ear about games .
Matrix dudes save humanity thanks to soft drink
Trying to sell us stuff in: Enter the Matrix
There's nothing like an energy drink to get us ready for some bullet-dodging action. Thought Neo and co's time-bending arcobatics were the result of glitches in a computer programme and a weird dude with a Santa beard? Pah. Clearly, it's all thanks to the power of some semi foul-tasting Powerade.
Big Boss (again) fights the flab while endorsing diet food
Trying to sell us stuff in: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Above: Oh c'mon...
Awww, man. Why Snake? Is Kojima really paying you so little to save the world from giant killer robots and psychotic chicks in skin-tight leather suits that you have to make ends meet by trying to hock us food for fat women? CalorieMate, a cheese flavoured block that debuted in Japan in 1983, is a tasty treat which helps soldiers blend into their environment seemlessly, while also increasing neck-snapping efficiency by 72%. Probably.
