New Chinese Video Game Allows Players to Shoot American Soldiers

The largely-unspoken, and uneasy, tension between the United States and China may have just gotten a little more apparent. A new video game sponsored the People's Liberation Army (PLA) now allows players to target and shoot American commandos.

Wired.com reports the new game, "Glorious Mission," was developed by China’s Giant Network Technology Co. It sends "soldiers' off to basic training and then sets them out on various missions. For the most part, it's modeled after many American-made shooting games. But  the comparisons may end at the graphics once you read this:

But there’s one key difference between the American and Chinese “shooters.” Where the bad guys in America’s Army are generic Middle Eastern or Central Asian insurgents and terrorists, the enemy in Glorious Mission is apparently the U.S. military. A TV report offers glimpses of an American-made Apache gunship crashing in flames.

There’s another big difference. America’s Army [an American-made game] has been criticized for having a subtle, propagandistic effect on young players. In Glorious Mission, the politics are anything but subtle. Following training and combat, the game’s third stage recreates the “fiery political atmosphere of camp life,” according to one Chinese-language news report.

You can see some of the images from the game below, which was featured on a Chinese news report:

(H/T: HuffPo)