The UK's Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox has called for the ban of the "tasteless" Medal of Honor. The only defense he is doing now is of his remarks.

"I am disgusted and angry," Fox initially said. "It's hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game. I would urge retailers to show their support for our armed forces and ban this tasteless product."

The Medal of Honor series was created by filmmaker Steven Spielberg, and the upcoming entry in the series features multiplayer that allows gamers to play as Taliban fighters. Fox's comments seem to be prompted by a YouTube clip that shows a Taliban fighting on a multiplayer map in Helmand province, where is where UK forces are stationed.

Thing is, there are no British troops in the game. According to Electronic Arts, Medal of Honor "does not allow players to kill British soldiers". So how could Medal of Honor be "thoroughly un-British"? Oh right, it can't.

A spokesperson for Fox says the politician "stood by" his comments. "The point remains that part of this game allows you to play the part of the Taliban attacking ISAF troops in the area of central Helmand where British troops are operating."

The most worrying part about this? Fox is shooting his mouth off about something he clearly misconstrued. He didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't have all the facts. Total cowboy stuff.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the UK's Secretary of State for Defence, Liam Fox.

BBC News - Liam Fox defends call for ban of Medal of Honor game [BBC] [Pic]

How tempting it was to write "Fox wants Medal of Honor banned." For while the U.K.'s defense (sigh, defence) secretary is named Liam Fox, he's not the fearmongering U.S. network.

Fox (again, man, not network) is of course pissed that the game's multiplayer mode allows one side to fight as Taliban insurgents against 'Mericans - sorry, coalition forces. Many in this noncontroversy have gone out of their way to take offense (sigh, offence) but Fox (not the network) gets special commendation. He's assuming that because one of the multiplayer maps is set within Helmland province, where U.K. forces are based, this explicitly means the game's killing British troops.

"I am disgusted and angry. It's hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game," the man who is not the network said. "I would urge retailers to show their support for our armed forces and ban this tasteless product."

Really, y'all have jingo-spouting superpatriots over there, too? Damn.

I mean, why hasn't U.S. Defence (sorry, Defense) Secretary Robert Gates had anything to say about Medal of Honor? Possibly because he is a sensible man with bigger responsibilities to fulfill right now.

Speaking of shitbag misleading headlines, check out The Press Association's below.

Fox Urges Ban On Taliban Video Game [Yahoo News. Thanks Nick C. Image via.]

Good news and bad news for Medal of Honor fans: Gunfighters, the level shown off at Gamescom that has you controlling a gunner in an Apache helicopter, is a blast to play... but it's also the only one that takes place in the gunship.

Playing through the level earlier today in a behind-closed-doors meeting with the developers, I was reminded of just how much I enjoyed and miss attack helicopter video games.

While there have only been a few such games over the past decade or so, I've always thoroughly enjoyed them. And Medal of Honor's quick dip into the under-served genre is no different.

Gunfighters takes place somewhere well into the game, a game that is, of course, not a helicopter combat title but instead a first-person shooter. But Gunfighters follows a level that has you controlling elite "Tier One Operators" as they mark targets in the mountains of Afghanistan for an Apache attack helicopter assault.

The game does this on occasion, said Medal of Honor product manager Kevin O'Leary.

"There are two types of missions in Medal of Honor," he said. "The first type is scalpel, very quiet, stealthy missions, these missions lead for a sledgehammer mission, that's typical big-army, boots-on-the-ground stuff."

Gunfighters is part of that sledgehammer gameplay.

The mission opens with me in control of the gunner position of the helicopter, staring out the side of the gunship as it hovers across the barren Afghanistan landscape.

The controls are slightly different than what I'm used to. Most importantly, as the gunner I have no control of the helicopter itself. Instead, I control the weapons, using the PlayStation 3's top right trigger to fire the machine gun, the bottom right to fire missiles and the top left trigger to zoom in slightly to help find and pinpoint targets. I can also launch a Hellfire missile at distant targets that have been marked by holding in the bottom left trigger.

Firing the machine gun kicks up a considerable amount of dust and dirt, chewing through whatever I point it at, including people. While ammo doesn't seem to be an issue, you do have to make sure the gun doesn't overheat. The helicopter has hundreds of missiles in it's cache, though it only loads eight at a time. After you shoot those off you need to wait for it to reload.

The mission starts off simply enough, with a bit of training disguised as a weapons check.

I'm impressed by the radio chatter constantly streaming out of the speakers.

O'Leary tells me that the developers worked closely with a real Apache team in creating not only the mission but also that chatter. Every line spoken in the mission was approved by them, he says. I can believe it.

The mission takes the helicopter around the mountains, into a town packed with enemies and then back out across the mountains again on the hunt for mortar positions. Gunning down enemies with such powerful weaponry is satisfying. Spotting the armed men running from craggy cover to craggy cover is rewarding. It's the sort of level I'd like to play again.

And there are ways to die, not by getting shot, but by having your helicopter hit by RPGs, something that can happen with surprising frequency if you're not careful.

After working through the mission, O'Leary leaps to the PlayStation 3 controller to pause the game.

"I don't want the next level to load," he says. "It would spoil the surprise."

During GamesCom 2010, Linkin Park's co-lead singer Mike Shinoda realized what it takes to successfully marry music and games, but not before blowing himself up on stage in front of the hundreds of people attending Sony's press event.

The members of Linkin Park aren't just a group of guys who are lending music to EA's new Medal of Honor revamp. They're gamers as well, as Mike Shinoda proved by taking the stage to demo Medal of Honor on the big screen during Sony's big 2010 GamesCom press event on Tuesday evening.

Shinoda made it through the game level without a scratch, but as the level ended, so did his life. ‘Mission Completed' flashed on the screen, followed quickly by ‘Mission Failed' as the exploding final objective took him out.

"I literally blew up the last thing, and then it blew me up right after," Shinoda tells me, sitting down for a brief interview amidst the glowing blue squares that make up EA's expansive media area. "You couldn't have engineered that. I couldn't recreate that if I tried."

He tells me that the other members of Linkin Park and he grew up gaming. He's a fan of first-person shooters and role-playing games. "Those are my soft spots," he says.

Shinoda is at Gamescom promoting Linkin Park's participation in EA's Medal of Honor via the song "The Catalyst," which is debuting on the band's next album, A Thousand Suns, due out September 14 in the States. "We really have made every effort to push the envelope and do something different," Shinoda says. He says the album will challenge many of the band's fans.

And it could draw some more in at the same time, now that "The Catalyst" is closely tied to EA's next big shooter.

From the Journey Escape game for the Atari 2600 to Eminem's latest showing up in Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops, the relationship between the music and video games has steadily evolved from trite tie-ins to something more meaningful. At least that's the general idea. Tacking a song onto a video game is easy enough, but creating something special via the merger is another thing altogether. Like any relationship, the one between music and video game cannot be forced.

"Being here today," says Shinoda, "I'm realizing that the times when it works the best is when it's honest, and when it's not a forced relationship. If you truly like to play a certain type of game, or you're a fan of a title and you get to collaborate with them, then that's when it's the best."

And that's the sort of relationship he believes his band has formed with EA.

"If you look at our videos and you look at the trailer that Joe Hahn created for Medal of Honor, it doesn't seem out of place at all. It fits right in with what he does and what we like. It seems to fit pretty well. "

I'd like to personally thank Mike for his time, and for not laughing too hard when I responded to his question, "Do you play music?" with "Well, I own a guitar."

Perhaps I spoke too soon about Medal of Honor's singleplayer. In this look at the campaign, executive producer Greg Goodrich says the story will be told "from two different sides."

This video shows two singleplayer missions, including one in which players head into town to gather intel on al Qaida. It seems unlikely the singleplayer would tell a story from the American forces' side and then suddenly jump into the shoes of those they're fighting. Maybe he means a story told from the perspective of Tier 1 operators and regular soldiers. Because it sounds like anything even seemingly sympathetic to a side Americans are currently fighting in real life will only ramp up the noise about the game.

GameTrailers TV [GameTrailers]

I must be inside the bubble, because the idea of playing as the Taliban in Medal of Honor multiplayer didn't hit me as particularly controversial. Fox News noticed. Though it did treat the subject reasonably, the woman they interviewed doesn't.

This segment aired on Fox & Friends yesterday and, despite the network's poor rep with gamers thanks to past treatments, its handling does come in pretty fair and balanced. They didn't have to pick this subject, of course, and it may not be news to us, but I'll allow that it is to the general public.

Anyway, here's Karen Meredith, a Gold Star mother who lost her son in Iraq six years ago. Her beef with Medal of Honor is, more or less, that it's disrespectful. And that it's coming out at a time when the U.S. is having a bad month in Afghanistan.

"Families burying their children are going to be seeing this and playing this," she alleges. I seriously doubt anyone in the throes of grief will choose to pay $60 to be hurt by this war again.

The Fox News anchor does point out the Taliban component is part of the game's multiplayer mode, and that the average gamer age is 35 - 39 for someone buying this particular title. So, no B.S. about this desensitizing children to violence or war.

Although he doesn't differentiate that the singleplayer game - the story being told - is entirely the U.S. perspective, I'm not sure that detail would mean much to the majority of his audience, or to this woman.

Fox read a pretty candid statement from Electronic Arts' Amanda Taggart: "Most of us have been doing this since we were seven. If someone's the cop, someone's gotta be the robber, someone's gotta be the pirate, and someone's gotta be the alien. In ‘Medal of Honor' multiplayer, someone's gotta be the Taliban."

I'm not sure this woman gets it that the multiplayer only concerns the hat you wear; Taliban fighters in MOH multiplayer are not fighting for a cause, and neither are the Americans. The alternative to a playable Taliban is, what, U.S. soldiers shooting each other?

Meredith, naturally, mentions the abortive "Six Days in Fallujah," as some kind of evidence that games publishers can be shamed into showing respect for the current war. "Six Days" ran into a buzzsaw because it invoked a specific, brutal conflict and then, Atomic Games did the extremely stupid thing of bragging it had Iraqi insurgents as consultants on the project. To my knowledge, Medal of Honor concerns fictitious operations in Afghanistan and its military advisors are entirely American, or at least not Taliban.

But Meredith's problem seems to be that any game would be made about a current, ongoing conflict. World War II games are fine because "that's far removed, that's not based on real people." Well, neither is Medal of Honor, to be honest.

Fine. I think trying to convince her of this game's legitimacy, and the respect gamers still have for the armed forces despite (and perhaps because of) playing it, would be like talking to a stop sign. She's done a very good job of going out of her way to be offended by something she doesn't consume, and then relying on her martyr status to get her way.

Video Game Lets You Be The Taliban [Fox News, thanks Robert R.]

The ability to play as the Taliban forces in Medal of Honor could have been a defining moment in the history of video games. Sadly, it won't be.

Last year, a promising war title from Atomic Games that was set in the current conflict in Iraq ended up in development limbo, as publishers Konami backed down from releasing the game following a political debate over the morality of releasing a game set in a war that's still ongoing. There were also concerns about the involvement of insurgents in the development process.

This year, EA is publishing Medal of Honor. It's a war title, one set in a conflict that's still ongoing, only this time it's Afghanistan, not Iraq. Far from being in development limbo, it's shaping up to be one of the biggest games of the year, despite the fact that its multiplayer modes allow you to play as the Taliban.

Surely that's a point of contention, right? A game that allows you to play as a member of one of the most dangerous and despised (at least in the West) organisations in the world, one responsible directly for the deaths of thousands of Western soldiers and Afghani civilians and one of the most repressive regimes in recent history?

It is. And as we nudge closer to the game's October release date, you can bet questions will be raised over the morality and suitability of allowing young Western kids to play a game as the Taliban, where your objectives in a multiplayer game will be to kill digital American soldiers. Digital soldiers based on actual living, breathing American troops.

When those questions are asked, it would have been great to see the game's developers and publishers steel themselves, and be able to justify on creative and artistic grounds their decision to include a game mode where you could play as terrorists. And not fictional terrorists like those in Counter-Strike. Real ones, who are attacking and wounding and killing Western troops as you read this.

Magazine PSM3 asked recently. And got this response, from DICE's Patrick Liu.

"We can't get away from what the setting is and who the factions are but, in the end, it's a game, so we're not pushing or provoking too hard."

It's OK. It's just a game.

No! An established brand from a big-name publisher would have been a great moment for a games developer to make a statement. Do something that, beyond the crass, juvenile inclusion of things like ultra-violence, drugs and boobs, was genuinely controversial for a video game. Something political, something that took balls.

I don't mean this in terms of "making games art". That's not what this is about. This is about making games - or, at least, big-budget blockbuster games - something a little more impactful than the one-dimensional fodder we're mostly presented with.

I've seen plenty of movies where you see things from the "bad guy's" perspective. Read books, read comics, too. Stories where bad things are done to good people by Nazis, or Crusaders, or any number of other unsavoury types. They can be uncomfortable, but often that's what can make a work truly memorable, as they cause you to really consider the nature of a struggle, or one group's determination to wage war on another.

But no! Not in this game. You're not really playing as the Taliban. They're just multiplayer skins, EA aren't pushing it, it's just a game. Relax. It's just a game. Something trivial, something frivolous. Well, as long that's the defence for something as contentious as this, that's sadly all it will ever be.

[via Connected Consoles]

Last week, I hit up GameTrailers HQ for a taping of The Bonus Round to talk about the fall's biggest shooters. That includes Halo: Reach, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Joining me were Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter and Shacknews' Garnett Lee. See if you agree with a sleepy version of me in thinking that Halo: Reach will be Bungie's best game to date, that Black Ops will sell less than Modern Warfare 2 and that Medal of Honor isn't doing enough—at this point—to differentiate itself from the other modern day military shooters on the market.

And if I look really sleepy at any point during this episode, it's because I was.

As promised, the Medal of Honor video, directed by Linkin Park's Joe Hahn, featuring both live-action and gameplay sequences set to the band's new song "The Catalyst," went up today. Someone certainly grew an epic beard for this trailer.

I'm told that's EA producer Greg Goodrich as Rabbit, who's been working on that badass beard since at least E3. Warning to those with empty stomachs, this thing goes into serious shakycam at the end.

Medal of Honor will be on store shelves on October 12. Linkin Park's new album, A Thousand Suns will be in stores on September 14.

I'm probably least qualified to talk about military shooters or Linkin Park, so don't take my lack of comment as any judgment. Knowing you guys, you probably have zillions of opinions. Fire away.

[Thanks Excaliburps for the heads-up]

EA sweetens the deal for players picking up the limited edition of the modern-day Medal of Honor reboot on October 12, with a beta invite for DICE's highly anticipated Battlefield 3 in every package.

We've heard nary a peep regarding Battlefield 3 since EA COO John Pleasants mentioned it back in June of 2009. All we've known since then is that the game is in development.

Now we know a sure-fire way to get into the beta.

Along with some extra weapons and a remastered version of Medal of Honor: Frontline (exclusive to the PlayStation 3 version), picking up the $59.99 limited edition of Medal of Honor ensures players a spot in the Battlefield 3 beta test, which should happen within twelve months of Medal of Honor's release, according to the EA beta website.

Medal of Honor goes on sale on October 12 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. I get the feeling sales numbers will be much higher now that this news has hit.