There was the COD game where everyone was up in arms because in one mission, you play an undercover agent, who's infiltrated a terrorist cell, and you are forced to go along with a terrorist plot where you either shoot civilians or let them be shot.... There was already enough written about this at the time.

However, none of those articles mentioned how this "controversial" mission fit into the game's plot - that the crazed American military leader had deliberately put you in that situation, and forced you to fail at stopping the terrorists, as part of his plan to start a global conflict by creating terrorist attacks against his own country, so that there would be an excuse for him to recruit more Americans and deploy them overseas... Something something nine eleven was an inside job references, etc...

The "No Russian" mission - it would be a good mission to cover in a video discussing controversy. Amusingly, I played the game a year or two after its release, and played right through the mission without realizing it was controversial. After I stumbled across the controversy (when I was near the end of the game), I had to watch a youtube video of someone playing through the match to even remember what it was.

No no ... I don't think that there are any controversies with the call of duty.

Side note: I like how the younger the game is, the less severe its controversy becomes.

This stuff is pretty screwed up if you think about it:

1982: Custer's Revenge: The game depicts a crudely-rendered General Custer dodging arrows to reach a naked, native-American woman tied to a pole. For surviving, he was allowed to have sex with her, and points for doing so.

1992: Wolfenstein 3D Violence, gore, Nazi symbolism, and the inclusion of Adolf Hitler as the final boss

And then you've got present games that are apparently "controversial":

2007: Mario Party 8: Use of the phrase "Turn the train spastic! Make this ticket tragic!" by the character Kamek caused controversy in the United Kingdom, where the word spastic is considered offensive.

2008: Little Big Planet: Lyrics from a licensed song, "Tapha Niang", were removed due to fears that Muslims would be offended as it allegedly contained words from the Quran.

2009: Left 4 Dead 2: The cover art in the UK had to be altered due to a potentially offensive hand gesture being depicted.

Who cares?

I wonder what this says about our society?

Manhunt? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhunt_(video_game)#Controversy

"Side note: I like how the younger the game is, the less severe its controversy becomes. ... I wonder what this says about our society?"

I don't think there's necessarily evidence of that - I suspect there's recentism bias in that every time a minor story pops up these days, someone can edit it into Wikipedia, but it's a lot harder digging out references for games 20-30 years ago, so you're more likely to only get the more notable examples.

Not that I think your first two examples were any more controversial anyway - the General Custer one just sounds surreal, and I don't think including Hitler as a boss to defeat is in itself controversial (there are plenty of fictional depictions of Hitler, and people aren't going to be offended by one that portrays him as the enemy or a bad guy). Violence yes, but there are plenty of modern day examples of those games too.

And I wonder if Little Big Planet is on the list because it might have been controversial if they'd released it with the lyrics, or if it's controversial because people were offended that they removed them... I mean that's the thing with this kind of thing, you might say "Who cares" to the people offended, but also, who cares if a company chooses to remove some lyrics or alter some cover art.

No no ... I don't think that there are any controversies with the call of duty.

I was aiming for the other category actually

which category are you trying to aim ?

No no ... I don't think that there are any controversies with the call of duty.

I was aiming for the other category actually

which category are you trying to aim ?

propaganda

Speaking of propaganda games, there are some faux-propaganda games out there (played for the humor).

Glorious Leader! is one (GameDev.net thread).