They try to use that in the story in a smart way. And this dissonance comes up. But it is not done very well. But the British aren't the bad guys in this. All atrocities are either traced back to the templars or actually to the colonial insurgents.

I've read that the advertising was supposedly very anti-british, the game itself is it certainly not.

I never could understand why the brits were so upset about that tbh. I mean the game was based on events from over 200 years ago. Its not like the modern brits were made villains in the game... hell, Shaun is British for fucksake.

There's actually a line in an British advertisement: "They speak of Freedom but for whom" that the British seemed to ignore.
They're probably just pissed off of the Americans always being portrayed as the good guys in every single game. I don't know one game where the Americans are the villains.

Spec Ops: The Line?

I just noticed something relevant to this topic. In Vice City, the edge of the crotch of their g-strings are so pixelated that it looks like they've got a huge forest of pubes sticking out of the sides. If nothing else, it gave me a bit of a chuckle while waiting for the Pole Position asset to complete.

Never played it. Are they actual villains or have the "excuse" of being a traitor like in Modern Warfare 2?

I just finished Flat Out and moved straight onto Flat Out Ultimate Carnage (The PC version of the Xbox 360 version of Flat Out 2) and I thought I might be a bit disappointed at first as the tight and twisty tracks have been replaced with long straights and sweeping bends like Burn Out or Need or Speed but happily, once I'd adjusted I realised that, OMG,this game is AWESOME yay \o/
HOWEVER seeing as the next one - FlatOut 3 has been made by a different Dev and has a metacritic score of just 23 I strongly suspect disappointing sequalage in my future!
BTW bit of a gip from Steam that they sold me a pack containing Flat Out, Flat Out 2 Flat Out Ultimate Carnage and Flat Out 3 without explaining that FO:UC is just a HD remake of the 2nd one, good job it was only £10 and the 2 games I've played so far have been amazing!

Witcher 2.

First was developed for PC, second was clearly an unthinking and unpleasurable console port.

First had a likable, nicely understated character who would stand up also for the under dogs, the second had harsh world that mocked the vanquished or underprivileged (e.g. the prostitute hanging herself, the balatantly disgusting Dethmold character that "happened" to be gay) with cynicism that was surely intended, but not very likable, not to my mind enjoyable.

On top of that, scripted "boss fights" where due to non-open world it was not even possible to roam about and do side quests until one gets enough margin not to execute those fights EXACTLY as one has to. The pleasure of RPG genre is in the creative build up to any given fight, IMO.

Hmm... I can think of some where Americans are portrayed as flawed or dark "heroes" (see any war game set in Vietnam), but none where America as a whole is portrayed as the force of evil.

I think it would be actually rather enjoyable to have a really horribly offensive anti-USA FPS where we're all portrayed as maniacal overweight inbred hillbillies with shotguns and whiskey who invade more civilized foreign countries to oppress them under the dictatorship of capitalism.

inb4lolthatgameiscalledunitedstatesforeignpolicy

lol that game is called... aw. :P

What about non-American FPSs? If we have American FPSs about shooting cartoonishly evil British people, are there any British shooters about shooting cartoonishly evil Americans?

See, I think I'd actually get some enjoyment out of that. Playing the righteous civilized British fighting an unruly barbarian uprising.

Yeah, that actually sounds kind of fabulous.

Especially if they portrayed the British as ridiculously...well...British as possible.

C-o-m-p-l-e-t-e-l-y o-p-t-i-o-n-a-l.

In GTAIV, it's vital to advance the storyline in certain places (if memory serves me correctly). In San Andreas admittedly, the only time it's required you also have to option to just kill the cunt so I suppose that's acceptable.