New video game depicts Venezuela mercenary attack

Tag : Electronic Game
New video game depicts Venezuela mercenary attack By Frank Jack Daniel CARACAS (Reuters) - A video game depicting mercenaries stormingVenezuela, which has been criticized in the oil-rich South Americancountry as a blueprint for an invasion, will be released by a U.S.company this weekend. The release is likely to anger allies of President Hugo Chavez, aWashington foe, who has in the past threatened to cut off oilexports to the United States. The game, "Mercenaries 2: World in Flames," will be released onSunday by a division of Electronic Arts Inc <ERTS.O> and isset in a "fully destructible Venezuela," the company said in a newsrelease. "A power hungry tyrant uses Venezuela's oil supply to overthrow thegovernment and turns the country into a war zone," the company saysof the game on its Web site. In 2006, when the game was first announced, lawmakers from Chavez'scoalition called it an example of a U.S. government-inspiredpropaganda campaign against Chavez that could even help lay thepsychological groundwork for an actual invasion. "All the controversy around this is kind of comical," ElectronicArts spokesman Jeff Brown said. "At the end of the day you have toremind yourself it's a damned video game."

The government on Friday said it could not immediately comment onthe game's release. Chavez, who first tried to take power by force in 1992, was electedto office in 1998. Relations with the United States deteriorateddramatically after Washington initially welcomed a short-lived coupagainst him. The former soldier, who is popular among the poor for spending theproceeds of an oil boom on social programs, frequently accuses theUnited States, Venezuela's main oil client, of plotting tooverthrow him. He has replaced aging military equipment with billions of dollarsof Russian weapons including fighter jets and plans to strengthenthe country's reservist army to repel, he says, a potential U.S.invasion. A trailer for the game, set in 2010, features mercenaries withAmerican accents storming oil installations during a bloody coup bya tyrant called Ramon Solano. "It is time the Venezuelan people stop paying for the greed offoreign interests, we will make them pay dearly for our oil. Fromthis day forward everybody pays," the character says before shotsof helicopter gunships and tanks attacking familiar Venezuelanlandscapes. Chavez has nationalized oil projects owned by U.S. companies likeExxon <XOM.N> and ConocoPhillips <COP.N>. (Editing by Eric Beech)
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