Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
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Why Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has torture, child combat, and shooting unarmed women

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 20 min

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has some of the most difficult scenes I have ever seen in a video game. When I saw a couple of the scenes during a preview in May, I felt like they went too far. The violence made me more than uncomfortable.

Now that I’ve played the full game (here is my full review), I would add another scene: the waterboarding of a freedom fighter by Russian captors. Taken by themselves, these are scenes that parents should be aware of when they nonchalantly permit underage kids to play the game, ignoring the Mature (17 and older) rating. And yes, this is one of those games where parents should know what their kids are playing.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.