US Army bases still won't stock MOH

The US military has no plans to reverse its decision about stocking Medal of Honor on Army and Air Force bases around the world.

That's according to a spokesperson for the Army & Air Force Exchange Service, who told Kotaku it wouldn't be stocking the game "out of respect to those touched by the ongoing, real-life events presented as a game".

"While we regret any inconvenience this may cause, our position is consistent with the direction stated a month ago," the spokesperson said.

Medal of Honor's single-player campaign is set in the Shahikot Valley in Afghanistan and focuses on a mixture of US Army Rangers, elite Tier One Operators and Apache specialists at the start of the Afghanistan war against the Taliban.

But it is the game's multiplayer component that has found itself in the headlines because of the developers' decision to allow players to control the Taliban as one of its playable forces.

Following high-profile complaints from the likes of UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox, publisher Electronic Arts recently decided to rename the Taliban "Opposing Force" in multiplayer encounters.

However, the Taliban and the battle against them remains the focus of the single-player game, and the "Opposing Force" tweak is just a name change in menus - players still ostensibly control the Taliban in multiplayer.

EA studio Danger Close has denied that the game is "about the Taliban or Al-Qaeda" in the past, stressing that its narrative focus is on soldiers rather than politics.

"The story that we wanted to tell was about these guys in this initial fight, and the individuals that we hooked up with happened to be doing it there," the game's executive producer Greg Goodrich told Eurogamer last month.

"It's an historical fiction inspired by these guys in an historical event, like Saving Private Ryan... That's where they were."

Medal of Honor is out on 12th October and will be reviewed early next week.