Cubans upset at new video game that aims to kill Fidel Castro

Cuba’s state-run media and bloggers are not amused at Call of Duty: Black Ops, a new videogame in which the player can join a secret operation in the 1960s to assassinate former leader Fidel Castro.

“What the US government did not manage to do in 50 years, now it attempts to accomplish by virtual means,” said comments on the website Cubadebate, where Mr Castro regularly publishes opinion pieces.

The site was referring to the numerous plots to kill the Cuban president, which the government said numbers 638.

The latest installment of the hit Call of Duty franchise went on sale in North America and Europe on Tuesday, ditching World War II and modern-day environments for a Cold War theme.

The game’s first mission is to assassinate Fidel Castro before the 1962 missile crisis, the moment when the Cold War came closest to tipping into a full-blown nuclear conflict.

Later missions take gamers inside the former Soviet Union and southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

Castro, now 84, led Cuba from the 1959 revolution until he stepped down for health reasons in 2006. His brother Raul Castro is currently the president of the communist nation.

On one hand, the game “glorifies the attempts that in an illegal manner the US government planned against Mr Castro,” while on the other it “stimulates sociopathic behaviour among American children and adolescents, the main consumers” of those games, Cubadebate said.