Reality Bytes

By Julie Rawe; Logan Orlando

Hey, mom and dad! Video games are achieving even higher shock value by pairing the latest in computer-generated gore with historical tragedies, urban thuggery and real-time foreign crises.

JFK RELOADED A Scottish firm launched this so-called docugame on the anniversary of the assassination last week. The game's website jfk-reloaded.com is offering up to $100,000 to the player who most closely re-creates the shots Lee Harvey Oswald fired from the Texas School Book Depository. (Points are subtracted for hitting Jackie.) Although the novelty was excoriated by Ted Kennedy's spokesman, the site has received more than 500,000 hits.

JOHN KERRY'S SILVER STAR Regardless of their politics, players at kumawar.com can try to re-enact Kerry's much-scrutinized swift-boat mission. Using satellite images and input from veterans, the site attracts some 300,000 visitors a month to games based on actual military events--`a la Uday and Qusay's Last Stand--that are so realistic the U.S. Army is starting to use them for training. GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS As former gang members debate its authenticity on online message boards, politicians and parents' groups condemn the No. 1--selling video game for glorifying street culture. Players can hire prostitutes, and although no sex occurs onscreen, the controller shakes to simulate an orgasm. SHELLSHOCK: NAM '67 A cross between Saving Private Ryan and Apocalypse Now, this brutal game from the makers of Tomb Raider lets characters take drugs and watch a comrade chop up a hooker.

TOM CLANCY'S GHOST RECON 2 Developed in cooperation with Defense Department contractors, this new release at Blockbuster has been assailed by Pyongyang for depicting multinational forces invading North Korea amid food riots. A government-run newspaper there noted that U.S. video games featuring invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq preceded actual wars. By Julie Rawe and Logan Orlando