I decided to sit down and think about all the good things that come from videogames and playing online. Apart from social interaction, friendships, knowledge, leadership, organization, team building, lans and close, friendly communities I was totally stumped.

Then my attention drifted over to one of the latest fads. World War 2 games. My mind wondered back to the time I bought Medal of Honor, leading a team of Americas highly inept, who, for reasons still beyond me, seemed to think walking into a sniper’s field of vision was an excellent idea.

I remembered a level in this game called "Omaha Beach". I'm sure many of you, who have played the game, will know exactly what I'm talking about. This level was the epitome of fear, horror and pure evil all rolled into one.

I had known of Omaha Beach from history at school and old war documentaries on television but I had never, until this point in my life, really taken into account how brutal, how sickening and how utterly horrific this tragic moment in the war really was.

Ignorant, I ran out of the boat and swam to the beach; unaware of how lucky I was to of actually reached the shore. I knelt down and prepared to assess the situation. Around four seconds later my player was nothing more than a lifeless corpse.

So I respawned and headed towards the beach again, new tactics being thought up as I ran for my life looking for any signs of possible shelter. Landmine. Dead again.

I decided to take a different viewpoint of the game. This time I pretended that every man in the boat was someone I'd grown to know over time. As the boat reached its destination the bridge lowered with a metallic clunk and my teammates ran, without hesitation into a hailstorm of smoke, gunfire and explosions.

In less than seventeen seconds I had witnessed every one of them die. Bodies thrown like ragdolls across the beach by concealed landmines, men cut in half by what I can only describe as a whip of machine gun fire. It seemed as if the AI had been programmed with fear as I watched one man freak out only to be silenced by a single bullet from the barrel of a sniper's rifle.

I didn't even bother to step out of the boat for I knew what little good it would do.

If the emotions I felt were for mere AI teammates then I can only try to imagine the sheer level of fear, stress and anxiety felt by the solders who were really there, at Omaha Beach on that fateful day, 6th June, 1944.

For them there were no respawns. The men who surrounded them were practically family and I can only assume most of them knew they would be dead within two minutes of touching land.

How horrible it must of been to of witnessed this event first hand, trying to lament the death of their friends as they aspired to stay alive even though their hopes were rapidly diminishing as they ran through the remains of those who had departed before them.

These men were fighting two wars. They fought one on the battlefield and another in their head. The respect I have for the fortitude they showed as they ran into the jaws of death is that where I cannot put it into words without failing to do it justice.

No game can ever bring such a level of mental anguish and disturbing aftermath to a gamer yet Medal of Honor succeeded in opening my eyes to the true horror of one moment in a bloody, evil war.