“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – my eleven year old was a ‘virtual Jihadi’ mowing down dozens of defenceless tourists with a Kalashnikov!” says forty three year old Didcot resident Barney Rodstall, describing the moment that he walked in on his daughter playing an Islamic extremist video game on her Xbox. “I think it was what they call a ‘First Person Shooter’, the setting seemed to be some kind of tourist resort – she was being awarded points for every tourist she killed! The more bullets she riddled one with, the more points she got! There were bonuses for wiping out entire family groups and reloads for her gun every time she took out a cop, soldier or security guard!” Appalled by what he had seen, Rodstall immediately confiscated the game from his daughter. “Naturally, I decided to investigate it a bit further – I found that there were all sorts of levels to the game,” he explains. “The tourist scenario I’d seen was just the entry level – a sort of initiation for the would be terrorist. As far as I could see the aim was to mow down as many infidels as possible in order to gain entry to an ISIS-style terror group! After that, the sorts of terror attacks become ever more difficult and elaborate. There was one set in London, involving attacks on the tube and planting bombs around historic monuments – you got a massive bonus and progression to the next level if you succeeded in bringing down Nelson’s Column!”

An enraged Rodstall took the game back to the shop where his daughter claimed to have bought it – a local branch of CEX – where he accused staff of attempting to radicalise children by selling them such games. “Obviously, they denied having any knowledge of the game’s content,” he says. “The manager claimed that it must have been part of a batch of second hand games they’d bought or part exchanged. He reckoned that his staff would have assumed that it was just a regular game. To be fair, the cover looked just like any other violent video game. Mind you, I do think the title, Modern Terror 3: Jihad!, should have tipped them off as to its content!” With the shop refusing to give his daughter a refund, Rodstall took the game to his local police station. “I told them it was clearly some kind of Jihadi recruitment tool, probably aimed at young Muslims. I mean, I just thank God that my daughter is white – if she’d been darker skinned then she’d probably be wearing a Hijab and hijacking local buses after being exposed to that game,” he claims. “I’m not sure they took me or the game seriously. Although some of their CID boys spent hours playing it – apparently they got so frustrated at not being able to get beyond the Paris street massacre level that they raided the local Mosque and arrested a couple of Imams. They interrogated them for hours, but they still couldn’t get the secret of unlocking the next level out of them.”

Despite Thames Valley Police’s reluctance to investigate the Modern Terror game further, it’s discovery isn’t an isolated occurrence. Another distraught parent, this time in Poole, discovered their child playing a similarly terror-themed video game. “I thought my nine year old boy was playing some kind of driving game on his Playstation,” says thirty eight year old Mona Washer. “Then I realised that there were screams mixed in with the engine sounds, so I decided to take a closer look – I was shocked by what I saw!” The Dorset housewife was aghast to see that her son’s ‘game’ involved him driving a hijacked coach into a busy crowd of shoppers, apparently on London’s Oxford Street. “As if that wasn’t bad enough, it was clearly set at Christmas time – the street’s decorations were clearly depicted,” she recalls. “It was quite, quite tasteless, with points earned for every Christmas shopper run over.” As with the first game, the Oxford Street massacre turned out to be only the first level of the game, with others depicting such scenarios as an articulated lorry being driven through revellers at the Glastonbury Festival. “The most sickening one involved driving a white van through a municipal park in Berlin,” Washer says. “The key to completing it was driving the van through the children’s play area. What kind of sick monster’s could create such a thing?”

Also in common with Modern Terror, the second game – entitled Driven to Glory – came in regular-looking packaging and was bought second hand. “His Gran bought it for him,” says Washer. “She had no idea it was this vile Jihadi training video – she bought it from a Christian Aid charity shop, for God’s sake!” Another game, apparently sourced from the same charity shop, later turned up in nearby Christchurch. “I thought it was a flight simulator, at first,” says twenty three year old Ryan Proop, who was given the game by his girlfriend. “Then I realised that to rack p the points, you had crash the airliner into various buildings in major world cities! It got more difficult as you went up the levels, having to avoid being shot down by fighter planes or missiles, for instance. It was pretty addictive – I got a real kick out of totalling the White House on level ten!” Proop, however, admitted getting most satisfaction from crashing his airliner into a virtual representation of his old school. “I was actually meant to be targeting the London Eye, but I couldn’t resist going off course and taking out the school in Bournemouth,” he chuckles. “I know it didn’t get me any points and cost me the level, but the thought of wiping out all those bastards who bullied me was too much to resist!”

Perhaps the most disturbing of these games was found being played by a ten year old in Bracknell. “It was nothing less than a training simulator for suicide bombers,” declares a still shaken fifty one year old Jeff Lorgue, who found his daughter playing the game – Call of Allah – on her laptop. “The player is given missions to blow up specific targets (and themselves). They have to evade security forces and infiltrate themselves into places like schools, crowded buses or government offices before detonating the explosives they are carrying. They accumulate new lives’ with each successful suicide bombing, allowing them to return to earth and go on another mission!” The number of lives accumulated on each mission also dictates how much explosive they can carry on subsequent missions. In addition to accumulating lives, players also collect ‘Virgins’ depending upon their degree of success, with the ultimate aim of collecting the seventy two virgins promised to suicide bombers when they ascend to heaven. “To cap it all, each level is introduced by a virtual simulation of the notorious ISIS terrorist ‘Jihadi John’, who gives them their mission,” says Lorgue. “I suppose we should be thankful that the players aren’t required to perform any virtual hostage beheadings.” In spite of the widespread condemnation of the Jihadist-themed video games by politicians and the media, one academic claims not to be surprised by their existence. “Why should we be surprised that Islamic terrorists are producing violent video games to inspire and indoctrinate their youth into the idea that war and terror are fun and entertaining?” muses Professor Bob Mincer, head of International Studies at the Slough Secretarial College for Young Women. “Haven’t we been doing the same thing here in the West for years, with stuff like Call of Duty and Modern Warfare?”