Cinema Won't Let You Be The Terrorist, But Video Games Will

Cinema is finding it harder to compete with video games for the attention and dollars of youth. When you see videos like this - Modern Warfare 2 In 90 Seconds - it's easy to see why Hollywood is losing the battle.

A blockbuster video game which sees players act as terrorists and shoot up civilians has sparked calls for the Australian classification system to be cleaned up.

"When the terrorist level starts you step out of an elevator, the memorable line is one of the guys turning around to you and saying 'Remember, no Russian,'" he told ABC News Online.

"Then all of you bring your guns up and you just unleash on an entire crowd of people. There's people screaming, some people trying to put their hands up to surrender, but everybody gets mowed down. You can choose not to shoot, but you can also choose to throw grenades, kill security guards.

"You eventually come up to a balcony where you're looking down on a massive crowd of people and then you can unleash of them. Then you have to take out a SWAT team with riot shields."

Modern Warfare 2 is claimed to have sold 7 million copies in its first 24 hours of release. Something like a $500-700 million dollar one day gross, when Hollywood wets itself when a movie makes $30 million in a weekend. Tens of thousands of copies of the game are now also being downloaded every hour through hundreds of torrent sites.

With a widescreen TV and thumping surround sound, cinemas can no longer match games like this for a mind-blowing visual experience.

James Cameron's Avatar In 3D is unlikely to do much to change this reality.