Cuban government says segment of game in which players try to kill former leader glorifies real assassination attempts by US

A video game developed in the US that challenges players to assassinate former Cuban president Fidel Castro has provoked an angry response from Cuba.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, which went on sale in the UK this week, is set during the cold war, with gamers taking on the role of a special operative as he saves the US from a communist plot, travelling between Cuba, Vietnam and Russia.

However, a mission in which players try to kill a young Castro has sparked a fierce response from the Cuban government.

"What the United States government did not achieve in more than 50 years, it now tries to do virtually," said a story on the government-run cubadebate website .

It said the game glorified real US attempts to kill Castro – there have been 638 attempts on the former leader's life, according to one of his bodyguards.

In 2006 Fabian Escalante, the former head of Cuban intelligence services, revealed how plots ranged from an exploding cigar that was intended to blow up in Castro's face to a fungus-contaminated wetsuit that would infect him with a chronic skin disease.

Perhaps the most fanciful plot involved planting explosives inside a mollusc shell painted in bright colours in the hope that Castro might be drawn towards it while scuba diving in the Caribbean.

In a section of Call of Duty: Black Ops set in Havana, players gun down enemy combatants while pursuing Castro, who was president of Cuba for 49 years before resigning in 2008.

"This new video game is doubly perverse," the article on cubadebate said. "On the one hand, it glorifies the illegal assassination attempts the United States government planned against the Cuban leader … and on the other, it stimulates sociopathic attitudes in North American children and adolescents."

It is not the first military-style shooter game to generate controversy this year. Medal of Honor was banned from US military bases before it went on sale last month because it let players take on the role of Taliban fighters battling US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. Developer Electronic Arts later changed the name of the combatants from Taliban to Opposing Force.

Reviewers of Call of Duty: Black Ops, which retails at around £50 in the UK, have been unfazed by the challenge of gunning down one of the primary leaders of the Cuban revolution. The game was given five stars by the Guardian.