PETA is officially unhappy with Battlefield 3 because of a callous, brutal and utterly inhumane sequence of rat-stabbing.

Pop quiz, hotshot: how many rats have you snuffed in all your videogaming adventures? If you answered less than "about a bazillion," you're a dirty liar and we can't be friends anymore. Because we all know that when it comes to laying the cheap XP beatdown on filthy creatures that nobody cares about, it's Rats Uber Alles, baby. But that doesn't sit well with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Germany, which issued a statement today criticizing the game for allowing players to stab a rat with a combat knife and then toss its carcass away like... well, like a dead rat.

"[Battlefield 3] gives players the option of [stabbing] a rat with a combat knife in the back and then lifting it by the tail, then casting [the dead body] aside like trash," the organization said in a Google-translated statement.

"There have been repeated cases in Germany of animal cruelty, where young people kill animals in cruel ways," it continued, drawing a "science says" connection between videogames and bad behavior in the real world. "Inspiration for these acts they received in the past, often by violent movies and computer games."

It's a bit silly, given that rats have been the go-to punching bag for gamers pretty much since the dawn of time, but this isn't PETA's first foray into videogame criticism. Super Meat Boy, Cooking Mama and Madden NFL 12 have all come under fire in the past and in March 2009 the group leveled very similar criticism at Activision's Call of Duty: World at War for allowing players to shoot German attack dogs.

Battlefield 3 publisher Electronic Arts has not yet commented on the PETA criticism, and is not expected to.

via: Battlefield 3 Blog