It’s 2.6 GB, but if you have the disk space and five hours to spare, go here to download Glorious Mission Online, a first-person shooter you’ll be hearing a lot more about in the coming hours and days.

Glorious Mission is the People’s Liberation Army’s military simulation, developed by the Chinese company Giant Interactive Group. A few years ago, it was used as a training and leisure program for real, actual Chinese soldiers. Now, it’s a free, downloadable game that lets players try their hand at defending the Diaoyu Islands.

The game was released on Thursday, on the anniversary of the founding of the PLA.

Reports Reuters:

The PLA was interested in having a 3D interactive game for simulations with virtual replicas of their weapons, said Richard Chiang, a spokesman for Giant Interactive.

“The military was 100 percent behind this game,” he said. “Rather than playing the same foreign games like Call of Duty and being American Marines shooting Russians or whatnot, Chinese can actually play as Chinese soldiers.”

A term you’ll hear throughout the game is guizi, referring to the “Japanese devils” who occupied China during World War II.

“The guizi are coming!” warns the game in a scenario where players are tasked with defending a World War Two-era Shanghai and its cultural artefacts from Japanese invaders.

“The guizi have been obliterated!” Glorious Mission congratulates the player after a grenade explodes under the last enemy’s feet. Shanghai’s museums are saved.

Yes, save the museums. Save the motherland. Capture those rocks in the East China Sea.

If you get tired of Glorious Mission (and why would you get tired of it?), we recommend Defense of the Diaoyu Islands. It’s not really the same kind of game, but when the objective is to kill Japanese, what does it matter?

UPDATE, 8/6, 12:32 am: Caveat emptor. As sent along by reader Joel M:

We thank and curse Kotaku for alerting us to the game “Defense of the Diaoyu Islands,” hosted on Chinese Global Times’s website, wherein a player takes control of a Chinese warship that must kill as many Japanese enemies as possible before inevitable failure.

It’s interesting, but what a time suck.

“Defence of the Diaoyu Islands takes after pretty much every single screen scrolling shooter from Raiden to Ikaruga,” explains Eric Jou. “Basically the player takes control of a Chinese ‘Diaoyu Island’ patrol ship for the purpose of defending the Diaoyu Island!”

Or as one Reddit commenter put it, “All this taught me is that the Japanese Navy is fucking badass.”

Two keys for getting a high score:

1. Level up on weapons, preferably the laser.

2. Hitting space bar will destroy all enemies on screen.

30,900 is my high score. Reddit’s platypusmusic has 50,000. And yours?

While checking out coverage of the “invisible console” unveiling of the Playstation 4 in New York, I was struck by a familiar sight. No, not Diablo III. During the gameplay footage of Killzone 4, I recognized a certain oft-blighted building here in Beijing. Amidst the the civil unrest between the Helghest and Vektan loomed the unmistakeable curves and orbs of the Zaha Hadid-designed Galaxy SOHO.

Why? In a bid to convince the often pride-motivated Chinese government to end its June 2000 ban on video game consoles, perhaps Sony ordered a launch title to feature a building from the capital city. Or maybe, with the civil strife and sectarian violence of Killzone 4 eliciting the long repressed memories of the pre-July 14th revolution in the Baghdad of her childhood, Hadid is compelled to design for the game a building evoking life under the rule of an authoritarian regime.

More likely, it’s just a case of designers in one field taking inspiration from designers in another.

That being said, you’d think if you were given the blank slate of a future world to create architecture not bound by present conventions, construction capabilities or even physics, you wouldn’t resort to copying an empty office building in downtown Beijing.

(Images Gizmodo [from 55-second mark of video below], People’s Daily)

That’s from Swedish photographer Christian Åslund, whose photography series “Honkey Kong” was commissioned by shoe brand Jim Rockey. The website Hong Wrong tells us that it’s “a tribute to classic 2D platform games, integrating a person into street scenes.”

Shot from above using a telephoto lens, the images appear flat and look as if the subject is navigating the streets. Åslund used walkie-talkies to co-ordinate with friends on the ground and kept retouching to a minimum. Accessing rooftops was the toughest part of the shoot, though some local film students worked as fixers.

Amazing results ensue. Check out Hong Wrong for more pics. (Not for those who suffer from vertigo.)

PHOTOGRAPHY – ‘Honkey Kong’ – HK Photographed as a 2-D Platform Game (Hong Wrong)

Here is the cinematic intro to Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising, a tactical shooter game released in October 2009. In it, an island originally owned by the Chinese, called Skira, is jointly colonized by Russia and Japan through military force in the 17th and early-18th centuries. After the Russo-Japanese War, Japan gains the entire island, then loses it back to Russia following World War II. Sometime during the Cold War, oil is discovered on this volcanic island but is “hard to reach.” After the Cold War ends, Russia and the US become bound by certain treaty arrangements related to Skira. In 2004, a “massive Chinese economic boom” depletes the country’s domestic reserves of oil, and after the global economic crisis of 2008, Chinese leadership destabilizes as the people gravitate toward hardliners. In 2011, China mobilizes its forces toward Russia, closer to Skira Island. Russia responds. And then, the PLA takes Skira, claiming “original ownership.” The trailer ends with the US sending forces to the Sea of Japan.

Swap out Russia for Japan, and does any of this sound familiar?

The connection was made by Reddit user XADE101, and if nothing else, it makes me want to play the game. I’m sure the Bo Xilai scandal is tied into Operation Flashpoint’s storyline somehow. You know what they say: reality imitates first-person shooters. Youku video for those in China after the jump. (Update, 12:53 pm: The video was up for a good hour-plus before censors removed it. I wonder which senior censor figured out the connection.)

We’ve seen, on more than one occasion, people here play real-life Frogger to disastrous results. A news show in Heilongjiang Province called Xinwen Yehang (新闻夜航, literally “News Night Flight”) has connected the dots — Frogger… real-life… BAD — and compiled several dozen examples of jaywalking pedestrians risking their health to get across a street in Harbin called Edmonton Road.

If not for the 8-bit music, the running commentary is best: “In the last half-hour, 392 people chose to cross the street, 66 cars crossed the double-lines to U-turn.”

And the vox pop from atop a nearby pedestrian bridge:

Journalist: “Aren’t (your bags) heavy?”

Man: “Heavy. But paying attention to safety is best. Of course I understand the traffic rules.”

At the very end, the earnest journalist — bless her — says, “Life isn’t as simple as video games. When you pass in the game, you can level up. If you fail, you can try again. But as for people’s lives, they only have one.” Youku video for those in China after the jump.

This is not the first time within the last four months that someone playing real-life Frogger in China has been captured on video losing. In March, there was this (I added the music… it seemed appropriate at the time), in which a man sprinting across heavy traffic gets nailed by a van in the furthermost lane. Apparently that video wasn’t enough of a deterrence, a clear message that real-life Frogger is a bad idea. In the above (on Youku after the jump for those in China), two kids in Changde, Hunan province, out of boredom, sprint across four lanes. Then they sprint back. They successfully cross the road a third time. And then, during the fourth attempt, it’s game over for one of them.

The boy, luckily, suffered no life-threatening injuries, though his broken hip will probably keep him from sprinting anywhere for a long while.

It’s unclear whether this was done out of love or spite, but a man in Beijing, reacting to his girlfriend’s constant nagging about his lack of prospects, his laziness, and other things girlfriends generally dislike, decided to show some initiative and prove his worth. He rented the big screen at Beijing West Railway Station, plugged in his laptop, parked himself on a suitcase… and began playing video games. Yeah. That’ll show that harridan!

This actually happened a week ago, but Chinese news teams are picking up on it just now. More images after the jump, via QQ Games (h/t Alicia).

China doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to intellectual property. Big international companies spend lots of money fighting IP theft when smaller groups here in China happen to “borrow” IP rights. Which is why the current IKEA commercial in its spring public transport ad campaign seems a little strange.

Sound familiar? Yeah, pretty sure that’s the old NES Super Mario 3 song… you know, from World 1, Level 2, i.e. Overworld 2. It’s “creatively altered,” so it seems unlikely the company licensed the tune. You would think IKEA, a company promoting creative furniture and storage solutions, could at least commission some of their own music rather than ripping off the poor, unemployed plumber Mario. Koji Kondo would like his residuals check, please.

Mr. Smith is a consultant living in Beijing.

In case you’d forgotten what the original sounds like (off-key, but close enough):

The worst part about what happens here is you see it coming and you want to shout some warning to the guy, a simple “Wait!” or “Whoa there!” But there’s no pause button in real life: it just happens, sometimes in slow motion — the man hesitating, quickly glancing both ways to make sure he can at least clear the first couple of lanes; the slow-moving white van concealing the fast-moving white van on its (and the man’s) blindspot; that final stride, a gallop of faith…

The lesson here? Leave Frogger and the other DOS arcade games for the emulators.

The song is No. 43 Baojia Street’s “Mistake” :: 错误《鲍家街43号》