The sole purpose of any TV advertising campaign is to tempt potential consumers into purchasing any given product. Videogames being what they are – an influential form of interactive entertainment – they require a certain punchy, cutting-edge, and often daring promotional approach to capture their target audience. Furthermore, to set videogame ads apart from more traditional advertising, they also tend to employ boundary pushing, shock tactics, and morally debateable content delivery in order to gain gamer attention. But what happens if said tactics are taken that little bit too far?

GamerSquad presents a selection of the five most controversial videogame-related television adverts of recent times...