As videogame titles go, Mustache Boy ranks among the greatest. An obscure eighties Japan-only arcade game made by the same company responsible for the classic shooter Raiden, it's little more than Pac-Man with bells on. But what a title, and what a title screen: there's the eponymous Mustache Boy himself, sporting a dazzling shock of ginger hair and the kind of luxuriant face fungus that would have made Einstein blush. Mustache Boy simply stands there and stares, teasing you with the enigma of the mysterious hair that eclipses his chin. Who is he? How did he get it? Is it detachable? These questions are never answered, and the game itself, though eminently playable, fails to match the extraordinary promise of that captivating title.

The earliest facial hair in a videogame was a moustache of convenience. The chap responsible for creating Mario - then called Jumpman - was faced with a problem: what to put in the two-pixel void between his nose and chin? A pair of tiny blue dots of phosphor were added, and the first game moustache was born.

We are, of course, now in a season of beards. Santa Claus, a 3rd century saint appropriated by an American fizzy drinks corporation, has a beard as white as sheep's fleece. I had my first moment of doublethink while seated on the knee of a supermarket Santa. One part of my six-year-old brain believed this elderly gentleman was, indeed, St Nick himself, while another, more analytical part of my mind noted the shiny nature of his beard and knew that, if Santa really existed, he probably didn't buy his beards in packet form.

Jesus also had a beard, and Jesus, famously, was born on Christmas day. He may even have been born with a full growth of beard. It's probable, since everybody else in the Bible wore a beard, from Nebuchadnezzar right up to the big G himself. Moses had a majestic, flowing white beard which hung pendulously between his stone tablets.

This brings me neatly on to the war in the Middle East, and EA's recently announced Medal Of Honor reboot. Seeing that there's cash to be made through videogame depictions of modern warfare, they've brought their ageing WWII franchise into the 21st century and onto the morally murky battlefields of Afghanistan.

You can tell when a game wants to be taken seriously, because its makers will add beards to tell you as much. Splinter Cell's Sam Fisher is now sporting a moody, grizzled look for next year's sneak-em-up revenge drama Conviction, while the eponymous star of Rockstar's perpetually delayed Max Payne 3 has apparently grown the facial hair and accompanying physique of a real ale campaigner.

In what's become an arms race of gloom, a battle of furrowed brows, EA is now attempting to market Medal Of Honor as an experience even more gritty and dark than Activision's billion-selling FPS.

We know this because the character on the Medal Of Honor cover wears a beard - and not just any beard. This is a proper Old Testament beard, a foot long and fuzzier than a tumbleweed. It could be argued that real-life soldiers don't head into battle looking like Dimebag, the late guitarist from Pantera, but that would be missing the message that EA is trying to project: Medal Of Honor is back, and it's very, very, serious, indeed.

Head to the game's site, and you're presented with more funereal seriousness: muffled sounds of distant thunder, windswept typography and subliminal glimpses of more beards. It's all incredibly impressive.

But while I'm sure EA is working extra hard on their Afghan adventure, I find it hard not to look at their marketing propaganda without the same creeping sense of incredulity I felt while sitting on Santa's knee all those years ago: that underneath the startling beard, Medal Of Honor is probably just another derivative first-person shooter.

Ryan writes his gaming column every week at Den Of Geek. Last week's is here.