Special to WorldTribune.com

Westerners who are looking for the rush of a video game in the real world by joining the battle against Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) should stick with “Call of Duty,” an American who is actually fighting ISIL in Syria said.

“You meet a lot of people who think this is going to be the gaming experience – [like] Call of Duty,” Randy Roberts, who is fighting alongside the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), told CNN. “They think because they understand how to pull the trigger on a console they know how to do it in real life.”

Roberts, who completed two tours of duty with the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division in Iraq, said he was motivated to return to the battlefield by ISIL’s “mass slaughter of innocent people.”

Roberts sought to re-join the U.S. Army in 2014 but said he was unable to due to the military’s ban on soldiers having more than four tattoos.

Along with fighting ISIL, he is also training Kurdish fighters who he said have very little military experience.

Roberts told CNN that anyone looking for a “video game experience” by fighting ISIL in Syria or Iraq should not be there.

“If you want to do fighting in other countries, do fighting for your own country first,” he added.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials say a German-born rapper who joined ISIL was killed earlier this month in a U.S. air strike in Syria.

Denis Cuspert, whose rap moniker was Deso Dogg, was killed Oct. 17 when the vehicle he was traveling in was targeted and hit, The Daily Beast reported.

The U.S. State Department formally designated Cuspert as a terrorist after the ex-rapper appeared in several propaganda videos for ISIL.

Cuspert recorded three albums for a Berlin-based gangsta rap label, toured with American rapper DMX and had a minor hit with “Willkommen in meiner Welt” (Welcome to my World) in 2010.

  American fighting ISIL in Syria: It’s not a video game, Denis Cuspert, Deso Dogg, Randy Roberts, WorldTribune.com