Riot: Civil Unrest lets you play out various scenarios from real-world acts of protest around the world, including events in Italy and during the Arab Spring rebellion not so long ago. The screams you hear may have been recorded for the game, but they aren't entirely fake. You can mask that behind as much pixel art as you like, but there's no avoiding the fact that those dots on the screen are stand-ins for actual civilians and policemen. These are real people, who really did get beaten and shot at for doing something they believed in.
Instead, it's something more to do with the fact that all the events you're playing in the game really happened. It's not the controls - though the lack of tutorial and general cumbersome nature of moving units in this real-time strategy-style game certainly doesn't help matters. There's something about playing Riot: Civil Unrest that makes me deeply uncomfortable.
