I don't think gore in a video game serves any educational value, except its in a medic-simulation or something.
The damage war does, is not that the headshots look so cool, or that you blow off limbs and get to watch super realistic rag-doll physics afterwards, or an occasional 'wtf. lol. I vaporized him'.
It is that people die for false reasons and they leave a whole in their social structure. It is because countries develop a hatred against each other for propaganda purposes and of course because of the war itself.
As strange as that might sound, but I honestly think that the gore is the least cruel thing in war.
Sure, watching a comrade getting shot in the head while he stands right next to you IS cruel. But not so much because of his brains being splattered all over the place, but because you see a living person, a friend maybe, getting turned into a worthless piece of meat and experiencing how sudden this happens. One second you are a soldier, a father, a husband, a brother, a friend, and the next second you are a pile of dead mass. The way the headshot looked or the way your rag-doll-body behaved in that moment is the least important aspect of death in my opinion.
As long as this isn't represented in video games (and I hope it will never be!) the gore is just a hollow threat. It is cruelty with nothing behind it.
So what you blew his head off? Does it matter? Sure, it looked great, maybe even funny from some angles, depending on how twisted your humor is, but in the end it was just a slightly gross special effect.
Gore in video games does not educate people about the horrors of war. If anything it makes the real horrors of war appear harmless because they fade behind blood spurts and blown off limbs.
How does this fit into this thread? I don't know anymore but I wanted to get it off my chest.