Konami May Censor Silent Hill: Homecoming in Australia
Last week, The Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) refused to classify Silent Hill: Homecoming after review. This is essentially a death sentence for a video game, as it is illegal to sell until a rating has been applied. As a result, Konami may have to remove some content from the game itself.
...the OFLC cited several high impact scenes in the game, mostly focusing on drilling into and severing body parts. One scene in particular that was highlighted as a problem involved Alex (the main character) having a drill forced into his right eye socket, which caused a lot of blood to spray out. A couple of other scenes mentioned include one where Alex forces the drill up into an enemy's skull and another where Alex is cut in half by an enemy. We haven't seen the Silent Hill scenes in question but based on the descriptions we find it hard to understand why the OFLC refused to permit them, considering the famous Resident Evil 4 chainsaw decapitations of Leon were passed without issue.
Yes, the game is violent. The game has always been violent and that is part of the atmosphere. Censorship is silly, and frankly, this game is more horrific than educational. It seems silly that Australia would take exception to something that is otherwise tolerated throughout the rest of the world.
On a completely unrelated topic: it is funny how the Playstation 3's software rarely has a region lock. Someone from a country like, say, Australia would have absolutely no problem buying a copy of an import video game. Running software without the need to modify or otherwise perform in illegal trade and hardware sales to get it to run sure is handy. Completely unrelated of course.
Konami May Tone Down Silent Hill: Homecoming for Aussie Market [Game Politics]
Asterick
Posted to Video Games on 30 September 2008
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: australia, censorship, homecoming, pc, playstation 3, region lock, silent hill, xobx 360
Oh god this makes me even more anxious for the release. My thoughts go out to the the deprived Australian people in my hour of immense excitement.