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| Abomination of gaming indeed.. |
Here we are on the day we thought would never happen. As Aussies, there had always been threats of censorship but in the end, the games somehow always made it through unscathed. Not this time however. The Australian version of Left 4 Dead 2 has been 'mutilated' to the point of mediocrity.
Everything that made Left 4 Dead what it is, the fear, gore and tension has been removed, and what is Left 4 us is an ugly rotting carcass of what was once a great game. The disparity between the censored and uncensored versions is huge, as shown by IGN’s review scores. IGN AU, the poor guys who had to play through the censored version, gave the game a 5.0, a score unheard of for such a prestigious developer as Valve. On the flipside, the US team who had the uncompromised version of the game gave it a 9.0.
The level of change is ridiculous, to the point of looking glitchy. Bodies flash away before your eyes (As you can see in the video at the bottom of the page), burning bodies don’t even catch on fire and zombies barely look like they have taken a hit as they crumple stupidly before your eyes. Wait for the part in the video where a zombie bait grenade is used, upon its explosion the 30 or so zombies simply vanish into thin air, leaving one body behind, which quickly dissipates.
What we want to know is, why did it have to be this way? I mean apart from the obvious ratings Valve had to abide by, sure there were other ways than this, ‘abomination of gaming’, to get it into Australia. The main issue the OFLC raised was that the zombies lacked something setting them apart from humanity, thus it was as though the player was running around killing normal people. Couldn’t they have just made the zombies have glowing eyes and yellow skin or something? Instead of a creative solution they chose to bastardise their own game in a shoddy cutting job.
This is a sad moment for Australian gaming. When it comes down to it, we would rather a game not be released rather than having this ‘insult’ spread to unsuspecting consumers in Australia. That is also why Gamerz Ink will not be bothering to review this game until we can get a copy on the true version, just like Valve hasn’t bothered to make at least an acceptable edited version for Australian stores.
If you still need to be convinced not to play the edited version, you can watch the montage of censored gameplay below. Warning: Some viewers may find the following scenes disturbing, if you are easily offended you should not watch the video.
[Via IGN]
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