This week in Nanny State News – F.E.A.R 2 banned

Mike Bantick
Friday, 28 November 2008 07:50

Opinion and Analysis

The Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) have effectively banned the forthcoming horror/shooter F.E.A.R 2 Project Origin.  By not being able to shoehorn the game into the constraints of a non R18+ classification system, the game will be unavailable for adults to play in Australia.

Feeling nice and cosy?  Well living in Australia you should, the government is doing their darn’est to protect your fragile – yet adult – minds.

Not content with proffering up a net filtering idea , the Australian Government, under the guise of the OFLC classification system for interactive entertainment continue to protect the fragile minds of Australians.

The latest victim of ‘unclassifileablness” from the OFLC is Monolith Productions F.E.A.R 2 Project Origin.

The horror/shooter is undeniably scary and violent, picking up from the original 2005 game.  Actually F.E.A.R 2 begins a little before the end of the original, so that players can alter the outcome and continue down a new story arc.

According to a report at Games on Net , playing the part of Michael Beckett battling against human and mutant foes in a realistic (!) blood spattered way, does not sit well with the classification board.

The Guidelines for the Classification of Films and Computer Games state that - as we know - "Computer games that exceed the MA 15+ classification category will be Refused Classification". They also explain that "Impact may be higher where a scene encourages interactivity".

They have found that the violence in F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin has a high impact which exceeds levels acceptable in an MA15+ title, and have made a few references to in game examples to illustrate their point - such as this scene:

...Michael uses his sub machine gun to explicitly bisect an enemy, the two parts of the body lying separately on the ground, with copious blood spray. There are also a number of explicit close range decapitations involving both human and mutant creatures. The decapitations are the result of close-up throat slashing from behind and close-up gunshots to the throat.

All grisly stuff, just like a horror movie, with the main issue, as it has always been in this country, being the interactivity of the video game – despite being a title not directed or expected to be marketed to the younger mind.

Distributer/Publisher is currently working through the appeals process.  The game is due for release in February 2009 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

So it is possible, that like Fallout 3, Dark Sector and others before it, the game might see the light of day on Australian shelves, at least in some sort of mutant fashion.