Every intelligent being in this world knows what's the use for these ratings.
Since I try to write articles to everyone, here's a synopsis - game age ratings purpose is to avoid submitting a younger audience to strong content. In layman's terms, it protects your 3 year old from razor, razor, cut, cut, blood, spurt, artery, murder, Hitchcock, Psycho...!

There are at least four entities that regulate such ratings that I'm aware of their existence - ESRB (United States and Canada), PEGI (Europe) BBFC (United Kingdom) and USK (Germany). My knowledge of the others is scarce since I poorly read about their misadventures. Either they do a hell of a job or they also censor news relating to their mistakes.

Even with this immense protection for the wee ones, there's still strange phenomenons.
Carmageddon, which its uncensored version received ratings of 17+ or 18+, had to be edited in order to be released in Germany, getting a 12+. So this "violent" game couldn't be released there, while porn games such as Lula: The Sexy Empire are distributed with a 18+ rating. Maybe because its of German production? Mmm... Oh it's great when they bend the rules for the home team advantage. I love sarcasm.



But the strange part I'm underlying here is how tight the freedom as become. This idea jumped on me months ago while I was replaying Tomb Raider Anniversary to hear the developer commentary.
In one of the mythological rooms they explained that to appease the ESRB, Crystal Dynamics had to take away the impaling animation from Lara. I did find it strange that she would ragdoll everywhere she died, even spikes, but it didn't occur me why.

Back in '96, the original game received a TEEN (13+) rating from ESRB. I'm not describing the game since you probably played it or you should. Anyway, the game had some pretty gruesome stuff, being Lara Croft's death animations the most fun. If she died from a big tumble, you could hear her bones crack and her corpse would be all bent in the wrong way. If she tripped onto a spike filled floor, she would get impaled. Oh I loved that moan she released. Hum, sorry, got a bit distracted there.

So here we are, in 2007, and the first Tomb Raider adventure got remade. To keep the TEEN rating, they had to eliminate some stuff, including all normal death animations, replacing them with a ragdoll-ish tumble. Imagine a marionette, now drop it, that's how she dies if attacked by enemies until she perishes. The only different deaths occur on the Simon Says events. Mind that there is also no single drop of blood, contrary to the previous Tomb Raider games before Legend.

What is the philosophy behind these ratings if they change over time? Even Nintendo went from a neck breaking dictatorship to the point of having a game such as Conker's Bad Fur Day released on the N64 (I'll get to this one shortly). Why do I see these entities such as ESRB constricting the freedom of the developers.
Since a while now, sex as been their excuse to everything. Did someone over at ESRB, while reviewing Lara's death animations, thought "Oh dear, I bet one of those spikes went right up her vagina."



I didn't mean to write solely about the ESRB, but they are the ones who have been raping the games I like.

The other game I want to rub on their faces is Conker Live & Reloaded, the 2005 remake of Conker's Bad Fur Day. The name as with the look of the main character, sound innocent enough, but I dare you to buy this for your little Barbie and Ponies loving daughter.



The singleplayer mode from Live & Reloaded is heavily censored, minor obscenities are bleeped, some characters tweaked (such as the sunflower, that appears to have a bra now) and The Great Mighty Poo Song was consequently butchered.
These were the changes necessary for a M (17+) bearing game from 2001 to keep such rating in 2005.


Fuck was already bleeped. Yet, they felt the need to censor shit, twat and even fellatio in the remake!

I could also talk about Manhunt 2 but I am not aware of the differences between this and first game. Maybe there were none, maybe the rating rules are the ones that changed. Am I being obvious?

So tell me, what is your feud with these ratings, where do you feel that they're limiting the creative process? Do you have other examples besides the ones I mentioned? What do you expect from the future, more censorship or a change of hearth?

-CL