Dead Space To Launch Early, Banned in Three Countries

EA Redwood Shores' Dead Space seems to be one of the few games that has its release constantly moved forward. Shortly after news that the game's European debut was moved up to Oct. 24th, the company announced that the US launch date would be moved up to October 14th. Unfortunately, EA's Ben Swanson also said the game has been banned in China, Germany, and Japan. (Announcement here, sound toggle to the upper right of the page.) Previews of the game are available from Ars and Gamespy.

Comments

Re:China and Germany could be expected

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Wikipedia article:

Previews of the game have universally drawn attention to the high levels of gore and violence in the game, in particular the tactic of 'strategic dismemberment' when battling the Necromorphs. The aliens cannot be subdued by a single shot, rather they have to be incapacitated by shooting off their tentacles and appendages.

Remember, the Japanese take their tentacle porn seriously. It is one thing to show graphic violence with humans. But if you do it with tentacle rapists, you have crossed the line!

Re:China and Germany could be expected

[arth1]

I think you have the wrong impression of Germany. Quite often, there are special German versions of games because of their stricter regulation. Mostly it's the strong prohibition against displaying any nazi symbols, but there's also laws against showing gratuitous violence.

Which I think is pretty much OK (except for when it prevents historically correct depictions of e.g. planes and uniforms due to the swastika). I find our laws here in the land of the free, which make a nipple or penis a more horrible thing than brain splatter and bloody guts, far harder to understand.

Re:Different culture...

[ozphx]

As in they are famous for starting off a lot of it, but turned out not to be as good at it as they thought?