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Left 4 Dead 2 Approved In Australia After Edits
Last month we discussed news that Valve's upcoming shooter Left 4 Dead 2 had been denied classification in Australia, which meant the game could not be legally sold there. Now, after a series of edits which removed "considerable amounts of gore from gameplay," Australia's classification board has given the game an MA15+ rating. Their new report (PDF) says, "No wound detail is shown and the implicitly dead bodies and blood splatter disappear as they touch the ground. ... The board notes that the game no longer contains depictions of decapitation, dismemberment, wound detail or piles of dead bodies lying about the environment." The unmodified version of the game may still be approved, pending a review that concludes on October 22nd.
While I agree with you that the blood is not needed, it's still pretty strange to be shooting at zombies with no visible damage done to them.
Frankly, as it stands they could just remove the zombies altogether and replace them with fuzzy forest animals and they could replace the guns with paintball markers. The game would not lose any more immersion, I believe.
AFAIK, this game is supposed to be one of those "You're all alone (as a group) surrounded by zombies. Will you survive the adrenalin?". Now it's just a game of tag.
Then don't import. Download an ISO off of bittorrent and have the key sent by email.
Just to save people time, if you were thinking of learning German, look elsewhere.