As a teenager I used to have the biggest crush on Nicole Kidman. In fact, I told myself that if the majority of Australian girls looked even half as hot as her I was going to move there when I grew up. Lucky for me and my unhealthy gaming addition, I never grew up.

The Australian Game Ratings Board has struck again pretty much rendering Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2, a terrifically gore-filled zombie hacking blood fest, into a body vanishing mess that even a trained CSI couldn’t extract DNA from. Bravo Australia, I will never eat at another Outback restaurant again.

As you can see below in the Left 4 Dead comparison video featuring pre-censorship and post-censorship gameplay, the experience is pretty much garbage now. Read more…

The Australian games ratings board have refused to classify Left 4 Dead 2 for release. Because the game features a lot of blood and gore, it is only suitable for those who are 18 and over. Because the Australian ratings board (the OFLC) is ridiculous, they do not have an 18+ rating. Therefore, Left 4 Dead 2 is banned from being sold in Australia.

Because of the stupid and backwards system in place in Australia, the game must either lose all of its sales or cut out most of the mature content in order to secure a 15+ rating. I know that many are campaigning for a separate ratings board for games in Australia, and I wish them the best of luck- even if all they can hope for is an 18+ rating for now, that’s a start. As if they don’t suffer enough from price hikes and late releases.

Sega reps won’t be showing the extreme gore-fest MadWorld at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, mostly due to the fact that it may be too extremely gore-festy for Japanese audiences.  The game is being developed with a western audience in mind and will only be evaluated for a release elsewhere if it becomes a hit. Read more…

The Australian government has reversed a ban on the forthcoming Fallout 3 due to gamer objections.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification originally had banned Fallout 3 due to its in-game drug use, rendering the game illegal for sale in Australia. Read more…

An Australian man was arrested recently after he convinced a 15-year-old girl he met while playing World of WarCraft to run away from home to be with him. He even paid for the trip. How sweet. Read more…

Attention all gamers! Fill your mugs up with game fuel and strap on your fingerless gloves, because the 2008 Championship Gaming Series (CGS) dates have been announced for the North American Season and World Final.  Read more…

Debra McGrath of EB Games Australia, the largest games retailer in the country, has recently announced that the PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto 4 is just ahead of the Xbox 360 version in terms of pre-sales. Read more…

After a solid two weeks with Dark Sector, I feel fully qualified to make this statement with absolute certainty: I played Dark Sector. That’s honestly as objective as I can be, but if you want to know my true feelings of the game, please continue. Read more…

It seems that Australia is all up in arms as of late over video game ratings and Rockstar has taken this as a reason to cut some mature material from the latest Grand Theft Auto title. Read more…

During GDC, the Ripten crew was privy to an exclusive invite-only shindig presented by the good people at D3Publishing. What did we do? Well, we sat down in front of some system-linked Xbox 360s and proceeded to tear the shit out of each other in a few rounds of Digital Extremes’ new game, Dark Sector. Read more…