Will the Dead Rise in Australia?

All eyes will no doubt be on how Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) board will classify Capcom's XBox 360 zombie action game "Dead Rising" now that Germany's own rating board has decided to ban the title from sale in Germany, deeming it too graphically violent. Germany has long had a strict approach when it comes to violent games, with publishers requiring to drastically alter versions of their games to make it into the German market. One method was to re-image the human victims as zombies, as seen in the German version of Carmageddon. Unfortunately for Capcom, it seems sensitivities towards zombie killing has heightened somewhat since...

According to reports, the USK made the decision after the game's content was deemed to be too violent. Dead Rising sees players taking on the role of photographer Frank West, who finds himself caught up in a battle against an army of zombies. It's thought that the USK has objected to the way in which players must hack and slash enemies to destroy them.

Violence in games has been an issue again for the OFLC in Australia and New Zealand, with the game adaptation of the movie "Reservoir Dogs" not receiving classfication in both countries, and it'll be interesting to see whether the board views the massacring of fictional entities like zombies as a serious social concern for our youth.