Germans are surprised to discover that, assurances from Activision aside, their version of COD:MW2 is censored.

How confident are we that ours won’t be? After all, these were the initial promises to the Germans from Activision:

The German version of Modern Warfare 2 includes each level of the U.S. version of the unabridged version, in all three modes of play – Single player, multiplayer mode and the new “Special Ops”…. The multiplayer mode of Modern Warfare 2 is internationally compatible and identical in terms of points, including shooting series, hit display on the screen and all the other player awards… It allows players worldwide by search and benchmarking between players at international level.

The reality?

When the player begins to fire upon the civilians in that first scene, the player will receive a game over screen. While it seems the scene will stay in the game, if you live in Germany, you can’t take part in it. While most other countries are given the option to participate or not, Germany will lose the option to interact.

In the German version, however, the game ends immediately with a sort of Game Over message, if the player decides to fire on civilians.

Are we going to have a nasty surprise when we put in that disc tomorrow?

I’m having difficulty deciding whether to get Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 for the PS3 or the 360.

Apparently I’m not the only one:

OTX data shows that 15 percent of those who plan to buy the PS3 version of Assassin’s Creed 2 own the Xbox 360 version of the original, while only 7 percent of those who plan to buy the Xbox 360 version own the original game on PS3.

The data highlights a shift, at least among fans of Assassin’s Creed, in favor of the PS3 — a “sizable portion,” according to Williams, of players who plan a console defection for the second installment.

That’d be me – I have both the original games on the 360, but I’m seriously considering a switch. Why?

• Sick of being forced to pay Microsoft $50-100 every year just to be able to keep playing multiplayer on my old games, and would like to wean my collection off Microsoft;

• Running out of room on my 20GB 360 hard disk, and I’m fairly reluctant to pay the ripoff prices Microsoft charges for a new, slightly larger (but still tiny in terms of modern physical media capacity) drive. Which I’d need to pay, if I bought MW2 on the 360, when the inevitable map packs emerge.

Now against this are the fact that I’m probably going to need to keep Gold anyway, so I can keep playing the old games; and that I’ll have to buy a new PS3 mic (although that would be good for Uncharted 2 multiplayer as well); that I’m not sure how easy it is to find a local game on the PS3; and that, well, I don’t really like the PS3 triggers.

And that is, of course, assuming that the games are equally as good technically on both platforms.

It’s an interesting choice, alright. What are you going to do?

Via Kotaku, a list of the things cut from the Australian version of Left 4 Dead 2, and a video to illustrate:

Here’s the list:

• No Gore: When you shoot an Infected you see a small splash of blood. You will not see any “gibs” at all.

• No Blood Spatter: You will not see blood spattering on the screen.
• No Dismemberment: You cannot shoot or melee any limbs, including the head, off an Infected.
• No Corpses: As soon as they’re dead, Infected bodies will disappear.
• No Burning: Infected will not catch fire from, for example, a molotov. They will, however, still die.
• No Riot Cop: The “riot cop” Uncommon Infected will spawn at all. In fact, if just one player on the server is running the Australian edition, the “riot cop” will not spawn at all.

Just annoying, immersion-breaking nonsense for the most part (magical disappearing corpses! Fire that kills without actually setting anything alight!), but that last one is a kicker.

Literally. What’s the bet that, as soon as everyone else around the world realises that having an Australian in their game affects their own play experience, they start kicking us from every game to which we connect?

For a multiplayer co-operative game like Left 4 Dead 2, that’s fatal. This is one gaming experience we’re really going to miss out on.

What (male) Russian CounterStrike players have to contend with if they want to win the tournament (other images NSFW):

Severely cropped to protect impressionable eyes.

What are they going to try to distract mixed gender teams, and do we want to know?

Lost Cities is a clever and enjoyable two-person card game by legendary board game designer Reiner Knizia. (One of the classic “my wife/girlfriend actually enjoys playing this with me” games.)

In April last year, a videogame version appeared on Xbox Live Arcade, enabling you to play against computer opponents – or humans on the other side of the planet. It was a decent version, an excellent online game, and an Arcade title I play to this day.

…Lost Cities was actually good, earning a nomination at the 2008 Xbox LIVE Arcade Awards and critical raves from IGN Xbox and GameSpot.

And then, in February this year, it suddenly disappeared. It’s never been explained why – there seem to be some inexplicable “copyright issues” relating to the Activision buyout of Sierra, the game’s original publisher. Ah, copyright, how you so often act to destroy created works.

Because it was only playable on the 360, and because it’s only available as a download from Live, and because of the myriad anti-piracy garbage infecting anything Microsoft touches, there is now absolutely no way for anyone to obtain or play this game. Microsoft officially has the power to remove a cultural work from existence, simply with a stroke of its delisting pen.

Now, because it was reasonably popular before it was delisted, there are still many copies out there on people’s Xbox hard drives and, so long as copyright laws don’t get any harsher, somebody will eventually manage to salvage it to play on a modified console or future PC. It will be preserved via torrent sites and other online repositories that the copyright industry works very hard to destroy, even while it tries to save their products from their own contempt.

Which raises an interesting question: what happens to other such games that didn’t get enough of an audience for someone to risk prosecution, fines and jail to preserve? What happens if the copyright industry successfully campaigns for even more extreme penalties and powers? Won’t it get worse with more and more games coming as locked downloads instead of on physical media? We are just going to lose these works forever, aren’t we?

And why is that acceptable? If books were being burnt, or films melted down, the general public would be disquieted. That’s our cultural history that’s being lost! But because average gamers are still just in their thirties, and haven’t generally turned their minds towards the issue of preservation of their history, and are not an organised demographic to which politicians are in the slightest interested in pandering, it’s an issue that’s being ignored.

Something else to keep in mind next time the content industry comes pretending that it campaigns for tougher copyright laws to “save games”.

An Onymous Lefty on the replacement of Good Game host Jeremy “Junglist” Ray with self-confessed woman Stephanie “Hex” Bendixsen – “It’s political correctness gone mad!“

Surprisingly thoughtful and balanced coverage of an issue truly dividing Australia.

If they read this, then maybe we won’t get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 after all.

Says Infinity Ward:

“Modern Warfare 2 is a fantasy action game designed for intense, realistic game play that mirrors real life conflicts, much like epic, action movies. It is appropriately rated 18 for violent scenes, which means it is intended for those who are 18 and older.”

Not here it isn’t. It’s been shoehorned into MA15+. If they decide it’s “intended for those who are 18 and older” it will be banned. Or be unrated until you remove a critical scene demonstrating the villains’ villainy.

Can’t have adult themes in a videogame!

I’m glad the government is doing such a good job of protecting my future children.

UPDATE: Oh, bugger.

And Age? “Terrorist” game?

I’m enjoying Borderlands on the 360 – although it could desperately use some variety in scenery, and the fact you can’t combine the local split-screen co-op with online players is unfortunate.

I was amused to see on the disc itself an 18+ logo for a non-Australian territory (I’m guessing New Zealand) right next to the MA15+ rating for Australia. This is not unusual, but it highlights the absurdity of arguing that the lack of R18 protects Australian kids. No, it doesn’t! All it does is cause adult games to be squeezed into MA15+ – if your kids lived in a country with an R18 rating, they wouldn’t be able to play the game until they were 18. Here, they just have to be 15.

(This little censorship stuff-up with the game was amusing, too.)

Monday afternoon game. Take this article by some fundamentalists* trying to scare parents into sending their kids to Bible college instead of a real one – “Sex, Drugs & Video Games: Why Our College Are Kids Failing At Life” – and tell us your favourite, most lunatic quote in the comments below.

Is there something you’re frightened about that we left out of our collage? Email ChristWire and we’ll include it in our next crazy rant!

My current favourite: “Reckless, nonstop dorm masturbation is another major college issue.” Although

Video games like Gangstar, Halo and Metal Gear Solid are turning our clean-cut college children into drug addicted bisexual libertines who live in a nasty world of imaginary radical terrorists (Perfect Dark), sadistic nymphos (Soul Calibur) or hero athletes (Pro Skater).

is pretty hilarious, too.

*Or not.

There you go. The full, non-silly version of Left 4 Dead 2 will not be sold in Australian shops. The Classification board can’t tell the difference between four human survivors and everything else in the world being the walking dead, so neither can you.

A zombie in Left 4 Dead 2.

…it was the Review Board’s opinion that there was insufficient delineation between the depiction of general zombie figures and the human figures, as opposed to the clearly fictional ‘infected’ characters. This was a major consideration of the Review Board in determining the impact of this game on minors.

That sentence doesn’t even make sense – there are “general zombie figures” as opposed to “clearly fictional ‘infected’ characters”? What?

Member of the Classification Review Board.

And if you can’t tell a human being in a Left 4 Dead game from the snarling, toothy, deranged zombies – everything OTHER than you and your three fellow survivors – then keeping violent videogames from you is the least of society’s worries. We should be putting corks on your forks.

The above website is likely to provoke insane violence in readers; restricted to those 18 and above.

This leaves Australian gamers with two burning questions:

1. Will Valve release a patch online to update the Australian version to the same as the worldwide one?

2. Will a full imported copy work on an Australian console/PC?

I’m not going to buy it unless there’s a “yes” to at least one of the above questions.

(Via AG.)