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So apparently about 3 weeks ago or so there was a thread about L4D2's problems down under. In the interests of avoiding any accusations of necromancy, I've decided to post some new material about the issue. The initial plan by Valve was to pursue two avenues - appeal the ban while at the same time considering the possiblity of a 'special' Austrailian edition.

Apparently Valve appealed the decision in late October, only to refused again (I understand this decision to be final)
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/60964

At this point footage of the clean version has been released on the internet. Details below and a gameplay snippet from the tube allegedly comparing the two versions:
http://www.destructoid.com/left-4-dead- ... 3901.phtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH7QCtuaXgI

So the long and short of it is...
-No dismemberment
-Hugely reduced blood
-Rapidly vanishing corpses
-Apparently no 'uncommon' infected Riot Cops as they represent 'figures of authority' (?!)

So, thoughts? I'm not getting this game so I'm more interested in input from Ozzies (viz. Stark) than trying to rub this news in. Personally I regard the cosmetic changes as more annoying than anything else. The exclusion of Riot Cops strikes me as far more worrying. Until Valve can come up with a benign skin, they will presumably not exist in Australian copies of the game, potentially making them incompatible with the International version.

They should just make zombies in Ned Kelly style armour; it doesn't make much sense, but it's pretty hilarious.

Mmmm. Modding.

On the other hand, it shouldn't be necessary for the mod community to rectify the fact that the old joke that Australia is a nation of convicts who could be goaded into violent uprising by the mere whiff of a bit of violence is, in fact, a matter of Australian government policy.

Australian versions - in the demo - are compatible with the rest of the world; I've played with an Australian on-line. They don't see the gore that characterizes non-censored versions, but BOTH (or rather, all four) players do not see the riot cop zombies (they just don't spawn).

This doesn't affect other uncommon commons, which don't feature in the demo but don't count as authority figures.

They should do what they did with the TF2 censored version, and have a party mode (which they did for germany).

So when you shoot zombies, candy and confetti falls out and stuff. Or the zombies could instead be, uh... I dunno. Mannequins and straw dummies and clowns. Which I think would be scarier than normal zombies, but probably be more able to get past the censors.

We really need to get a better games rating system going on over here. Isn't it just West Australia holding out at this point that's stopping that?

I wasn't planning on picking up L4D2 anyway, so it doesn't bother me, except in a 'fucking Government wankers' sort of way, like most government decisions.

It's Michael Atkinson of South Australia who's vetoed it the last two times around IIRC.

He's the sole reason.

*teeth grind slowly*

Michael Atkinson, oh I hope someone makes some cool flash game ala The LAst Stand where we can gun down hoards of zombie Atkinsons or something...

Why don't some the Austrian gamers go and demand the guy to sign out of office? Aren't there legal channels to do this?

Not effective ones. It's Mike Rann's (the Premier) decision, and he's popular enough and the Liberals are ineffectual enough that Rann isn't going to worry about the ten or so people who are actually going to vote against him solely based on the issue of the A-G's attitude towards video games.

And given the amount of drama that Atkinson has caused in areas not related to games ratings, Atkinson is popular enough with Mike Rann that he'd pretty much have to eat babies in order to lose his position, and even that isn't a sure bet.