It should be no surprise that South Park: The Stick of Truth is chock full o' filth-flarn-flarn-filth-flarn and hellbent for an M-for-Mature rating. It's still fun to hear the ESRB reading the dialogue aloud from its fainting couch.
In 2011, Sony released LittleBigPlanet 2 for the PlayStation 3. Two years later, Sacremento, California's News10 uncovers the startling truth behind its misleading "E for Everyone" rating.
The ESRB has asked the Chinese maker of a browser-based game to quit advertising it as rated Adults Only, reports GamesIndustry.biz, largely because the game has never been rated by the ESRB.
Legislation passed in Australia's Federal Parliament adds a R18+ rating for video games on January 1, 2013, ending years of mature games being censored, banned, or simply unreleased due to lack of age-appropriate classification. [News.com.au]
The ESRB has a fairly detailed and complex system
You know, video games will rot your brain. They're filled with nothing more than gratuitous fish abuse, LEGO toilet humor and references to pornographic cannonballs—or so this week's most potentially offensive video games might lead us to believe.
How are new and upcoming video games potentially offending us now? In mostly the same old ways: with excessive violence and gore, earfuls of foul language, smoking, drinking and "suggestive themes," sometimes known as sex.
Earlier this year we published a rumor
It's no surprise that Deep Silver's zombie title is getting an M-rating. The certificate just handed to it by the ESRB is still a little interesting for the bits of details it gives up from the game, from dialogue to gameplay features.
The Nintendo DS game based on the Aliens franchise that leaked more than two years ago
Developer CD Projekt has teased console versions of The Witcher games before, but it looks like it might actually happen for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. The game's producer talked around it to Eurogamer and the ESRB now has a rating for an Xbox 360 version. Maybe at E3, then?
Microsoft may be running shorter on genuine new surprises for this year's E3 expo, as Australia's ratings classification board shines a light on new, unannounced Xbox 360 and Kinect games. That said, I'm dying to find out what Kinect Googly Eyes is.
Looks like Microsoft is turning game show Hole in the Wall, the Western take on Japan's Nōkabe (aka Brain Wall or colloquially "Human Tetris"), into an Xbox 360 game. And, yes, that does seem like a very natural fit for Kinect...
Already outed
Looks like the enhanced PlayStation port of Square Enix's seminal role-playing game Chrono Trigger is bound for the PlayStation 3 and PSP. The ESRB has just rated Chrono Trigger for those platforms, so expect the update of that JRPG favorite to show up as a PSone Classic on a PlayStation Store near you soon.
Shortly after introducing ratings of individual video game developers
Metacritic, whose 90s, 80s, 70s and dreaded 60s are points of pride and shame for the video game industry, will now be applying ratings to individual game developers, giving them a score based on an average of all the games they've worked on.
Metacritic, whose cumulative scores provide a thumbs-up/thumbs-down barometer that can move games publishers' stock prices, has expanded. The review aggregator has begun listing iPhone and iPad apps.
Just five percent of all games rated by the ESRB and published in 2010 were classified as M, a marginal decline from 2009 when they accounted for 6 percent, the board said in a news release today.
A glowing fan review for Dragon Age II on Metacritic discovered to have been written by a member of the game's development team sparked outrage among the gaming community yesterday. EA's response? That's how it works.
The ESRB has rated 1998 PlayStation game Parasite Eve for the PlayStation 3 and PSP, a sure sign that the game will receive "PSone Classics" status at some point, likely coming to the U.S. PlayStation Store before the latest entry, The 3rd Birthday, ships stateside on March 29.
It's an appropriate opening for a song placed in a game that begins in prison. "You know you fucked up, right?" begins "The Loser Wins," by Atmosphere. In another sports game, this would have to be blanked out, or just not used.
In THQ's Homefront the United States of 2027 faces an invasion by North Korea. For the Japanese release North Korea has been replaced with "A Certain Country to the North." Damn you, Canada!
In today's installment of Speak-Up on Kotaku, commenter Dracosummoner explores the controversial role of sex and violence in our video games.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Australia's Labor government will support the creation of an adults-only classification for video games there. A decision on backing a new rating, called R18+, is expected Friday at a meeting of Australia's attorneys general.
As this report on Kotaku AU details, Australia continues to deal with how it classifies and views video games.
Not yet officially rated by the ESRB, promotional copy on the game's official page bills EA Sports' next boxer as the publisher's first ever M-rated game.
Sunday, Redskins coach Mike Shanahan benched his quarterback late in a winnable game, claiming "cardiovascular issues" made him unsuited to a hurry-up offense. Most though Shanahan was full of crap, but Madden NFL 11 took him at his word. Hilariously.
