Fable II
Why it should be more controversial than GTA: A dog dies. A DOG! Also, a kid or something.
Its official: video game kids and canines are second class citizens. How else do you explain Fable II offing a young girl and dog in cold, clinical fashion without once making any journalists drop their writing monocles in shock? What’s more, our hero’s young sister can be heard begging for her life before she eats some old timey lead.
Albion being a brutal place, soon Molyneux’s arch evil doer is taking her out like Pierre Foreign Henchman in a Seagal flick. Much, much worse, though, he also goes old Yeller on your faithful mutt’s ass near the end of the game.
Why it’s not: GTA uses words like ‘f*ck’, ‘shit’ and ‘teeeeeetttiiiiiiieeeessss’. Fable uses words like ‘whence’. You do the math. Or, if you’re not mathematically inclined, it seems like your game can get away with all kinds of diabolical shit, as long as no one uses their potty mouth.
Heavy Rain
Why it should be more controversial than GTA: It lets you change a baby’s nappy… with a serial killer.
Heavy Rain is basically Ted Bundy: The Video Game. Just with a little less killing and more changing tykes’ soiled pampers. Going on this evidence, it seems people find beating up drug dealers more disturbing than seeing Scott Shelby (i.e. the big kid-killing mass murderer) look after a baby.
OK, so it’s not as if he does anything to harm the kid or her manic depressive mother. But after you’ve finished the game and the revelations about Shelby come out, the entire scene becomes cast in a massively wrong, creepy, retrospective light.
Why it isn’t: Probably because we don’t find out that Shelby is a wrong ‘un until much, much later in the game. That and everyone was no doubt too preoccupied cooing at the mass of infantile make-believe baby pixels.
Overlord 2
Why it should be more controversial than GTA: It rewards you for bludgeoning baby seals to death.
If it’s alright with you, we’re going to conduct a short experiment. Look at this picture of an adorable infant seal, if you will...
Now, which of the following options best describes your current emotions?
A) D’awwwwwwwwww
B) That is some cute-ass shit. I’m ringing the WWF right now to adopt 50.
C) I hate seal pups sooooo much. I won’t rest until I’ve wiped out their entire cuddly species… preferably via severe blows to their furry faces courtesy of spiky clubs.
Congratulations, if you chose any option other than A or B, you’re well on your way to an exciting career in professional serial killing. You’ve also no doubt already unlocked Overlord 2’s Seal Slayer achievement/trophy, which rewards players for doing in a hundred of the precocious pups.
Why it isn’t: Apparently, no one cares about baby seals. Now if it were baby pandas…
July 26, 2010
We look back at gaming's most debatable decisions
Top 10 banned videogames
The games that incurred the wrath of the censors the world over
