EA argued it should be given an MA15+ rating because of its ”unrealistic nature”, but that didn’t fly very far, so the ‘boring’ one got through.
They tried hard to convince the OFLC board that 15 year-olds are quite capable of discerning who is a zombie, and who isn’t. That the game itself makes it abundantly clear what characters make up the infected, which gamers must put down to survive.
These words of logic fell on deaf, or politically motivated ears, with the board saying it has ”insufficient delineation between the depiction of the general zombie figures and the human figures as opposed to the clearly fictional ‘infected’ characters”.
Ultimately it came back to the violence issue, ”whether the objects of the violence were fictional or real, and whether a 15 year old could discern the difference, is largely irrelevant where the game displays the level of realism this one does”.
Curiously of course, Modern Warfare 2 passed with an MA15+ certificate and tackles plausible outcomes on the world stage, and involves the potential massacre of innocents. Gamespot’s article carries a list of niggles the OFLC has with Left 4 Dead 2.
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