SHH Unsilenced

Another banned game, Silent Hill: Homecoming, reaches home shore.

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By Nathan Davis on 7 January, 2009

Janitor Bill decides he hates his job.Silent Hill: Homecoming is one of the unfortunate adult games that slammed into the adult-unfriendly wall in Australia last year. Our Classification Board did only what it could and deemed the clearly adult game unfit for children and handed it a red card in the form of a Refused Classification (RC).

No one in Australia would be permitted to buy or sell the title. Of course, this is far from the fault of the Classification Board and entirely the result of ignorance in our Attorney-General’s Department. At least one member lovingly waves the flag that adults don’t need an adult category for their adult games, presumably because it reckons the age of people who play games sharply drops off after fifteen. This draconian mindset is mildly cute, but mostly annoying for those of us in favour of evidence and five o’clock shadows.

That said, after seeing the recent rating change for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, it looks like the Classification Board has officially signed up for aerobic classes, as this game has also now received the green light – although, it’s unclear as to whether the two cases are similar.

As expertly noted by Sex Dirt’s Dan Chiappini on GameSpot Australia, the Classification Board has updated its entry on Silent Hill and changed the classification from RC to that of every other Silent Hill title prior – MA15+. The consumer advice is ‘Strong horror violence and themes’, which sounds like something every fifteen-year-old would soil their pants over, except it’s Silent Hill.

Comment from Atari was not available at the time of writing as to what content, if any, was altered. The version is listed as ‘revised’, so we can only assume Atari submitted an altered build of the title, thus further entrenching Australia as the bane of mature games for mature adults.

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