Silent Hill Homecoming

Horror game Silent Hill: Homecoming has become the fourth game this year to be refused classification by Australia's censors.

The game, which was due for release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in November, is the sixth installment in the popular Silent Hill survival horror series published by Konami and features a soldier who returns from war to search for his missing brother.

Homecoming was refused classification by The Classification Board last week, presumably for excessive violence, and follows similar verdicts for Fallout 3, Shellshock 2: Blood Trails and Dark Sector.

No doubt the distributors will now edit the game to produce a suitably child friendly version to get an MA15+

The film was passed 18 uncut by the BBFC, the UK's game censor.

Australia's game censor recently banned Silent Hill: Homecoming.

In terms of the 'offending' violence in Silent Hill: Homecoming, the Censor Board cited several high impact scenes in the game, mostly focusing on drilling into and severing body parts. One scene in particular that was highlighted as a problem involved Alex (the main character) having a drill forced into his right eye socket, which caused a lot of blood to spray out. A couple of other scenes mentioned include one where Alex forces the drill up into an enemy's skull and another where Alex is cut in half by an enemy.

When we spoke to Atari about its reaction to the ban and plans for the game, the representative mentioned that they hoped to get Konami to tone down the high impact violence scenes so that it could be reclassified as MA15+ and allow the game to be released in Q1 2009. We'll let you know as soon as Atari is able to confirm these plans.

The computer game, Silent Hill: Homecoming was banned in Australia in late September.

An update to the Classification Board's online rating database dated January 5, 2009 now lists Silent Hill: Homecoming as conforming to the maximum MA15+ rating for video games.

The site lists the rating as "revised," with consumer advice identifying strong horror violence and themes.

So it seems that Atari have edited the game to make it suitable for the MA 15+ rating

Atari, the publisher of the game Silent Hill has commented about what they censored from the game to achieve an Australian MA 15+ rating.

A spokesperson for Atari states:

The major changes to the Australian release of Silent Hill Homecoming will be made to its cut scenes, where new camera angles and techniques will be used to reduce the impact of the unclassifiable material.

The company notes changes have only been made to some scenes, while the original storyline remains unchanged.