Dead Rising has been surprisingly passed by the British Board of Film Classification for release in the UK. The game will be sold without any alteration or censorship of its content.
Dead Rising,s plot is about a journalist who discovers that the whole town has turned into zombies. He runs for cover in the safe sanctuary of the local shopping mall, only to discover that, it too, is infested. He then tries to survive the onslaught of monsters by using anything he can find in the mall to defend himself and to attack the unfriendly-undead. Needless to say, there is a lot of good old-fashioned blood and gore in the game.
A BBFC spokesperson told GameIndustry that, "Dead Rising is considered a fairly straightforward 18. We take the view that at 18, unless there is something harmful in the game, we have no reason to intervene as far as adults are considered." The “18” rating is equivalent to the American ESRB “M” (mature) rating, which restricts the game to persons 17 years or older.
The BBFC believes that, as far as adults are concerned, there is nothing to worry about them playing Dead Rising. They stated, "There is no clear evidence that playing games leads to copycat behavior. We would only intervene if a game was going further than any other game in terms of interactivity and the ‘thrills, it offers a gamer."
Zombie activist rights groups, please note what the BBFC says, "The game is gory, but it’s not detailed and the violence is not sadistic, and it’s focused against zombies. There’s a fantasy element attached, and there’s a sense of humor, albeit a macabre one."
The BBFC spokesperson also said that the graphic violence in the game did not concern them. "There’s a lot of blood in the game, and the player is required to take gory photos, but there are no close-ups and no depictions of sexually motivated violence, which is something we might consider harmful.”
Dead Rising is scheduled to ship throughout Europe on September 8th.
