God of War: Ascension rated R18+ in Australia; cannot be sold in Queensland

Steve Wright writes, "Kotaku Australia has broken news of God of War: Ascension‘s R18+ rating, and more importantly, its subsequent inability to be sold in Queensland stores this March.

A national R18+ rating for video games exists, but individual Australian states and territories must pass their own legistation to allow games to be sold. As Queensland has yet to pass legislation for an R18+ rating in games, the newly classified God of War: Ascension cannot be sold in the state until this is rectified."

[cee773]

A lil T&A goes A long way lol

[TrevorPhillips]

Thankfully I'm in Sydney so I'll be able to pick this amazing game up :)

[first1NFANTRY]

me too i'm in Livo and i'm glad this won't affect us. feel bad for my fellow aussie gamers in the Q tho

[Sandmano]

Surely it cant be THAT hard to acquire the game, right?

[showtimefolks]

ausies rating systems sucks

[BattleAxe]

The Ausie government sucks.

[showtimefolks]

no doubt lol

[BitbyDeath]

Dammit, never had any problems with past GoW games.

[BanBrother]

I actually said this a while back. It will be weird when tne ne/t GoW becom es R18+, when you are used to it always being MA15+. Luckily every other state gets it, so it is easily avoided.

[NateCole]

Aussies come across as tough people and yet their gaming rating systems treat them like a bunch of little girls.

[Bathyj]

I think they're just going a bit over the top now because we have an R rating, any game with some gore is automatically R rated.

Starship Troopers was MA15, it it more gory than that?

And WHY is it up to individual states. There should be a blanket law across the whole wide brown land. It took long enough to get the law passed, now they want to break it down further to have smaller squabbles?

Anyway, I doubt they will be able to stop anyone in Qld who wants to from buying it on eBay.

PS
Bought Total Recall with the GoW demo in Qld at Christmas.
Thats contraband now.

[shikamaroooo]

Guess ill try import it ..... If Last Of Us gets banned too, I will be very pissed.

[Bathyj]

Holy crap, thats guaranteed to get an R rating.

You better hope they pass this legislation soon, May is not that far away.

BTW, did you know you can buy metal replica handguns in Qld, but you can not buy GoW?

[Riderz1337]

The Last of Us is probably worse than God of War cause you have the ability to kill other humans in the Last of Us.

[Furesis]

you can do that in god of war as well yeah they give you health i remember

[MaleManSam]

I hate the R18+ in Australia. Everyone espected it to allow the gory or violent games into Aus, but instead all it did was bump up future MA15+ games to the R18+ level. We will never see Mortal Kombat (2011) or future games alike.

Such trickery our government has played on us. Such bullsh!t.

[cloud495]

Every God of War game in NZ has been R16 and the playable demo for ascension was also R16. It's weird seeing it as R18 in Aus.

[AusRogo]

Thank god I'm in Melbourne.. if all they've done is make ma15+ games to r18+, I'll be pissed. We have waited so long for r18. Guaranteed the next cod will be r18+ instead of the usual ma15. F**k the system.

[Bathyj]

Well prepare to be pissed. The bad pissed, not the good pissed, cos it looks like thats what theyre doing.

At least now they cant refuse classification on games because they are R rated overseas. Our R rating might be basically R and MA together but we still get the R titles now. Sucks for minors though.

I wonder if many games will even come out MA anymore. Are they just going to bump everything up and make PG the new MA?

[slapsta72]

i'm from adelaide, australia, and it is just so funny because you just know that ascension would have been rated MA 15+ under the old law.

i tried telling my insane law professor this but she was one of those idiots who thought r18+ would magically make more violent games enter australia.

how ironic that this new law is actually keeping god of war violence out of the hands of 15 year olds.

(i say all this because i highly, highly doubt that this new god of war game is any more violent than past titles)

[Karpetburnz]

Does the Australian laws effect New Zealand? Every God of War game in NZ has been R16, So I hope It doesnt change.

[Sammo24]

NZ has it's own rating for restricted games. Plus as NZ has an R18 for games, it shouldn't really matter, so most definitely it will not be banned.

[solid_warlord]

All the Kangaroo's rioting after this...i have forseen this.

[jakmckratos]

Damn that SUCKS.. I was thinking about moving to Australia..how hard would it be to import it from Amazon or something?? Doesn't your government realize those who really want it are just going to have to work a little bit harder to get it??