I just know, that behind the fictional ‘board of assessors’ that are purportedly the deciding body at the OFLC, there’s a crotchety old lady with severe Alzheimers who actually makes all the decisions.

Because how the hell else do you explain a ratings decision like this.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Wii, PS2, PSP) - M
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (360, PS3) - MA15+

In case you weren’t aware X-Men Origins: Wolverine is going to be quite violent. When Wolverine gets shot chunks of flesh are going to fly off before regrowing in a completely gross and awesome manner. When he slashes some poor bastard with his adamantium claws there’s not going to be a flash of light or a pussy impact sound, that guy is going to lose what gets slashed. Blood and limbs will fly.

Sounds like an MA15+ for a certainty. How could it not be? Dark Sector was initially banned for almost the exact same content.

So how the hell can they justify an M rating for the previous generation hardware systems (live with Nintendo fans) and penalise the PS3 and Xbox 360? Sure the graphics are going to be a bit better and the gore and violence will look a step closer to ‘reality’. But is there really that much difference between the PS2 and Xbox 360 graphics to warrant a completely different rating?

The reality is the OFLC decisions of late have increasingly made no sense. Grand Theft Auto IV was only admitted for the PS3 and Xbox 360 after significant edits were made, yet the PC version is admitted with no edits. It’s like they’re trying to please everyone at once and thats not going to happen. The sensible solution would be to ignore the people who don’t even care about games and are only using the issue to further their own status and listen to people who actually consume and love games as to what they feel is good for them. Or better yet just adopt an existing classification practise from the US or the UK. Copying other western civilisations is where most of our legistlation comes from, and how hard is that to do really?