So would you like to know what has been cut from Left 4 Dead 2? I should warn you, it’s pretty upsetting. Valve have taken a rusty chainsaw to large sections of the game in response to the OFLC refusing classification. Not just to visual aspects of the violence in the game but to core elements of the gameplay. What’s worse is that they’re elements all ready apparent in dozens of other approved games.

Read on and be horrified.

This list of changes comes from the Steam thread devoted to the Australian version of the game which you can see here.

1. Limited Gore, shooting an infected will result in a splash of blood, no chunks or gibs will fall away from enemies and blood will not splatter the screen during a close up blast.

2. No dismemberment, simply put specific aiming of arms or heads, with a fire arm or melee weapon will never result in that limb becoming removed from the body.

3.  Melting corpses. Bodies will fade away after being killed rather than remaining on the screen. Despite this there will be ‘prop corpses’ littered around levels that will be persistent parts of scenery.

4. No death from fire, strangely infected can no longer catch fire and burn, weapons like molotov’s will still kill enemies but they won’t ignite them.

5. No cops, the unique infected character Riot Cop, a bulletproof infected, will not spawn in Australian versions of the game even if playing online with people from other countries. It’s been well documented that during the Demo people from Australia are automatically kicked from matches for this reason. This is despite the fact that, even though the spawn is called a Riot Cop, it’s actually a security guard in riot armour.

Here's a video so you can see the horrific changes in full effect.

As I read this list again I can’t help but notice that every single item on there all ready exists in a number of games, even games that have been approved by the OFLC in the last twelve months. Here are a few examples.

First of the original Left 4 Dead featured persistent bodies, blood spray on screen, death by catching fire, persistent corpses, police like enemies (who again were technically security guards) and decapitations. All elements that were somehow unfit for a sequel released barely a year after the original.

GTA IV is an obvious contender. It features gameplay that is almost orientated around killing policemen through a variety of methods including setting them on fire. While it lacks ‘gibs’ the PC version and Episodes feature Blood spraying on the screen during close kills.

Prototype features a massive amount of dismemberment and gore, fountains of blood and entrails and regular killing of police and US military personnel. You can kill shambling infected people or, quite easily just go nuts and butcher a while crowd of civilians. There are even trophies and achievements for the amount of carnage you can cause with certain powers.

Fallout 3 was originally banned for featuring morphine as a health pack. A quick name change to Stimpack, but leaving it as a syringe object, fixed that right up. Strangely the OFLC was okay with targeting specific body parts to be blasted off. It was even possible to kill another human, strip them to their underwear, shoot of each of their limbs one by one, then pick up their limbless corpse and shake it around like a puppet.

Gears of War is practically famous for the portrayal of blood and bits spraying the screen as players chainsaw enemies to death with the trademark Lancer rifle.

Ninja Gaiden 2 and Afro Samurai are both games for which dismemberment was an essential element of the gameplay. They wouldn’t exist without it.

As for the number of games that feature police of police like enemies to be killed or that feature fire as a weapon that ignites enemies? The list is endless.

In my opinion this proves that the OFLC has to standard by which to grade games. Or they do have one and they’re not applying it. As an organisation they need to be a helluva lot more transparent if they expect to justify these decisions. There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why the violence in Left 4 Dead 2 differs from the above games. But the OFLC needs to make clear what that is, the reports they’ve released into the public domain so far simply don’t justify this level of censorship.