Rule of Rose

[mokenju1]

Someone here has also played it?. I've finally finished it (good ending) and I'm still looking for psycotic children just waiting for me at every corner .

For the non- initiated Rule of Rose is a survival horror (Silent Hill style) about a girl "lost" in a creepy orphanage were all the adults have... dissapeared. But don't worry, because the Aristocracy (a group of very "interesting" children) would make sure that law and hierarchy are still going to be respected .

It has a very interesting story and great cinematics, but it also has one of the worst fighting gameplay ever...

[Sethaniel]

Yes! I completely agree with everything you said!
Why oh why did they even have to have a combat section to the game?
I swear, the gaming industry doesn't think adventure games are viable any more, everything has to have fighting somewhere.

Rule of Rose was a great story, terrific atmosphere.

(DYK some countries wouldn't release it?)

[mokenju1]

Yes, it's a story that is screaming for a couple of good puzzles to be one of the best adventure games ever created. But instead they decided to create a survival horror game without having enough time to make a proper combat system. I still can't believe that the people who tested "that" didn't ask the developers to don't release the game till it was properly finished.

IIRC it was forbidden in UK and other countries because they thought it was horrible that children were depicted like little psycotics and there was a couple of "sensual" scenes between some of the girls. But children are sometimes bad, some of them can have sensual behaviours (lesbian or heterosexual) and this is a game aimed to mature audiences, so where was the problem?.

[musical74]

Haven't played it - I don't care for survival horror - but I think I can take a guess on why it was banned....keep in mind this is just my view on it.

Video games are becoming a part of the culture, and while the intent is for mature audiences...what's to stop a kid from inadventately seeing a part of it? Kids are becoming more and more computer savvy and so more kids know their way around a computer. I THINK the reason it was banned was because of the view of the kids as little psychos...the parents don't want their kids to be anything like that. The *sensual scenes*? That was probably a secondary issue...I think the main one was the protrayal of kids as little psychotics that caused the banning.

I am NOT a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt =)

[mokenju1]

Well, I have seem more disturbing things in horror films (The Good Son with Macaulay Culkin was pretty disturbing in fact ). Films which I know can be seen by any child (in his/her home). In fact, if that was the reason because this game was banned they should forbid also any kind of pornography in the UK, because children can also watch it if they parents have a copy at home .

Thank god I'm living in a country where citizens can watch any content uncensored in cinemas and tv and (almost) no one plans to ban any game only because children can't play it .

[Septimus]

I liked Rule of Rose, of course only for the story. In fact, I wonder if it would make a good VN? I'd rather read about Jennifer repeatedly hitting a fish-headed demon over the head with a pipe than play it...

Another thing that really made the game was the music. I think if you took either the story or the unique music away from the game then I wouldn't have continued to play it.

[Jake]

I liked Rule of Rose, of course only for the story.

So did it get a release in the UK, in the end, or did you import?

(Mokenju: The last I'd heard it wasn't banned in the UK, but one of our oh-so-wonderful moral-minority tabloid filth-rags that pretend to be newspapers had run a sensationalist article (do they run any other kind?) claiming that the game was targetted expressly at paedophiles, and the publisher yanked it. The same one, IIRC, who had previously claimed that manga shouldn't be introduced to school libraries no matter how many kids it gets reading, because the entire medium was just non-stop graphic sex.)

[mokenju1]

According to the Wikipedia (which is not always right ):

"European Union justice minister Franco Frattini attacked the game as containing "obscene cruelty and brutality". He also called for changes to the PEGI rating system in place across Europe and for government officials to engage in discussions with industry representatives."

"The publisher has chosen to cancel the release of the game in the UK following complaints by Frattini and other EU officials, and "largely misleading"[17] commentary from the UK press.[18] It will however be released in the rest of Europe. Review copies of the title had already shipped to UK journalists when this was announced. The UK body which had granted the title its 16+ PEGI rating (the Video Standards Council) responded to the press and Frattini's comments thus:

I have no idea where the suggestion of in-game sadomasochism has come from, nor children being buried underground. These are things that have been completely made up. [...] We’re not worried about our integrity being called into question, because Mr Frattini’s quotes are nonsense.["

I wonder if those serious and "inteligent" persons really have nothing else more important to worry about than trying to ban a video game...

So you were right Jake it was not banned, it seems the publisher was scared by the bad "reviews" and decided to not release the game only in the UK.

[Jake]

I wonder if those serious and "inteligent" persons really have nothing else more important to worry about than trying to ban a video game...

Well, I think the problem is that they are intelligent, but also have little moral fibre. They realise that a very low proportion of the people who vote them into power play videogames, a reasonable proportion of those people never have and have a relatively low opinion of them, so videogames are an easy scapegoat and an easy thing to rail against in order to demonstrate to the public that they're morally concerned and interested in promoting those oft-talked-about 'family values'. It's only us who do play videogames who easily see through this charade, and we're easily painted as just a bunch of videogaming degenerates who probably eat babies trying to defend ourselves by lying about some poor innocent politician. Ahem.

It happened with rock music, but now the first generation of rockers are the aging population with families that these politicians are trying to appeal to. It happened with jazz, and what was apparently once politically-frowned-upon music is considered harmless enough, as DaFool put it recently, to play in elevators. No doubt in twenty years time when the first generation of videogamers are getting on in years they'll find some other new thing to pick on.

[Sethaniel]

The other thing, IMO, is that most of the people crying for games/books/music to be banned haven't even had the courtesy to actually experience the entertainment for themselves. They're simply relying on what they've read or heard and rushing to judgement.

Take the recent Death Note flap- there are all these concerned parents talking about how irresponsible it is to tell a story like that about a high school kid who writes the names of people he doesn't like in a death notebook--- that's not even what the story is about! Yes, Light is a high school student, but the story of Death Note isn't about revenge against people he personally hates, it's about exploring what justice and righteousness actually are, it's about the conflict between two brilliant people. . . (sigh)

Censorship is even more unjust when it's based on lies and hyperbole.