![]() The critics loved that game for pushing boundaries and delivering an unabashed adult experience.Īnd I agree that it is a title worthy of merit for those reasons, the praise rings hollow when, just a month before the release of the latest Mortal Kombat, the latest iteration of another fighting game franchise, Dead or Alive, landed in stores, and it was roundly criticised for alleged exploitation in dressing hyper real-proportioned women in very small bikinis. The games industry is one where a title like Mortal Kombat can be praised for violence so explicit that players see x-ray footage of organs being ripped and spines being broken in half. And while what I have described above would be easy to dismiss if it were just one example of self-censorship from a relatively obscure game, the frequency this occurs in this industry strains any credibility that games have when the rest of us try to deal with them as works of art. That content was deemed appropriate for the same audience that were apparently incapable of handling some Victoria’s Secret-style lingerie. What is so striking about this is that none of the other content was touched there was no effort to tone down the graphic violence, nor the themes of sheer terror within the game. Whether it’s a concern over the inevitable critical reaction to such things (more on that in a second), or a fear for children seeing things they shouldn’t (despite it being an adults-only game), Nintendo, in its infinite wisdom, saw fit to remove the sexier costumes of Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water. For the English release, Nintendo decided to censor such costumes out of the experience completely. Or at least, that’s the case in the game’s homeland of Japan, where it was released late last year. They’re optional, but for the (adult) audience that is playing this (adult) game there is certainly something to be said about the juxtaposition of the revealing, vulnerable costumes and the decrepit, haunted environments that the protagonists find themselves in. ![]() ![]() ![]() From Dracula right through to the slasher horror, sex has been a recurrent theme in our spooky tales, and there’s no real mystery why historically and culturally there has been a resistance, even fear, to the emotive power of the sexual experience, which has led to religions demonising it and politicians trying to enact controls over it, as they do drugs on the streets.įatal Frame embraces that relationship between sex and fear by providing players with some incredibly sexy costumes to dress characters up with. One of the major games released this year on the Nintendo Wii U is the very adult, very dark, and very frightening Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water.Ĭonsidered to be one of the most intelligent, transgressive, and narratively rich horror franchises in the long history of the horror genre, Fatal Frame also has a reputation for fully embracing the close relationship between horror and eroticism. A puritanical approach to sex themes is stymying our games industry writes Matt Sainsbury.
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